Marketing, Public Relations or Customer Service?
The debate on which box (Marketing, Public Relations, Sales, Customer Service or something else) to put Social Media into has been going on as long as Social Media has been around. It has aspects of each of the disciplines mentioned above but cuts horizontally across each of these respective areas.
Here are a few examples:
Customer Service: you log onto your Twitter account in the morning and see if there are any Tweets about your company and find that a customer who came in for anoil change has been waiting for 3 hours and is getting impatient. They are telling their "online" friends about their experience via Twitter and Facebook. You don't have to know anything about social media to know that's a bad thing!
Knowing that this is happening in "real time" provides an opportunity to do something about the situation and make sure that the customer is satisfied and taken care of before they leave the dealership. This is a great opportunity to save a customer relationship versus losing a customer for life. Let's face it.... 10 years ago people who were dissatisfied with your brand were saying bad things about your products and company and unless they wrote you a letter (or email) you didn't know about it. Love it or hate it, (I hope you love it) now your brand can engage with the consumer in real time and come up with a solution as opposed to never hearing your customers concerns.
Marketing: Since so much time and effort is placed on developing quality TV, newspaper or magazine ads it makes sense to extend the reach and impact of these ads by distributing them through your Social Media channels such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Each of these social media networks are great places to show your followers or fans what you have been doing in terms of marketing and providing additional product information.
The one caveat with using ads in your social media mix is that you don't want to be putting ads in front of your social media followers all of the time. Social Media is one place that consumers don't want to be explicitly sold to or pitched. They are engaging with the brands (such as Infiniti) on these social networks because they want to get more information about the products, be entertained or have other non purchase interests.
ROSM (Return on Social Media)
I have been asked dozens of times how companies can justify spending money on social media activities such as blogging, establishing a presence on Facebook / Twitter when measuring the return is so difficult? Especially if the basic tenant of social media is that it's not explicitly for selling product.
At the end of the day the social media platform's (their use of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) are the companies funnel with a companies website and CRM being where everything flows. This generates additional web traffic, leads and in the long run leads to an increase in sales.
I will be blogging more on this topic and how Social Media is crucial to the automotive industry over the next few months. There are some great resources listed below for those looking for additional information.
Great Social Media Articles
GOSO - A web and social media suite for auto dealers
www.goso.com
February 2010 - The Social Influence of the Auto Industry
Dell Rides Twitter to $6.5 Million in Sales
Mashable - the authority on Social Media
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