With the growing awareness and interest in “Web 2.0″ for car dealers, the pressure is on to conceive truly impacting ways for dealers to sell more cars with today’s web technologies. I for one have no doubt that Web 2.0 is key to the success of car dealers, but I also realize the climb has hardly begun.

It’s important to consider proven marketing practices and techniques when leveraging technology. Often people shift towards tools and technology because they are new and then try to find clever ways to make them viable. Take something like Facebook for instance. It’s free and available to everyone so dealers are signing up for it and then wondering how they can put it to good use.

Facebook is a sophisticated application and there are numerous ways to utilize it for sales and marketing purposes, but its not going to be easy. First you have to develop an audience which takes time, commitment, and creativity. You don’t develop an audience in social networks by advertising and soliciting to people. You develop it by observing your connections, interacting with them, and creating interest in them for you. Not realistic if you have an ulterior motive. But that’s the reality of social media networking.

So what can dealers do with Facebook? Well, I think a good start would be to keep it simple by using the Events functionality. Let’s say you are having a tent sale in a few weeks. First you would create an event on your Facebook to announce the event. Then you would blast an email to your permission-based email audience about the event, maybe using a short video to introduce it and invite people to connect with you on Facebook.

Then, at the event, set up a table with a Facebook banner and some materials to educate people at the event about your efforts on Facebook. Take lots of pictures, some videos, maybe even get some written testimonials. Essentially, document the event with multi-media. Heck you might even consider hiring a professionals to do this like you would for your wedding.

After the event, update your Facebook with all the pictures and videos and such, like a journal entry. Make it look sharp, fun, and appealing. Now shoot out another email to your list thanking them for attending and encouraging those that weren’t there to make a check out the pics and stuff anyway.

Hopefully you get the idea. This is no easy task but you want to start somewhere. To pull this off you need buy-in from staff and possibly professional help from select partners, and of course an audience interested in your efforts. But it’s these sorts of efforts that will allow you to build trust with your audience, evolve your dealership, and selling more cars (and service them too). Do this regularly and you could be on to something.

Funny how writing about topics perpetuates the subject in conversations. This week I had conversations with multiple people about the Online Communities they either run or in which they participate. In all instances the conversation pinnacled on a specific thought - Is the community in response to a need, or trying to establish one?

Online Communities created for the sake of being an Online Community pose a tough question…WHY?

Why create an Online Community simply for the sake of having one? Does it not make more sense to create one out of a growing need, or better yet, let your community evolve naturally from demand of an existing audience?

With social networking and online community software as abundant and cost-effective as it is today, many are lured in to the idea of creating an online community simply because we can, well in theory anyways. What is the motivation here?

Money of course is one reason. Not in all cases but in many instances it is. The Internet has developed this evasive stigma that you can make money by having an audience. Well, yes, you can, but can you make enough money for the amount of time you put in to it?

Recognition is another reason. I seriously think the desire to have your own online community tantalizes this fundamental human need. We all want to be recognized for who we are and what we do.

Opportunity is one, particularly for business folk and people prone to networking. An Online Business Community holds out some shiny bright lights of opportunity for many of us.

Reality is there is a lot more to establishing an Online Community that most consider, which is why so many come and go. Like websites and software, most people completely underestimate the requirements for success and effectiveness in these areas. And while there certainly are proven methods and best practices for establishing community, the process is certainly organic and requires vision, commitment, and dedication.

This is why I think that Venture Capital can be dangerous. If a person or group start pouring money into developing an Online Community from scratch without having an actual product or service then what is your community accomplishing and where can it go before the funding runs out? It’s a tough reality because it is all too simple for us to think we have a revenue model that will work if have an audience. The school of hard knocks will most likely reveal that your audience itself is what will perpetuate the need for, or at least sustain any effort to establish an Online Community.

Like the Dot Com days that reach unfathomable heights, so too is the practice of creating Online Communities becoming a Wild Wild West in online communications.

Online Business Communities have rapidly become a competitive marketplace. Companies are investing millions into their own communities, and with mixed results.

According to a recent article on SocialMediaToday.com, author Jerry Bowles writes “…several giant corporations have launched online business communities aimed at engaging small business owners and managers through a conversational social media approach” and lists more than half a dozen companies having invested $1M to $5M each into their Online Business Communities. Membership counts in these online communities range from single digits to tens of thousands. Time obviously a major factor for low member counts, but not the only reason.

Sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo which are universally geared towards Online Professionals and fall in to the Social Networking category generate a lot of buzz traffic and offer a useful way to keep connected with close and distant contacts have an advantage in that they are not tied to a tight niche market or industry. Online Business Communities for big corporate well-known and established companies such as those listed in Bowles’ article, e.g. American Express, Visa, Dell, Intuit/QuickBooks, have the luxury of pre-exisitng large member groups with common and also recurring needs and interests specific to those organizations and their products also have an edge with their Online Business Communities because of those factors.

But one category of Online Business Communities to question are those in the niche market segments or industries that are starting up. We touched on the subject a couple weeks ago with DrivingSales.com, but there are others. The challenge with such Online Business Communities is their unique value proposition. Without an actual product or service, what are these online communities accomplishing? What can they do to develop and keep an audience aside from developing an audience for the sake of it?

Bowles makes some excellent observations that are good take-aways from his article which such all communities must consider.

3. The quality of the content of a web community trumps the most well-financed demand generation program. No amount of promotion can keep people coming to a community that is not engaging and useful.

6. Participants in smaller business communties are more engaged and likely to participate than those in bigger communities so make your community only as big as it needs to be. Two thousand engaged and qualified potential customers is better than a million page views.

8. That leads to what I modestly call Jerry’s corollary: the online communities that are most likely to succeed are those that are focused narrowly on engaging buyers of specialized, high-end products.

A concern with Online Business Communities that sprout from venture capital and which are designed for niche market segments and industries rather than evolving naturally from its customer audience is that through mere idealism they are putting the cart before the horse so to say in that they expect a software communications system to perpetuate the need for a business model.

MySpace evolved out of the need for bands to promote themselves which led to widespread popularity in promotion of individual persons. Facebook evolved that commodity into a more marketer-friendly environment. Both of these catered to a specific generation (or two). LinkedIn honed that down to a universal class of people, i.e. Online Business Professionals. But these sites are ultimately appeal to millions which is what gives them a chance to be successful.

Banking your model on something that will only appeal to a few thousand people makes for tremendous challenge. It limits advertising capabilities and puts you at the disadvantage with conversions and numbers.

One of the hotter Dealer Auto Sales Strategy Websites these days is DrivingSales.com. The site is officially in beta mode but it is essentially functional at this point. I have been registered with it now for a few months and recognize numerous names that are signed up. In fact one of my closer contacts is becoming heavily involved with the proprietors.

Anyhow, I have mixed feelings about the Dealer Auto Sales Website. It is designed to be a space where dealers and vendors can network and collaborate. More importantly, Dealers and Vendors can submit an Auto Sales Strategy and receive feedback on it. Dealers can also rate Vendor Auto Sales Website Providers. This is all good in theory, but its a “toot your own horn (or someone else’s)” approach to networking which appears all too common in the Auto Sales Industry.

LinkedIn was one of the first on the scene with this sort of networking system. I have been a free subscriber there for years and have yet established a desire to upgrade to a paid account and LinkedIn is a damn good Networking Space. In order for a Dealer Auto Sales Strategy Website to profit I suspect it will rely on ad revenue. But without appeal to a mass consumer audience this is a tall order.

So, while my curiosity is stemmed, I am skeptical about the Dealer Auto Sales Website. Seems idealistic to me and obviously backed by Venture Capital which I personally find dangerous unless the enterprise entails assembling widgets or is a Finance Business. But for a limited niche networking site how will it pay for itself?

“So what do you do for a living?”

How often have we all heard that question come out of someone’s mouth? Usually uttered at cocktail parties where few people know each other, this question establishes a framework for the relationships we have with everyone around us.

When we find out what people do for a living, we can determine what they can do for us and what we can do for them, creating networks that can last a lifetime. And who doesn’t want a friend who sells cars?

Except there are only so many people you can invite to a cocktail party, and only so many cocktail parties you can attend. So how do you turn this handy piece of information into more car sales without spending the next 30 Saturdays at cocktail parties?

- Utilize social media to make local contacts -

Social media has changed the way the internet — and the world — works. People are connecting with other people in ways they never could before. They would never have the time or ability to meet before this new technology became available. Now they’re not only meeting, but becoming friends.

To use social media to forward your business goals, the first thing you have to understand is who it is that buys your product. In the auto salesperson’s case, those people are local. Focus your energies on meeting new online contacts that you know are within driving range of where you are. There are local communities on all of the major social networks, most prominently Facebook. These are where you’ll meet the people who can come out and buy your cars.

- Make them aware of what you do -

Don’t hide your occupation. Make it easy for them to find out that you sell vehicles, either by putting something simple in your forum signature line or making sure to fill in the occupation and employer categories on Facebook and LinkedIn.

- Don’t sell anything -

Social media is just what it sounds like — social. This is not a way for you to sell cars. It’s a way for you to meet people to whom you may eventually sell cars. Do not try to sell through your social media profile, ever. Just be social.

- Go about your business -

Probably the most important thing to remember about building a personal social networking profile is that you have to be yourself. You can be yourself on your best behaviour, but you have to be honest about who you are and what you’re doing. Don’t pretend to be a churchgoer or a Democrat or a kite-lover, just to sell cars. Do what you would do anyway and meet like-minded people. That will be the secret to your success.

If you’ve got a website that caters specifically to a certain age group or target audience, your advertisements may be wasted on Internet users that don’t match your goals.

That’s why Google Adwords is offering something called “demographic bidding.” With this new system, your online marketing strategies can reach new and exciting goals. With demographic bidding, you can enable more attention-grabbing product placements for your Adsense ads to increase their impact on viewers. That way, your target audience is more likely to see the products meant for them.

Think of it this way: You are wasting your advertising dollars if you are paying for Adwords to display ads about the latest video game system if the only people seeing it are senior citizens.

The new system works because Google will receive the specific demographic data from various social networks. Myspace, Facebook and others often ask for users’ ages and other information when they sign up for accounts. Google will then use that information and display your Adwords ads to your target groups on those websites. Or the company can simply prevent your ads from displaying to groups outside of your target audience.

Google outlines three steps for those interested in this new program:

1. Sign up with Google Adwords and create a campaign.
2. Wait for the campaign to run for a week to gather demographic information and assess the impact of the campaign.
3. Increase your bids for groups with good values or hide the ads from groups with poor responses.

The time investment required for success in social media can be pretty intense. There are thousands of good possible places you can concentrate on to promote your cause but it is impossible to utilize them all. Which is why having a vision for what you want to accomplish and a plan to get there.

Chris Winfield of SearchEngineLand recently published a set of things you can do this year to achieve social media success. It’s called, “10 Simple Steps To Social Media Success In 2008″ and I have his list re-iterated here for your convenience. However you may want to visit the article and read them in more detail to get a more applicable use for these activities. The one that caught my attention was the idea of bookmarking posts you like but in another language. In other words, doing the translation essentially on behalf of the original poster to ultimately benefit you at the SEO level.

Here is his list along with a snippet and estimated time you can expect performing each action…

1. Connect w/ Others (1 hour per week) - Add 2 contacts per week to your profile on sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
2. Master a Discussion Forum (2 hours per week) - Become a regular masterful voice on a popular forum that interests you.
3. Trim Your Feed Reader (5 hours per month) - Narrow the selection of blogs you read to just a few and comment on them each.
4. Meet a Digger a Day (15 minutes per day) - Contact someone on Digg that interests you and form a bond.
5. Publish Company Video - Create a video to represent your company and build links to it. (Excellent Idea).
6. Think Globally (10 minutes per submission) - Translate articles you Digg into another language
7. Focus on Results - Not all social sites produce fruit. You want to closely monitor how each impacts your traffic and stop using the ones that do not produce.
8. Answer Questions (15 minutes per day) - Answer 5 questions a day in your niche on Yahoo! Answers.
9. Join the Conversation (20 minutes per day) - Find out where and what others are saying about you and join in on the conversation.
10. Year in Reviews (15 minutes per review) - Create reviews on the sites where your company is presented.

Excluding the reviews idea and the company video, this equates to approximately 10 hours per week of recommended activity you can expect to perform in order to achieve success in social media. That is no small chunk of time.

Notice there is no mention of producing content. The time required for researching topics, formulating a thesis or an opinion and then writing on a subject is demanding too. Even when you have people writing for you you still want to research topics and review what is being written.

This form of online brand marketing is no joke. You can’t take it lightly. You can’t expect results simply by creating a profile and posting some photos to it once in a while. You have to divulge yourself into it and engage virtually with those you encounter. Social Media success is no small feat.

People often equate social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook to an untapped land of opportunity for marketing purposes. While there is indeed tremendous opportunity for marketing in the online social arena, the formula for success is commonly approached with misconceptions.

For instance, this recent article on Digital Dealer states,

Probably the biggest, most important technique that successful social marketers use is networking. Networking with the community should be common practice for dealers. There are hundreds of blogs on automotive reviews, consumer auto shopping, OEMs, and vendors, along with other car chatter on the internet to comment on, link to, and network with.

Not to suggest that there isn’t opportunity for networking on social media, but is it really “the biggest, most important technique”? Obviously that is a hypothetical suggestion that is open for debate.

I would argue that for the sake of ROI, especially for car dealers because of the nature of the Auto Shopper, that SEO is a more important aspect or benefit with this sort of online brand marketing. To achieve SEO benefits with social media, auto dealers, or any business for that matter, can outsource the work to experts and have professional grade content designed to promote the dealership at the SEO level pumped to their profiles. The formula to accomplish this can be defined, executed, and measured. The dealer could additionally utilize their profile to do some networking but the SEO rewards would essentially be on auto pilot, thus cost-effective.

Think about the time and effort required to benefit at the networking level in social media. If you approach it with automation then you have to design and maintain an effective CRM process custom tailored to each social profile you run. That is time-consuming. Alternatively you could take your networking efforts with an ad-hoc approach, but would this be fruitful numbers-wise? Is it worth spending 20% of your day networking in hopes to pick up an extra sale or two a month?

Networking benefits with social media do exist but they require long-term commitment and vision, two seemingly difficult concepts to apply in automotive retail with high turnover and the weighty emphasis on monthly sales. The SEO rewards however prove more bang for your buck.

Last week we mentioned that a primary benefit to car dealers in Social Media Marketing was SEO. The value of this is in realizing that using social media and networking sites to promote your business is not just about engaging with your customer audience, although that is a significant aspect, but also in that when executed effectively, social marketing can also help your dealership website gain authority with search engines.

Authority with search engines is essentially a form of advertising because it causes your website to appear high in natural search listings. This of course is extremely valuable to car dealers which is why making sure this is one of the fruits of your social media marketing efforts is important.

One way to benefit from SEO with social media marketing is to properly link the keywords you reference in your articles and even in the comments you leave on other peoples’ blogs and social profile pages. Search engines scan these web pages for links and repetitive use of keywords so, if you leave 2 or 3 related comments a week on various web sites complimentary to your SEO strategy, then linking them to your site can add tremendous value to your efforts.

While it is ideal to link the exact key phrase of your targeted search market, you still want the reader experience to be natural so sometimes you have to use a variation of the key phrase. But this is o.k. because doing so also helps positively impact your relative or long-tail search marketing.

As a result of the enhanced SEO from which car dealers can benefit in their social media marketing efforts, your dealer website will become increasingly more visible to search audiences across the globe. Every word and every link you place on your site and the websites of others should be considered for its impact on search engines and for its impact on readers.

If you spend all your time writing for your customer audience without considering how search engines will respond then you could be investing a lot of time producing results that pale in comparison to what you could be accomplishing simply by applying a few simple techniques. By the same token, if you write exclusively for search engines then you will have minimal readership, if any at all, which also does not help to enhance your search engine authority and thus awareness online of your brand.

Technorati Tags: automotive marketing, auto marketing, internet marketing, search marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, sem, social marketing, social network marketing, social media marketing, long tail search

How you present your dealership online to active and inactive car shoppers has become an important part of the Internet marketing strategy for car dealers today. In fact, in a recent J.D. Power study, it was reported that,

While all new-vehicle buyers hope to get a good deal, customers are receptive to spending more than they originally budgeted provided that the salesperson does a good job of educating the customer about the features and benefits they are receiving. Source AutoRemarketing.

With this in mind, the smart car dealer will seek to find cost-effective and time-effective ways to bring this added value to their customers.

One way to accomplish this is by way of social media marketing. With social marketing, dealers are now able to meet their customers at the virtual level and provide an added layer of service and rapport. In fact, with the advent of some social media sites such as Twitter, Pownce, or even digg, dealers can learn to speak with their customers in mass using alternative methods to email. This is not to suggest that email marketing is not useful, but that dealers do not have to limit their outreach to just email and direct marketing.

The important thing to keep in mind when utilizing social media marketing for sales and marketing purposes is to sustain a level of transparency with your customer audience. This means that you want to refrain from trying things that might come across as misleading or deceptive. For instance, when posting information on the Web in places not branded to your dealership, be sure to make it clear who you are and why you are there. This includes things like leaving comments on peoples’ profiles, or in discussion forums, or on other peoples’ blogs.

Anytime you go online in the name of or on behalf of your dealership, engage with people in a professional and honest manner. Using different nick names and screen names for various things can be ok, but the last thing you want do is give someone the impression that you are trying to trick them in to visiting your dealer site or giving you their info when normally they would not. The rapidity of these negative impressions circulating across the many social networks can become a viral catastrophe if it gets out of hand.

But don’t let risks like this discourage you from going in this direction, unless of course you have no intention of being honest.

Technorati Tags: auto marketing, automotive marketing, car dealer marketing, internet marketing, social marketing, social media marketing, social network marketing, brand awareness, brand marketing, online brand marketing, internet brand marketing, twitter, pownce, digg, J.D. Power, AutoRemarketing