Businesses mainly benefit from processes by removing two major HR issues: The Key Employee Problem and The Specialized Knowledge Problem. 

To describe The Key Employee Problem, consider a small organization that suddenly lost an employee who was the only one in the organization that knew how to do his/her job. The implementation of processes, in this scenario, would allow the rest of the organization to understand how the previous employee did his/her job.

Due to the different markets, company culture, and other variables, two jobs with the same job descriptions in two different companies may be extremely diverse. The Specialized Knowledge Problem refers to your employees obtaining that specialized knowledge that is needed in order to make your business work.

“Reinventing the wheel” is used to describe how businesses lose productivity from new hires because they have to rediscover the specialized knowledge the previous employee left behind. It can take years for these new hires to gain this knowledge. 

Processes are beneficial in these situations since every documented business process is another piece of knowledge that doesn’t have to be reinvented each time turnover occurs in your organization.

Processes standardize routines and tasks which makes measurable quality possible within an organization. When employees are required to conform to the same business processes, the outcomes of those routines grow predictably similar. As a result, rational starting point is established by which organizations can rationally begin to measure the quality of results. 

Business processes help identify inefficiencies in operations. Inefficiencies can be discovered by inspecting each key operation in your business and formalizing those operations into processes. Correcting these inefficiencies will aid in improving the level of output and quality of those procedures.

This was a big change for us, as we typically host our own Naked Lime booth at Digital Dealer, but the decision was made to try something new this time. We were able to attend sessions by other industry leaders, attend networking events, and work alongside dealers to learn the best ways to serve them in the future.

We were impressed by many of the presentations, most notably keynote speakers “digital marketing evangelist for Google” Avinash Kaushik, social media and digital marketing consultant Jay Baer, and acclaimed marketing consultant Mark Schaefer. We look forward to implementing the lessons learned from them to improve our own services.

We are also proud of Chad Haas, who led a featured session on behalf of Naked Lime. Chad’s presentation, “Three Digital Strategies for Winning the Market Share Battle in 2013 and Beyond,” focused on actions dealerships can take to gain and retain customers as the auto industry rebounds. Highlighting the importance of consumer-driven opt-in communications, turning data into action, and leveraging multi-screen engagement habits of consumers, Naked Lime offered dealers valuable strategies for long-term growth.

If you missed the presentation, you can still see the slide show here.

With sunny Orlando behind us, we are already looking forward to painting Vegas green at Digital Dealer 15 in October. Hope to see you there!

While Naked Lime could present compelling data to refute all of the above, what we really want to talk about is the one communication channel that no one ignores: text messaging.

Think about it. How often does your dining companion succumb to the lure of the text message over dinner? How many times do you see the tell-tale glow of phones in a movie theater, even if they’re silenced? Phones are ever-present and text messages are irresistible.

Need numbers?

• In 2011, Americans sent more than 2.3 trillion text messages
• Mobile marketing company Mogreet says that 95 out of 100 people who opt into a text messaging program open and read the messages within 3 minutes of receiving them.
• Texting is the chosen communication channel by adults under 35 years old. Talk to them where they’re listening.

Text messaging can be used in a variety of ways, customized to suit your business. Send customers your latest promotions and upcoming events directly to their phones. Text message codes can be used to allow customers to respond to surveys, enter contests, or redeem discount offers. Text codes can also be integrated with your traditional advertising to track performance.

Like any outbound marketing, text messaging comes with regulations to protect consumers. Using an illegitimate service that sends phone spam to purchased phone number lists might appear to be the easiest way to jump-start a mobile marketing program, but we beg you not to go that route. Allowing people to opt in, then nurturing the relationship is less invasive, more profitable due to higher delivery rates, and will help you avoid legal penalties.

Get more information about mobile marketing and how your dealership can communicate more directly and personally with your customers from Naked Lime Mobile Marketing.

Naked Lime is proud to announce that Chad Haas will be hosting our session at the 14th Digital Dealer Conference and Exposition next week in Orlando.

Digital Dealer is dedicated to helping the automotive industry use the latest technology solutions to achieve greater dealership success. Naked Lime shares that vision for car dealers, and we are excited to be one of the industry experts presenting sessions, case studies, and demonstrations that offer valuable and innovative digital strategies for every dealership department.

Chad Haas of Naked Lime will be presenting in a featured session at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 8. His presentation will discuss:

• The single most important thing you can do for long-term success.
• What 23 million in pent-up demand means to your business.
• Which digital strategy will best match your organization’s needs.

To receive discounted registration through May 5, visit the Naked Lime Digital Dealer page for your discount code.

Touch screens are becoming a bigger and bigger part of website design, found on smart phones, tablets, and now touch-screen desktop computers. Of course you should offer your customers a mobile site when they are browsing with a mobile phone, but what about tablet users? Should you show them your mobile site? What about touch-screen laptops and desktops? You can’t possibly direct them to your mobile site. Your best option is to ensure that your desktop site is as touch-friendly as possible.

Making your site touch-friendly is fairly easy, but if you haven’t updated your site in quite some time, it will require planning and careful consideration. Follow these tips and your site will be ready for the touch world in no time.

1. Streamline your home page. Customers visiting your site on a 7.5-inch iPad don’t want to be bothered with you filling up your home page with dozens of buttons, links, logos, awards, and anything else you might think sets you apart. You should tout those things on your site, but take some time to streamline them. Rotate through several different award logos in a slideshow fashion, or pull out only what you truly think will help sell a customer on your dealership.
2. Bigger buttons. On tablets especially, if you can make pages ultra-easy to get to, your customers will go to them. Make your inventory pages, specials pages, and location pages stand out with a few sizable buttons on the home page.
3. Thick Navigation. In the world of touch, there is an increased margin of error over a cursor. By making your navigation a little thicker and the items more spaced out, you greatly minimize the margin of error, and make it easy for touch screen users to get to the pages they need.
4. Easy-to-Read Inventory Details Pages. Just like on the home page, mobile users don’t want to be overwhelmed by inventory details and links right from the start. Make your inventory details pages easy to read and navigate. Make the photos stand out and the forms easy to click into.

Many web design firms are now planning ahead for the touch world and making sites that are touch-friendly out of the gate. Ask your provider what they have already that can meet your needs and put your dealership at your customers’ fingertips.

Managing your social media is a lot to take on. Writing press releases, blogs, customer newsletter articles, Facebook posts, Twitter posts, (pause for air) Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and whatever else falls in your Social Marketing strategy takes time and dedication.

Ask these questions to make the process more efficient:

1. Who?
   Who is the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) to handle your social media? Be sure they know what is expected of them and the goals you lay out so they have a goal to work towards.
2. What?
   What platforms make the most sense for you to participate in and what are the goals you have for each? It can be to increase Facebook Likes, triple shares, reach 3000 YouTube views, etc. Also, determine what you will post about. If you are positioning yourself as a Honda dealer, you might consider posting recent news on Honda, new models, or specials you are running. However, you can also determine other topics such a community events or holiday posts you find acceptable.
3. Why?
   Why are you doing this? Create a mission statement and stick to it. When you feel unsure of what to write or if you should post it, refer back to your mission foundation.
4. How?
   How are you planning on reaching these goals? Lay out strategic plans, campaigns, or ideas of ways you can make your goals reality.

After consideration, if you feel like managing the dealership’s social media is too much for someone on your team to handle in addition to other duties, you can consider hiring a specialist to manage it for you.

1.       Answer Customer Questions

You probably receive several calls or dealership visits a month from people having difficulty connecting their phone to the car’s Bluetooth hands-free system. Think about those processes and shoot quick, simple videos showing your customers how to do them. Sure, they could look in the manual, but people are more likely to ask someone first. Be their go-to expert and take tips and processes from the owner’s manual to create your own video version.

2.       Get Your Videos Noticed

Once you shoot the videos, how do you use them? You have several options:  upload them to YouTube, host them on your site, or host them on a third-party video platform. With more than 2 billion videos viewed every day, YouTube can be great as far as potential viewers, but it isn’t very good for getting traffic to your site. Most people will view the video and never click the link to your site. This is not to say you should abandon YouTube; just know that it’s not likely to  increase your website traffic and metrics. Instead, focus most of your efforts on hosting videos on your site. Putting videos on your site drives all the traffic to the site, which can lead to engagement and swifter answers to your calls to action.

Now the question becomes how to get your site noticed…

3.       Video Sitemaps

You may have noticed on Google that when video is mixed in to search results, video thumbnails are shown. You can get your videos to show up in this manner by creating and submitting a video sitemap through Google’s Webmaster tool. Creating a video sitemap tells Google exactly where to find videos, what they are about, and how they should be shown in the search results. In turn, this helps get your videos noticed and your site, too.

Videos can help you improve your site and your site’s Google ranking. Use these tips to get your videos out there so you can start driving more traffic to your site and converting that traffic to leads.

A recent study conducted by researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech allowed Twitter users to give feedback to accounts they follow in exchange for feedback on their account to get an idea of how users see the content. The study interpreted which tweets were valued more by readers and which tweets people found just plain boring and worthless.

Here is a breakdown of the results:

Three most-liked categories:

• Questions to followers.
• Information sharing.
• Self-promotion (sharing links you have created).

On the other hand, the most disliked categories were:

• Presence maintenance (“Hello, Twitter.”).
• Conversations.
• “Me now” (a person’s current status).

So, why are some tweets valued more by readers than others? The study dug a bit deeper and found reasons like repeating old news, using too many hashtags, and being cryptic as the main reasons for followers to overlook a tweet.

So how can you benefit from this research?

Keep It Short and Clean

You’re already restricted to 140 characters for tweets, so choose your words wisely. Grab your followers’ attention with just a few words, and they will be more inclined to pay more attention to your tweets. And keep the tweets clean. Adding too many “#” and “@” links can be overwhelming and drown your message.

Humor Adds Character

Twitter is full of information. News articles, industry forums, and company blogs are flooding the Twitter feed, and sometimes followers need a change of pace. Use a funny quote about your industry that others may relate to, or give your followers a little touch of your witty, random thoughts. Don’t be afraid to give your followers a little piece of your personality. They will appreciate it.

Don’t Be a Repeat Offender

When people are interested in a popular topic or involved in a particular industry, they tend to get overloaded with the same tweet when breaking news is happening. Don’t fall into this pit. If the information is important and you want to make sure your followers are seeing it, add a touch of “you” to the tweet. Include a blog link that you wrote about the topic or throw in a video link. Get creative. You can still get the same message across and stand out at the same time.

Get Them Involved

Are you always the one giving out the great advice to your followers? Try asking them for the answers.  This could be anything from a poll, opinions on a top automotive story, or advice on a new slogan. Again, be creative and get your followers more involved in the automotive industry without them even realizing it.

We all value our time, so give your followers something to notice and something of value when they are sifting through their feed.

The complete Twitter study can be found here: Who Gives a Tweet? Evaluating Microblog Content Value.

For more information about the impact of Twitter and social media on your business, check out the Naked Lime whitepaper, How Social Media Empowers Dealers.

Use Social Media to Connect with Consumers

• Facebook and Twitter are obvious places to start, but don’t stop there. Your audience is also on YouTube (2^nd largest search engine behind Google), LinkedIn, Google+ and even Pinterest. You need to be where your customers and prospects are!

Grow Customer Loyalty Through Blogging

• Informative blog posts can help you establish your dealership as the expert in key areas and will keep customers coming back for more. For example, “How To” content can be extremely useful because most people would rather search online for how to do a certain task then ask someone. Simple topics such as “How to Save Money on Gas” and “How to Avoid Getting Your Car Stolen” are simple, yet intriguing topics to keep people coming back to read more.

Use Videos as a Natural Form of Creativity and Entertainment

• Videos provide an easy way to offer information in a creative and entertaining format, and they have a higher potential for “going viral” because of how they engage the viewer. Video walk-a-rounds are informational and can help you explain a vehicle’s features, but don’t limit your creativity to just show-and-tell. What if you had a video of a Jeep Rubicon versus the Toyota FJ Cruiser in an off-road environment or of the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 squaring off against the SRT Viper? Think about the videos you share and determine how your dealership can make its videos more exciting and engaging.

When planning your content marketing strategy, think about how you are entertained by the companies you do business with. Your dealership’s strategy will should follow that lead and build from there with relevant and interesting content your prospects and customers will use and enjoy.

Follow Naked Lime on Facebook and Twitter for ongoing expert advice on the hottest industry trends.

*B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends-North America

One of the best ways to improve your site’s performance and generate sales is to focus on lead conversions. Lead conversion rates refer to how many customers visited your site with and without submitting a lead. For example, if 1,000 people visit your site today, but only two people submit a lead, then you have a very low lead conversion rate.

Following are a number of best practices for improving conversion rates and, in turn, improving the number of sales generated from your website:

Add a Quick Quote Form to Inventory Listings

One of the most successful methods of improving website leads is to allow customers to submit a request for a quick quote from your vehicle inventory pages. Use a “list page form button” with a short, appealing title and graphic to capture consumers’ attention and encourage them to take action.

Limit Requirements and Fields

When setting up a lead form on your site, only include the necessary fields. Asking consumers for too much information will cause them to ignore your forms and, as a result, cause your dealership to lose out on sales opportunities. After all, a quick quote is no longer quick when customers have to enter 30 different fields of information. Keep in mind to “keep it short” when adding new web forms.

Being Different Is Good

To help your forms get noticed, they should stand out from other website content. But, resist the urge to use super-bright colors or kitschy graphics; instead, consider a simple color change or unique title to help draw attention to your forms.

Make It Visible

Make it easy for customers to find your forms on your website. Whenever possible, display the form so that customers will see it immediately without having to scroll down the page or navigating through a drop-down menu.

Home Page Forms

Having the right form, or link to a form, on the home page also will help you generate leads. For example, avoid using quick quote forms on the home page because typically consumers don’t yet have a reason to fill out that form. Instead, add more relevant options such as a credit application or service appointment form.

Keep It Clear

Appeal to the right audience at the right time by placing the right forms on each page of your site – lead forms on inventory pages, parts requests on the Parts department page, service appointment forms on the Service department page, and so on. Limiting the number of forms on a page also helps to avoid cluttering up the page and confusing consumers.

Use these tips to help you generate more leads – and more sales – from your website!

If you’re an existing Naked Lime customer and have questions about adding or removing website forms, please call our Web Support team at 855.NKD.LIME, option 2.