Jeff Cryder came to Ohio’s Lebanon Ford as a recent graduate from Miami University (OH). Fresh out of college, he was working as an intern to manage the Facebook Page for the dealership. Just over a year later, he’s now the Marketing & Communications Director running a team that coordinates all of the store’s marketing efforts in-house. But of course, the road there wasn’t all covered in roses.
The Story
As with any dealership, ideas are not quick to implement. Aside from the fact that our industry tends to be slow to transition in general, implementing new strategies, ideas, or marketing efforts tend to be costly and time consuming, and there is way too much money to be lost. So when Jeff butchered the store’s marketing budget and created a new digital budget and brand new marketing strategy, suffice it to say the owner of the store wasn’t quite on board. But despite getting torn apart by his boss, Jeff knew he had the map to the treasure sitting in his hands and so struck up a deal. Jeff was willing to do it all out of his own pocket. The deal was he would do everything social media oriented for the store, recalling telling his boss, “I’ll do everything from me, and I’ll show you that this works, and I’ll show you I know what the hell I’m doing and when that happens, you will give me a media budget and you will allow me more resources and be more open to my ideas.”
And that was the agreement Jeff struck with his boss. He had from May to December to prove that his digital strategy would work and that it was the right direction, and if he was successful, his boss would give Jeff more control, more help, and the store would fully embrace what he had set out to do. “It was important to show her that I was willing to sacrifice for the betterment of the dealership because I believed the direction. I knew where we needed to go was the right way.” It took quite a bit of personal sacrifice, but by December of 2010, it had paid off.
Right now, Lebanon Ford is operating at an unfathomable pace and has been since Jeff began implementing his social strategies. June 2011 is officially on the books as their best month ever. In fact, compared to June 2010, Lebanon Ford increased sales by 230%. 230%!!! Year-to-date, they are pacing a 70% increase over 2010, which was by far their best year. “We are seeing steady growth in all sectors which is fantastic and the sky really is the limit to where we can go with this in terms of our engagement. Our goal is to be the largest Ford dealership in our region. The growth is not spiking, but it’s steady, consistent growth.” Additionally, Jeff got the help that he was promised as well, bringing on Zach Bello, a 2011 graduate from Miami University with a degree in Business Marketing and a focus in Interactive Media Studies. Zach serves as the Digital Communications and Marketing Manager alongside Jeff, both using their trained communications and marketing knowledge to create a dynamic approach to social business.
The Approach
“We really take an approach of we’re marketers, we’re social marketers and we’re using the dealership as a laboratory, as an incubator, to cultivate how to utilize social and transcend social media principles and become a social business.” Jeff doesn’t think about his work solely as a social media strategy – social media is just another part of the business model. He’s working on transitioning the store to a social business and aiming to close the experience gap for customers between the store’s online presence, and their in-store atmosphere.
Jeff saw the need for this approach when Ford Motor Company rolled out with the Fiesta Movement. The Ford Motor Company would interact with their followers online, share with them about the Fiesta Movement, provide great customer service, and build relationships with their customers. Then, those customers would go down to their local dealership and be unable to get an audience with the Manager or owner, or would inquire about the Fiesta Movement and the store wouldn’t even know what the customer was talking about. Either way, it created a bad experience for the customer and a separation between the Ford image online and the Ford atmosphere in the store. Jeff saw the same type of interaction occurring at the local level. “If we’re doing things online and we’re approachable and interacting, and then they come to the store and that experience isn’t the same, it’s all for naught. We’re marketing outside of our expectations.” By closing that experience gap for the customer – so that whatever is happening online and whatever customers are seeing online is the same experience that they have on the lot in the dealership –everything is maintained, everything is synergized with the same message.
That message is Connect. Engage. Drive. Connect to exceed expectations, engage to grow relationships, and drive to build trust. That was the first step in the social branding which feeds into all the other activities and strategies Jeff and Lebanon Ford incorporate.
The Actions
Connect. Engage Drive. How? They offer 24/7 customer engagement via social media and they are constantly creating conversation, monitoring conversation, or directing conversation. And where there is usually a marketing coordinator within a dealership, Jeff, Zach, and their team are the marketing coordinators, giving them complete control over the messages. Their day is spent on the touch screen or laptop keyboards trying to create new ways to reach out to their customers. Their blog is an essential way they reach out to their customers, as well as their recently launched podcast, providing prospective and current buyers with shopping knowledge. And, with Ford coming out with some sophisticated technology in their vehicles, Jeff also created a MyTech Team. Jeff declares, “They are almost like a Geek Squad or Genius Bar, for your car,” handling all technology issues with the cars for customers, such as troubleshooting over phone and email, and making house visits to inspect the car itself.
One specific campaign that they’ve implemented to increase engagement with their customers in their community is the “Drive One a Week” campaign. In essence, Jeff and his team identify people of influence in the market area, build a relationship with them, and when the time is right, pitch them the idea of driving any Ford vehicle of their choice for a week. “We tell them to take whatever vehicle they want and do what they do best. Talk about it. Blog about it. Share about it.” The success that has accompanied this campaign is multi-fold. Not just from promoting the brand and product, but building their network. They’ve essentially built a network around their market area of people of influence, all having a common thread between each other: Lebanon Ford.
The Learning Curve
The incredible advances that Jeff and his team have made in the dealership are striking and have made a profound impact on how social media can be used in the automotive world. But much like getting the whole process started, the road to success wasn’t easy. Something that Jeff cautions against in creating a social appearance is implementing before strategizing. It’s important to get started in the social world, but going in and typing away on a Facebook page is not the most effective way to do it. Jeff made this mistake when he first got started and was forced to take a step back and reevaluate what he wanted to accomplish. “We needed to accomplish reaching our customer base and making those touch points with our current customers, and social offered a way to doing that, by using Facebook as a social tool for maintaining customer interaction, interaction they want to be a part of because they opted into.”
The learning curve quickened when Jeff and his team began to see the social media tools as platforms instead of destinations. “One of the things we learned really quickly is that Facebook, Twitter, [insert tool here] is 5% of everything we do and that what really matters is the strategy. It’s more about what we’ve developed behind the scenes and how we utilize those tools to synergize our strategy.” Seeing the tools more as platforms to help facilitate their business strategy was the fast track to accomplishing their goals.
And then there’s the other part of the deal Jeff struck with his boss over a year ago. Not just the personnel support and resource support, but the full embracing of everything that Jeff was bringing to the table. That has been instrumental in capitalizing on the social business model that Jeff has developed and in creating the social business that they’re seeking to be defined by. The strategy is engrained in everything Lebanon Ford does. Anytime there is a new campaign or promotion, there is a social aspect to it, in addition to dealership and traditional marketing aspects. “In order to make Facebook efficient, we needed to synergize all of our social media messages. In order to make social media effective, we needed to synergize all of our digital properties. In order to make our digital properties effective, we needed to synergize our traditional, physical, and dealership experiences.” Integrating the digital efforts all across the store has even resulted in a restructuring of the Internet department and appointing liaisons between every other department and Jeff’s team, truly keeping them on track to become a social business.
The Small Cog or the Chessboard
It’s undeniable that Jeff Cryder has brought profit-building strategies to Lebanon Ford and a clear path to helping it become a social business in its own right. His talents far exceed his reputation and I dare say he’s only scratched the surface. So how did he end up in the car business? Sure he completed his internship in one, but after numerous offers at various marketing agencies, he’s still here:
“I fell ass-backwards into [this industry]. I was supposed to run the Facebook page for Lebanon Ford and then decided to stay here. I thought to myself ‘Do you want to be a small cog in the machine or do you want to be the chessboard and implement your ideas?’ There’s massive opportunity for someone just getting into an industry and seeing the opportunity to make a name for themselves and to have a hand in changing the industry. A lot of industries are farther ahead in social and the auto industry is stagnant in a weird way.” But it’s those slow transitions that create the opportunity – create the opportunity for people to make a name for themselves, to have a hand in changing the persona of buying a car, to cultivate and implement ideas. Of course, stumbles will happen along the way, they’re inevitable, but turning those failures into successes and building upon them betters the company, the individual, and the customer experience. Jeff or Zach wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. “For him and I in terms of personal growth and professional growth, there’s not a better situation out there at all. At All.”
We’re glad Jeff decided take the plunge into the automotive arena and cultivate a social car business. It challenges all of us to close our own customer experience gap and explore the possibilities of social media. Thanks, Jeff, for your contributions to the auto world. We like you on our team.
