The key to achieving good ROI with social media and social marketing lies in the business understanding of how to correctly use CRM as a process and not just software. The secret is in their understanding of the R in CRM as a process for establishing meaningful relationships. The challenge however, is that as businesses seek out technical solutions as a means of automating the relationship building process, many business owners still hold on to the notion that clients can establish an emotional connection with the entity itself in lieu of the people that work for it. Consequently, they forego investing in the human element training or strategies necessary for the application to live up to expectations and to succeed.

This revelation reasserts the importance of dealerships adopting standards for what their professional needs to know to be effective in every facet of their jobs both on- and off-line in order to take full advantage of the technologies that are becoming a part of our everyday lives.

The importance of this insight will become more critical as dealerships begin to reevaluate the necessity of adding departments and man power to the payroll to compensate for personnel skill deficiencies. The automotive industry is slowly realizing the need to establish a process for Social Continuity in order to truly make the social experience sticky; meaning, making the back and forth interaction that happens both on & offline between the client and their professional seamless during the sales and relationship building process to establish familiarity and trust.

This is why limiting online touches to an Internet or BDC department only, will make it difficult for the client to establish a symbiotic relationship with the selling professional, which in turn, translates to customer loyalty, leading to repeat and referral business. In essence, understanding how to quantify and cost justify the ROI from the dealership’s commitment to Social is not complicated, as long as you know the limitations of the application and how and where to insert the human element needed to make the relationship building process seamless enough to be productive.