Socially Awkward
Hi Friends!
We do a lot of different stuff at Motorwerks. In fact, at present, we offer over a dozen different products and services. At our core however, we do remain a marketing and advertising agency.
Recently, we had a fairly large client return to us after about a year-long absence. We had built a very powerful social media engine for them prior to their departure that was producing monthly hits to their website in the seven-figure territory. Prior to their exit, they had made some suggestions that we knew based on our experience would potentially damage this and we advised them to rethink what they were trying to do. They were pretty committed to these ideas, chose to disregard our suggestions and as a result decided to try some different things on their own. We will not do things that we know will damage our clients. For us, we would rather walk away, so that’s what happened here.
Now I want to first preface by saying part of owning and operating an agency is understanding that clients come and go. Things like this are very common, so we never burn bridges on our end and oftentimes continue to provide advice and support where needed (we definitely care very much about the people that we work with – and before anyone asks, yes, this client does know that I’m writing this and I will not disclose who they are, even privately) outside of any official or professional contract. Point is, this type of thing happens all the time and generally when it does, it comes from the same places and the same mistakes are made. This often times in turn, requires us to do a significant amount of cleanup when the client comes back and tends to be very expensive for them and very time-consuming and mentally draining for my team, so we would very much prefer to see people stop doing this. This particular client pretty much made every single one of these mistakes and it’s costing them now.
Anyway, here’s the basic missteps that we see getting made repeatedly regarding social media in the classic, collector and specialty automotive spaces specifically. Hopefully, you can avoid these things with your approach.
(Note: this is directed more at businesses and less at influencer type accounts)
SOMEBODY INSIDE GETS BORED
This is generally where issues start to happen and problems begin to unfold. Somebody in a management position someplace starts looking at social media from the perspective of their own preference as opposed to what their audience actually wants to see and they start making changes that not only their audience doesn’t appreciate, but it disrupts any consistency that they build with the algorithm and hurts their reach badly.
Rather than thinking in terms of what it is that you want to see, think of it like a zoo. You may have all kinds of different animals out there, but there’s always going to be that group that makes people buy tickets and walk through the door. You need to feed those animals what keeps them alive first and if you change their diet drastically for no reason, it’s pretty likely that they’re going to get sick and die. You can’t stop feeding your monkeys bananas and start feeding them cheesecake just because you think cheesecake tastes better. You need to figure out what your animals like to eat and you need to continue to feed them what it is they require. Of course, in most circumstances the more animals you have, the better your zoo, but you need to prioritize.
Just because you develop a taste for something else, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to force everybody else to change their diet too.
TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH THE JONESES
If you’ve got a successful presence on social media, it’s almost always a result of somebody (either deliberately or accidentally) creating an identity online, that people can connect with. That individual identity is why people come to you and why your content is viewable, searchable, etc. While it’s never a bad idea to know the world around you and pay attention to what’s working in other places, when you directly rip off someone else’s approach (especially if they’re a direct competitor or somebody that the market deems is below you), it very dramatically cheapens your brand’s image and hurts your credibility tremendously.
TAKING BAIT
Fact: We don’t know anything about selling Hyundais. This is why we don’t do it. It’s not that we don’t get the opportunity, however. Our phone rings regularly with new and pre-owned passenger car type dealerships interested in our services and we politely explain to them that there are plenty of agencies out there that live and breathe this type of stuff, those agencies will likely better serve those dealers and there’s not much that we can do to help them.
Unfortunately, those type of agencies tend not to return the favor to us or the clients in this space that they pitch, sell and then royally screw up.
There are major differences between this marketplace and that one and these nuances are even more significantly exaggerated in regard to social strategy, ad targeting, etc. We have seen this over and over and over again. The things that work with used car dealers or your local Honda store cost a ton of money and completely torpedo people doing cool car stuff.
This gets even worse when an influencer with zero automotive knowledge at all or a jack of all trades type walks in the door.
Just be careful of the pitch. We’ve seen this dig bigger holes than anything else and it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money to put all that dirt back in the ground.
SLAMMING THE BRAKES
Here’s a pretty regular conversation I have with people when they come back after an extended absence:
Me: So, what kind of activity have you had in the last few months?
Them: Well, things weren’t working so we just decided to stop for a while
Me: So, your activity has been zero?
Them: Yes
Fact is, for as many good things as social media has done, it’s also done a lot of bad stuff too. One of those things is its shortened people’s attention spans down to that of your average sub-adult gerbil. This means, that if you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind and because of the way algorithms work on most major platforms, this becomes like trying to get a cargo plane off the runway with a rubber band connected to a couple of sticks.
Even if you’ve got a thoroughly developed, very large audience, if you all of a sudden start doing nothing and you sustain this for any significant amount of time, you’re basically starting over. We have clients currently that have sat out for months and then lost years as a result. Consistency is king on social media and stopping it is the ultimate sin.
There’s no doubt that social media can be enormously powerful for businesses in this space. It’s also extremely affordable and easy to reach highly targeted groups for smaller organizations that are on a more limited budget. The fact is though, it can also be very expensive and very ineffective if done incorrectly. Hopefully, this helps give you a little better idea of what not to do out there.
Of course, if you need some help, we’re always here
That’s it for this week…
Darin Roberge