How Do Social Media and Vehicles Interact?

Now more than ever, buying a car has become a social event. More and more people, and not only Millennials, who were practically raised by the Internet, are looking for their new or slightly used vehicle on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Why, you ask?

Because whoever buys a car will show it off on social media as soon as they leave the dealership. They will share why they picked the car they bought. They will say what they are excited about and what bugs them while driving their shiny new toy (even though they shouldn’t tweet and drive). They will recount their overall purchase experience and recommend or discourage you from going to a particular sales shop. They will perhaps even tell you how you can buy it at a lower price.

If you are one of those people in need of a new car, this will be your research phase. You will probably enter it with a vague idea of what sort of car you want to buy, but not with a made up mind.

That will come later in the game.

When you find the information you were hoping to find on social media.

And this is precisely the point where car brands will enter the game if they don’t want to be left in the dust by the competition. They will use the channels to approach their potential or existing customers by using personalized advertisements, which will have a better reach than the traditional approach. They will have valuable insights into how the competition is thinking as well as what is being said about their own brand.

Here are a few reasons why:

1) Constantly within reach

Buying a car is rarely the result of a spontaneous decision, so people spend a lot of time researching. This is why car brands need to not only be visible on Social Media but also keep their products top of mind for the potential customers.

For example, you’ve seen a cute little convertible in a Facebook ad from a car brand, but you are not really sure if you want to spend that much money, so you decide to sleep on it. When you wake up in the morning, what is the first thing you do?

You are a rare breed if it’s not checking your phone!

You go onto Facebook and there it is! A personalized in-feed ad offering you everything from a different color to the lower price of the car you were looking at the night before. Even if you don’t go to the dealership web page directly from there, a diligent marketer will have more targeted advertisements for you based on your preferences and you won’t have to lift a finger.

2) Ads tailored to you

Modern customers don’t want to be buried in ads referring to products they have no need or desire to buy, regardless of the industry. However, the automotive industry has the advantage here, since it is quite easy for them to see the types of cars people from different social groups like, share and comment on social media platforms. This is a great research tool for car dealers and can greatly aid in reaching a certain market. Not only can they direct marketing campaigns, but they can also find out if you like certain product features and how they can develop a product further.

Another example is this – if you are considering buying a vehicle, you might tweet about it using corresponding hashtags. Automotive brands can see this and send you direct messages and personalized ads based on the hashtags you inserted into your tweet.

And voilà!

You could have a car of your dreams (at a certain price, of course) on your doorstep simply because you decided to tweet about wanting to buy a car.

3) Anytime, anywhere

One of the many amazing features of social media platforms is that they are mostly accessed through their applications on mobile phones and tablets. This means that their users aren’t necessarily at home when they check their SM profiles and are exposed to personalized ads much longer. Also, people are increasingly more accustomed to researching and seeking advice about a potential car purchase from both their personal and online friends, whose reviews are considered objective and trustworthy in 84% of cases.

For instance, when your friend (who you may or may not know in real life) buys a nice car, they will want to show it off. What better place to do that than on social media where far more people will see the pictures of it than would have the actual car.

And so, your friend goes about taking photos of the vehicle in all its new and shiny glory while you salivate and soak up all they think is good and bad about the car; why this one is far better than this other one; and where they think is the best dealership to buy it (because they almost paid through the nose at this other place). Moreover, because you couldn’t stop thinking about the car you saw on their Instagram page and kept scrolling through the pictures on your coffee break, you will stop by the dealership on your way home to see the car for yourself.

Who knows, maybe that will be the defining influence on you to stop weighing out options and actually buy the vehicle?

In any case, social media is as helpful to the automotive brands as it is for you as a customer of those brands, so communication on the platforms has to be two-sided for it to be successful. If you as the potential or existing customer use it for research and product and experience review, it changes the way car brands and dealerships do business and treat you.

CRS Automotive, as the leading automotive service in Southern Ontario area, like to stay one step ahead of the competition by having professionals from TheIuvo maintain our online presence. We like sharing business news and useful car maintenance advice on social media platforms, as well as shine a light on faithful customers when you leave a review of our repair service (in Hamilton) or make an amazing purchase of high-quality luxury vehicles at the Ontario dealership. Having a professional company to help us connect and interact with our customers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram among other social media platforms is a big part of our growth.

So, don’t be shy and post, share, tweet and comment on everything and anything that interests you! We will see it and respond to every question or comment you have.

And in return, we will show you rare and luxury vehicles in our sales line that will blow you away!

We are located only 7 min driving West of The Centre on Barton Shopping Mall and 11 min South East of Hamilton General Hospital.