Despite being the most misunderstood member of the social media family, LinkedIn has a great potential to be a valuable tool in your arsenal – a quick search on Google (“Name of dealership social media”) will be evidence enough to demonstrate how vital it could be for your business. Here are a few simple tips to get you started:
Create a detailed LinkedIn profile and legitimise yourself online
A sizeable chunk of major vehicle manufacturers market their services, products and company vacancies on their LinkedIn page; LinkedIn is a sales site for businesses, fleet sales, recruitment and, to an extent, an individual’s personal brand.
Spend a little bit of time building your company and personal brand, and in return, you are creating authenticity and a trustworthy face for a potentially faceless company – leading to more engagement, value to the customer, and then, sales!
At a glance, we can immediately assume that the majority of LinkedIn users are employed or motivated professionals with a university education under their belt. They are willing to shop around and do their research in both their professional and personal lives.
This is the place that you can showcase your motivations, experience and key point successful moments of your career. The function of receiving ‘referrals’ from your connections is the most obvious way of demonstrating your credibility. Who doesn’t do their research and read reviews, after all?
Building an effective profile for your business not only boosts awareness and spreads your likelihood of being discovered through serendipitous browsing of the internet (bored commuters, lunch-time browsers, I see you), but an accredited profile with a good number of followers boosts your authenticity and makes you a trustworthy option in the potential buyers’ mind.
Be strategic about your use of keywords in your profile, both specific and broad (if relevant), to place yourself under the nose of potential car buyers.
After building your personal profile, you can move on to perfecting a company page to populate. Encourage members of your sales and accounts teams to ‘share’ and ‘like’ the content that you post. This will place the content on the timelines of useful connections - such as car dealers, business owners and other potential clients.
Build a LinkedIn following
We may live in a digital age, but the all-important business card is not somewhere to neglect mentioning your online presence. Ask your ‘real life’ colleagues if you can connect with them on LinkedIn, or encourage them to create their own profile – because, as dreadful as some may find the word ‘networking’, you never know when re-connecting with a former client or associate could be a return to your business.
Present your company to a B2B audience
Posting regular, interesting updates about your company is a great way to engage with a larger audience, and LinkedIn is increasingly as visual as channels such as Facebook.
Show off your new stock by sharing beautiful photos and give your new employees a warm welcome – those colleagues that you encouraged earlier to create their own LinkedIn profiles will be notified, as will all of their connections. Could one of them be thinking about a new car?
These notifications, including reminders about birthdays or anniversaries, are valuable for finding the sweet spot for pitching a great sale.
Make sharing your connection’s posts a part of your company’s culture – it’s a great way to generate traffic and interest. Join discussion groups; even keep a blog (like this one!) and share PDF’s of your writing on your profile. This can demonstrate your expertise on a variety of relevant topics, as well as keep you up to date on the latest trends and topics.