The document discusses how several automotive dealerships, including Sage Automotive Group and Galpin Ford, have leveraged social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to connect with customers and increase sales. Sage Automotive Group was one of the first dealerships on Facebook, though it took some back-and-forth with Facebook to establish a business page, and the dealership has seen responses to promotions within minutes of posting on social sites. The document advocates that dealerships should encourage salespeople to set up personal social media profiles linked to the dealership's pages to further expand their online reach.

1. D IGITAL Dealer INTERNET SALES
Phil Sura
Why Do I Need to be on Facebook?
I
will start with a confession. I didn’t in 2008 with 3,800 new unit sales, they lished, you can then add “fan pages” for
open up a Facebook account until I were number one in sales with four individual customers. This is the power
started working on this article. My different models. Mike has a strong associated with working within the
two teens have had Facebook pages for background with technology and he has social sites. The average person has at
two years but the only time spent on been involved with a number of start-up least five to ten friends that they connect
their sites was to make certain that tech companies tied to the automotive you to. If you have one site with 50 fans
there wasn’t anything inappropriate. space. He runs the technology initiatives and each fan is only connected to five
Social networking, blogs and sites like for the Sage Automotive Group. Mike other friends, you have the ability to
Facebook are exploding in popularity. gave me the history of how his opera- reach 250 people.
According to a recent article in Time tion got started with social networking. From this beginning, Mike’s team
magazine, Facebook is adding 150,000 Mike would periodically witness one of started to work with other social sites
new users daily (three times faster than including MySpace, Twitter, Friend
the growth with My Space). Facebook Feed and Gmail contact. Mike found a
was founded by Mark Zuckenberg in “Social sites are a great portal managed by ilist.com that will
his Harvard dorm room three years automatically link to each of these sites.
ago. He is 23 years old and recently and inexpensive way to Mike demonstrated how easy it is to
rejected a $1 billion offer from Yahoo. navigate with the ilist tool. He created a
According to Compete’s blog, connect with your campaign for a Versa ($2,000 rebate
Facebook is now the number one social and 2.0 APR) and added a file photo of
network in the U.S., with 68.8 million customer base.” the Versa. Within four minutes, the
unique visitors and nearly 1.2 billion campaign was created and with one
—Phil Sura click, it was sent to 5,000 people and
visits in January 2009. MySpace had
58.6 million unique visitors and 810.2 their friends. Mike received two
million visits the same month. the employees, James, visiting his responses within ten minutes.
Here are the top social networking Facebook site during work hours. After After each corporate social site was
sites in the country: several conversations with James, Mike built, Mike started to encourage his
January monthly visits (in millions) concluded that if he could leverage salespeople to open and link their
1. Facebook 1,191.4 Facebook into a business opportunity, personal pages to the dealership
2. MySpace 810.2 he would create a win-win. Of the 1,000 Facebook site. It is an easy way to
3. Twitter 54.2 employees, James became the Facebook connect with your customers and their
4. Fixster 53.4 champion for the entire operation. friends. It doesn’t cost anything and the
5. Linkedin 42.7 Facebook was created to be a social site investment of time is minimal. Mike
According to eMarketer Daily that included “faces of people”. The believes that the future of social
initial intent was not to include “pictures networking is with the mobile phone
So we know that people are going to of a dealership”. According to Mr. Sage, markets. Mike’s logic is that the kids
these sites. How do you leverage these Sage Nissan was the first automotive communicate primarily by phone. He
sites? To answer this, I connected with dealership to register with Facebook. It is working with Gumiyo to prepare his
key members of three operations: became a bit of a back and forth battle. team for the applications associated
Galpin Ford, Sage Automotive Group “We would register and have a picture of with the mobile phone market.
and SONS Auto Group. the dealership up and Facebook would Another leader nationally is located
Mike Sage is the owner of six dealer- take it down”, stated Mr. Sage. The deal- 45 minutes from Universal City
ships in the Los Angeles area, including ership didn’t fit the model that Facebook Nissan. Galpin Ford is the number one
Universal City Nissan. Two of Mike’s was looking for. This went back and volume Ford, Jaguar and Lincoln
brothers are also involved in this auto forth until the Facebook team agreed to Mercury dealer in the world. They also
group. Universal City Nissan is celebrat- provide Mike with a page designed for have the largest Mazda dealership in the
ing its 40th year in business and they the business community. Since this time, western states and they earned dealer of
have been a sales leader for Nissan for a number of other companies have the year honors from Saturn. I visited
the past 35 years. In addition to being added their operation to approved areas
the largest volume dealer in the country of Facebook. Once you have a site estab- continued on P-DD34
DD 10 April 2009 DigitalDealer-magazine.com