What does it mean to humanize your dealership? How can you do this on social media? What will the impact be for your dealership team?
More and more consumers look for the personal touch from companies, especially on social media. This digital platform is one place where you can truly showcase your personality, give potential customers a look at what you’re all about, and let them see a different side of things. Imagine working with a salesperson at the local dealer that you’ve seen in videos and social media posts. You’d feel more comfortable with them than with someone else.
Here are the Top 5 Ways to Humanize Your Dealership on Social Media
Here’s how you can increase brand loyalty through digital media.
1. Photos/Videos of Your Team
What kinds of videos do you produce now? If your dealership shows nothing but video test drives, you’ll want to expand your library of offerings for your customer base. The video test drives can help new customers get to know your team’s expertise while learning about the vehicles you sell, but you’ll want to offer more videos. Your team is unique, they all have personalities, and you can share more about them with the world through your company’s social media accounts.
The Service Department is an Untapped Resource
Have you ever thought of creating a how-to series using your service team? If your service manager or some of your team members feel comfortable in front of the camera, you can offer your customers a series of service tips. This allows your customers to learn new information and get to know your team at the same time.
What’s the Latest Trend?
Using the latest TikTok dance trend or producing a new trend that your team promotes as something fun for customers could bring more viewers to your social media accounts. Your team should appear fun, modern, and trendy in the social media world. Use your videos to humanize your dealership to your customers in a fun and educational ways.
2. Pics/Videos of Your Dealership Giving Back
There’s certainly some peacefulness to giving back without sharing the action with the world, but you want to show your team giving back as a company. Do you host a fundraiser regularly? If so, make this a series of promotional posts on social media that will help bring more eyes to your pages. You can share pictures of the progress bar of the donations collected, add videos talking about why you’re raising funds and what they are for, and share the final tally when the event ends.
Are You Sponsoring Youth Sports Teams?
Many businesses support local youth sports by sponsoring teams. If your car dealership is doing this, you need to highlight the teams on your website. Parents and grandparents of the players will love to see their youngsters on your pages to proudly show them off to their friends and family.
Holiday Giving Lasts All Years
Your dealership team certainly performs charitable actions and attends events during the holidays; make it a point to show your team giving back at this time of the year. The holiday generosity of your team will last all year long. The way your team gives back is one of the most important ways you can humanize your dealership.
3. Uplift the Community/Share what Places Your Team Likes to Frequent
You and your dealership team live in the community where you work, but most customers might not recognize your team outside of work. One way to make a connection with your potential customers is to show them the places they go. Your team can request permission from a local restaurant, small business they love, or other local business and interview the owners or managers to talk about offering at that location. This can help build partnerships between your team and the other company that customers can enjoy.
Hobbies Can Build the Human Touch
Do you have team members that love to paint? Ask them to create posts about where they like to paint and where they get their inspiration. You might find stories of some of the most beautiful locations in your area. Do some of your staff enjoy fishing? Ask them to talk about where they fish, where they buy bait, and what type of fish they like to catch. This can work for many hobbies, giving your customers a new way to connect with your team.
How is Your Local Nightlife?
If you’re operating your dealership in an area where there’s a lively nightlife scene, some of your staff may enjoy spending their weekends dancing, meeting other people, and checking out the new hot spots in town. Help them discuss where they like to go through your social media posts. This is a connection they can make with your customers who also enjoy the nightlife on the weekends. You’ll easily humanize your dealership by showing where your team likes to go when they aren’t working.
4. Share Customer Photos/Stories
Every customer has a unique story to tell. Maybe obtaining financing was a serious challenge and your team helped them over that hurdle. Another customer might desire a special model of a vehicle and your team made sure they could have that vehicle. Some customers spend weeks looking at cars only to find the right one at your dealership finally. These stories are what you want to share on your social media pages.
Get Permission Before Sharing
Before you can share any customer experience on your website, you must ensure it’s approved by the customer. You’ll run into problems with shoppers if you don’t have their permission first. Many happy customers will be more than happy to let you share their experiences on your website or through your social posts.
Turn it into a Video
Whenever possible, turn your positive customer experiences into videos. You can do this by reading the reviews after obtaining permission, taking a video of the customer, and allowing them to talk about your dealership, or by taking a photo and posting their written review alongside the photo. These are great ways to display positive feedback from your customers. While these reviews might not humanize your dealership, it does show friends and neighbors of potential new customers after they happily buy a vehicle from your team.
5. Share Customer Reviews
Customer reviews and stories go hand in hand. We won’t go into as much depth with this topic because of our previous item. The customer reviews you receive should go up on your social media posts. Yelp or Google will post most of them, but a section of your audience is checking your social network. There’s plenty of proof that reviews are one of the first things many customers look for when considering buying products or working with a company.
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