Traditional media still has a place in my budget…WHY??

I must have heard this 100 times at DD7 by many dealers I talked with. I even found myself agreeing…I remember saying sure it does. Today as I was recapping what I was exposed to this year at Digital Dealer I thought about this and it occurred to me…WHY?

What exactly does traditional media do for a dealership? I found myself not being able to answer the question. It’s not track-able so we can’t assign that value to it. Tried to fall back on the whole branding thing, but I think we have at least proven that social media does a better job of branding than traditional media could ever do now.

SO WHAT IS TRADITIONAL MEDIA GOOD FOR??

Honestly, I can’t say.

There are so many other ways customers are getting the information they need I really cannot see why any dealership would still be advertising through Radio, Television or Heaven forbid the Newspaper. The only explanation I could come up with is one that is all too common in the car business… We’re comfortable with traditional media. We are trained from a early start in this business to take control, so much so we sometimes we truly believe we can will things to happen the way they always have been.

TIME FOR A WAKE UP CALL… My fellow brethren dealers we can’t will it back to the old days, and we haven’t been in control of the conversation for some time now. It’s time to face reality jump in with both feet make some mistakes learn from them and keep going we can no long afford to sit on the sidelines of online marketing and social media and stick our big toe in to see how warm the water is.

I saw a tweet this week, can’t remember who tweeted it, it said “If you can’t do social media right then don't do it.” That’s crap we know more about what not to do with social media than what to do with it. You're going to make some mistakes and that’s ok, don't give up keep working on it. There is no one best way. Just keep 4 things in mind with social media:
Listen
Engage
Educate
Entertain

Beyond that it’s an open forum, and it’s supposed to be. You will be attacked by intolerant idiots who think they have the keys to social media… just deal don't vent online best to just ignore.

Above all we have to jump in stay in and keep our heads down and keep shoveling.

Hope that helps.