Making Dealerships Successful in a Socially Connected World
Coordinated Content Distribution
The Socialize Now content management system allows Tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn updates, Blog articles, YouTube videos, photos, emails and other social media to be composed, scheduled and deployed. Â Syndicate to multiple dealerships. Control your social strategy for an entire collection of dealerships from a single location. Allow dealerships to compose their own content which can be approved before being sent.
Tweets and Updates Ready-to-Go
Ready-made Tweets, Facebook updates, and blog posts on relevant topics along with surveys and coupons are essential to maintaining and growing a dealership’s social presence. Content from OEM feeds, auto review sites, and automotive blogs can be placed into content libraries for easy selection by each dealership. Required content that you create can even be pushed automatically to each dealership (or selected dealerships) and published on their behalf. A weekly email digest alerts dealers of new content that they can click and quickly approve for distribution.
Tailor Content by Brand and by Store
Items such as Tweets, updates, blog posts, emails, and coupons selected from the content library can be customized automatically to include components that are unique for each store and/or OEM brand. For instance, select a tweet that automatically includes a link back to the dealership website. Choose a Facebook update that automatically includes the dealership name. Or, pick a coupon that is automatically tailored to include the dealership logo, address, and a vehicle brand.
Promotions, Coupons and Shout Outâ„¢ Group Deals
Bring in new business through our socially enabled promotion engine. A range of offers and promotion designs can be selected. Use the power of social networks to turn customers into advocates and turn your customers friends into new prospects.
Lead Generating Social Content
The Socialize Now platform supports a growing number of interactive social content elements which can be used to achieve tangible business results. These elements are designed to work across social sites to…
- Expand the number of fans and followers
- Provide offers which generate new prospects and customers
- Promote the sharing of content and re-enforcement of your brand
- Receive answers to important questions
Social Coupons with Lead Capture
Coupons and offers are important ways to drive business. They become even more powerful when you add social aspects to the way they are distributed and promoted.
Getting More Fans and Followers
Social Coupons created through Socialize Now can act as a catalyst for getting people to “like†your Facebook page or to follow you on Twitter. They are promoted through social updates such as tweets and posts to your Facebook wall, and can also be distributed through email, your Website, your Blog, and more. Coupons can be flexibly designed to dealership specifications and can become templates that produce new coupons regularly throughout the year.
Collecting Leads
Providing coupons and offers through your social network presence also provides an opportunity to collect information about the people receiving your offer. Coupons can be configured to capture leads in different ways. Here is one example of how a coupon can work:
When a coupon is posted to your Facebook page, the coupon appears in the newsfeed of the people who have “liked†your page (your fans). When a fan clicks the link in this item for the first time, the user is prompted by Facebook for permission to provide their email address. Upon acceptance of this request, the coupon is displayed within Facebook and the user’s email address is automatically retrieved from Facebook and stored in the Socialize Now platform.
If this same coupon is distributed via Twitter, the Socialize Now platform will change its behavior accordingly and prompt the user for their email address first prior to displaying the coupon.
In addition to displaying the coupon on the first click, the lead collection process can be further modified to…
- Provide the coupon through an email response to the user
- Provide the coupon after the user takes the additional step of sharing the coupon offer to his or her friends.
The Shout Outâ„¢
Sometimes great deals are made possible through the actions of friends working together. In this spirit, Socialize Your Stuff offers a social element that extends the coupon model called the “Shout Outâ€. The purpose of this component is to grow the number followers and fans associated with a dealers Facebook page or Twitter account and expand the number of people who have access to a particular coupon or offer. This is done by having people share the offer by “shouting it out†to their friends.
Here is how the “Shout Out†works on Facebook:
- The fans of the dealer page receive an item in their newsfeed. This item includes standard  “Shout Out†wording and an offer.
- The offer text includes something like this: “You can get this great deal. Shout Out about this deal and have at least 3 of your friends Shout Out tooâ€.
- When the user clicks the link, they are taken first to a Facebook App where they provide permission for Socialize Now to post to their wall and collect their email address. This only happens the first time.
- A message such as the following is then shared on this users wall: “William Peabody has found a great deal from Washington Chevy and wanted you to know about it. Shout Out to your friends about this deal by sharing it. This will help William to get this deal and if 3 of your friends share this deal, you can get it too!â€
- This message includes a link that points back to William Peabody. When any of William Peabody’s friends clicks this link and in-turn shares the deal with their friends, this fact is recorded in the Shout Out database.
- Once 3 friends have posted the Shout Out to their wall, William Peabody will receive an email containing the coupon or offer details.
Lead Capture
The various coupon offers and Shout Out deals are used to collect new leads for each dealership. As coupon opportunities are passed along, each new friend who likes the deal becomes a new opportunity. Lead information can then be exported by each dealership or passed into their information systems using ADF format. Reports will tell you how many leads are being collected by each coupon or Shout Out deal, and totals by dealership.
Managing Reputation and the Social Inbox
Much like a standard email inbox, a Social Inbox is a set of social conversations displayed in an intuitive way. Each conversation can lead to a variety of user actions. A dealership can engage with their Social Inbox to browse, compose, and respond to social conversations.
The Social InBox is also the place where a dealership can observe and measure their reputation. Comments and ratings from Yelp and other review sites can be found, as well as Google and Bing search results. Each comment can be assigned a positive or negative sentiment rating which helps the dealership see a more general picture of how they are perceived in the marketplace.
Group-Level and Dealership-Level Reporting
Each dealership can measure how well their social marketing initiatives are working for them. Â Dealership activity can also be measured as a group. Through these reports the answer to several important questions can be discovered:
- What types of Tweets and Facebook updates are generating the most clicks to the dealership website?
- Which types of content are the most “liked�
- What topics generate the most comments?
- Which coupon is generating the most leads?
Integration and Single Sign On
The Socialize Now platform is built on flexible open-source standards. This provides the opportunity for us to integrate with a wide range of systems at both the data and user interface level. Â Our system can be customized to fit within many environments and work within a single-sign-on model.