Groundbreaking report on social media usage challenges some traditional outlooks. Are you ready to change your opinions?
One snowy day, a long time ago, Trish’s grandmother was reading the newspaper. Her reading glasses were precariously balancing on the tip of her nose. We were just waiting for them to fall off, when all of a sudden this tiny, kind lady hastily closed the paper, rolled it up in a large ball and launched it at the crackling fireplace. She proclaimed that the article she was reading was absolute rubbish and that the writer had no idea what he was writing about.
She then turned to us and, in a voice only a grandmother could get away with, officially advised that “paper never refuses ink” and that people should be very careful what they write since their impressions last a lifetime.
An interesting research paper was released in December 2011 by Dealer.com, DriverSide and GfK Automotive. The paper is called “The Rise of Loyalty Advocacy & Influence, Social Media and the New Automotive Purchase Cycle.”
It’s an interesting read, contains many facts and figures and, as you imagine, contains many observations about how consumers today use social media as part of their normal purchasing processes. The paper builds on concepts introduced by McKinsey & Company that develops a theory that the historical “purchase funnel” has been replaced by what they identify as the “consumer decision journey.”
Funnel is a journey
Many of the large international consulting houses have, or are in the process of releasing, papers on the changing consumer and their implications on the automotive industry of the future. Multicultural and multi-generational demographic shifts seem to be finally garnering the attention they deserve as demographic shifts and technology advancement along with social behaviour are all converging upon one another.
There is one common thread among most of the papers: the concept of connectivity, the increased participation of individuals and businesses belonging and participating in virtual groups.
We all know the statistics regarding the rapid growth in the use of smartphones and other hand-held devises. The Dealer.com paper segments the usage of various social media and seems to declare Facebook as the social media leader at this point with over 800 million users globally.
The papers offer convincing facts that we are in the midst of a major shift in consumer behaviour. The Dealer.com paper clearly indicates that Facebook and Twitter have a growing influence on the new vehicle purchase decision. In fact, their statistics seem to imply that both Facebook and Twitter have an influence of where consumers buy and service their vehicles.
Brace for change
The NADA conference this year again offered a virtual smorgasbord of products that claim to help dealers tackle the mountain of influences that are bombarding dealerships. They portrayed a near tsunami that is flowing its way through the dealership world.
I felt sorry for the dealers and their managers that attended. The social media alarm bells were sounding everywhere. Practical solutions, on the other hand were few and far between and were no match for the crescendo of alarms. Perhaps its because it’s still early days. One thing for certain is that more confusion than ever exists between the roles to be played by dealers and the brands they represent in dealing with this new retail wind.
The brand response to social networking messaging is critically important. Social networking goes way beyond a dealer’s realm of control and largely rests with their brand’s ability to promote itself using social media. Brands must create brand-wide social networking groups, geographic-based groups and demographic-based groups in an attempt to manage the high-level brand message.
Non-stop communication
This goes well beyond traditional sales and marketing tactics by providing forums for positive communication, where members can join with other brand enthusiasts to share their positive experiences and help each other overcome the potholes in the road that will definitely happen during the ownership experience. Members helping members is much more powerful and credible than expensive brand messaging.
With so many different types of consumers and diverse cultural demographics, brands need to cover a very broad spectrum of potential customers. Not so, however, for dealerships. The neighbourhood characteristics seem more relevant. Taking the battle out of the war is what matters to dealers. How to fight the battle is a modern day struggle of auto retailers.
One key piece of research, in my mind, comes from the Dealer.com paper where the importance of post-purchase community interaction is highlighted. They call this the “Interact” phase and forms part of “The Loyalty Loop.” Trying not to oversimplify the concept developed in the paper, the community interaction after the purchase or service experience has a direct impact of how other members of the virtual community will purchase new vehicles and seek out after-sales service locations for their own use.
This type of direct endorsement crosses all demographic boundaries. Regardless of cultural background or age, the concept of sharing your experiences is universal. What historically has been the “tell three people if you are happy and 10 if you are not,” is now expanded to the hundreds and thousands, thanks to social networking.
Deliver on your promises
It’s what creates the message that is of interest here, not how people communicate it. This is no different that it always has been. Let’s go back to the basics for a minute. Be honest, do what you say you will do, at the price you said you would do it at, in the time you agreed to do it in. This goes for all customer interactions regardless of their demographic circumstance.
So what creates the need to share a negative experience with friends? At play here are some of the disconnects we live with in our industry. Disconnects create unmet expectations. The disconnect between the internet message and the in-dealership experience, the disconnect between the used inventory we carry versus the mix of vehicles on the road in our market area.
There are more disconnects between the personnel we employ versus the demographic of customers that frequent our stores, the disconnect between perceived brand promise and vehicle performance, just to name a few.
The real issue is that consumers will no longer be silent about the disconnects and their unmet expectations. Consumers of all walks of life have grown incredibly impatient and now have the power to spread a negative message at lightspeed to a very broad base of friends and friends of friends.
Our objective as dealers is to manage the customer experience under our control to minimize or eliminate any negative messaging that any customer, regardless of demographic classification might be compelled to share with his or her friends in a social media setting.
Historically, consumers were influenced by a limited number of sources, mostly self-exposed. Sources were limited to those media outlets the consumer chose to engage. Consumers were also personally influenced by friends and family, but these numbers were relatively low by today’s standards.
Today, anyone with an email address and a web connection can be the source of input into social media sites. The boundaries are only limited by the connectivity. Once connected, potentially all those also connected within the network become part of the online connectivity network, the network of influence.
Trish’s grandmother would be throwing smartphones, iPads and the like into the fire faster than we could buy them. She would need to refine her observation “that paper never refuses ink” into something more 21st Century like, “social networks will let anyone and everyone put in their two cents.”
The trouble for dealers is that two cents could cost us a lot of money. Doing things right each and every time is the only way to keep the social networking drums beating in your favour.
“The papers offer convincing facts that we are in the midst of a major shift in consumer behaviour. The Dealer.com paper clearly indicates that Facebook and Twitter have a growing influence on the new vehicle purchase decision.”
“What historically has been the “tell three people if you are happy and 10 if you are not,” is now expanded to the hundreds and thousands, thanks to social networking.”
