Chris Brogan's used car sales experience - (C It Now video No. 5)
Chris is a revered social media marketer in the US who recently purchased a Chevrolet Camaro. Rather than purchase from a local dealer on the east coast, he had the car shipped from Aaron Smith at Motorphilia in Texas. Why did he do that?
One of Chris' childhood dreams was to own a Camaro; it's a quick sports car and it reminds Chris of the famous Batmobile. He was now in the comfortable position of being able to make the purchase so he started to look.
Chris started his search with the local dealers within a 50-70 mile radius of where he lives on the east coast. Because he was so disappointed with the dealer web experience he wrote an article entitled "Dear Car Dealerships - Stop Sucking".
He picks up on a number of points, but the worse offence in Chris's opinion is the fact that the dealer's web sites did very little to encourage Chris to go and pay them a visit.
Chris followed this article up with "Buy a Car off the Internet?". By then he'd bought his Camaro from Aaron Smith at Motorphilia in Texas.
Aaron had picked up the original blog from his Facebook page and replied to Chris four minutes after he posted the article. He simply stated that he could get Chris a Camaro, provided some pricing and asked Chris to get in touch if he was interested.
What's impressive here, and a sign of things to come, is that the connection was made because Aaron was listening.
Motorphilia has survived, and no doubt now thrives on offering a different customer experience to the average franchised dealership. His market is the world, not Texas, so he's used to remote selling which is reflected in his 'vestri via' process; he's comfortable with social media tools like Facebook and he provides lots of picture information to help his potential customer with the decision making process. His web site is also incredibly simple and uncluttered - it's really easy to get in touch.
I know car dealers that read this are unlikely to make wholesale changes to their web sites. But if you're looking to make more sales (remote or otherwise), here are some useful tips:
1. Make it easier for buyers to start a conversation - use a live chat application like Contact At Once or Vee24. I know some dealers where live chat is accounting for 35% or more of their sales.
2. Use video, live or pre-recorded to overwhelm the customer with useful information. C It Now has a sales conversion rate of 40% which is 4 times the national average (UK).
3. Start listening as well as advertising on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube.
So, what do you think? Is social media already a great weapon in your marketing armoury; could you be listening more?
We'll return to the subject of 'listening' in a future post.
