Dealership Racketeering, Part II
In the early days of Internet and the auto industry, some dealers jumped in to having a web presence and either made it work or didn’t. Some didn’t bother. Some waited a while and let things develop. Some pioneered. I remember the bitterness dealers would have for “Internet” customers because they had too much information accessible to them to be ripped off.
This has settled and today essentially every dealership has an “Internet Department” which, really seems archaic now. Why is the Internet still considered a separate doorway to sales? Do dealers have a “radio department” or a “TV department” or a “billboard department”? No. They don’t. So why an “Internet department”? I don’t have an Internet department.
For more than two years now, the possibility I have seen the Internet offer dealers is the opportunity to establish genuine trust and confidence with their customers AND their employees. To accomplish this dealers must lead the way. If they sit back and count on others to do the thinking for them they will be led astray. Dealers need to take responsibility for their desired result which begins with a genuinely perceived possibility.
There is a lot more talk than action out there. The angles dealers take with their advertising is not much different from before and when it comes down to it, dealers just want to sell more cars. By this I mean that dealers struggle to find the vision and lasting patience for cultivating and nurturing sales opportunities. Websites are designed to convert now buyers and the only real Internet tools dealers know how to use for retaining potential customers is their newsletter and CRM.
Dealers must make their blogs tangible to customers AND employees. If you treat your blog as a microsite you degrade its potential power.
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