Welcome to this week’s episode of Used Cars Weekly, the original CBT News show dedicated to bringing car dealers best practices and tips for the used car department, in-depth dealer interviews, hands-on dealership strategies, as well as vendor analysis. Today, host Jasen Rice is joined by John McAdams, Vice President of Sales for SOCIALDEALER, an automotive social media marketing, and reputation management agency based in Virginia.
McAdams spent around five years of his career as the general manager of a car dealership where he was tasked with streamlining the marketing strategy. His experience in the car dealership helped him transition into a marketing provider that specializes in organic and paid social advertising. These days, McAdams and his team travel all over the country helping car dealers leverage the internet to sell and service more cars.
There’s no one size fits social media marketing, says McAdams. However, you can use your first-party data to your advantage. Look at your top trade reports and your top selling reports first. Find out the year, make, model, miles, and price, of which vehicles move the quickest and hold the most gross. Then, strategize about which platforms to market those vehicles on.
When he was general manager, McAdams said he tried to execute this himself, but it was very time-consuming and complicated. While car dealers have access to the DMS and the CRM, they still have to manually process, clean, upload, and create campaigns for their social ads. However, car dealers can do it, if they are willing to invest the time and resources to learn. Dealers can even start small and make their social channels more community-focused. McAdams recommends unwinding your brain from a sales-only mindset and integrate the community into your strategy.
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