I’m making profitable sales using Flickr!

Some of the greatest organic SEO overlooked by businesses today is IMAGE SEACH.

While working for The Auto Gallery, a Porsche, Audi, Ferrari and Maserati dealer in California, photography went from being a hobby to being an important part of my marketing agenda. I started photographing company events and posting them to a Flickr account with our company name included in the Flickr URL.

At first I thought it was just a cool way to link people to the web site after running into us at an event. But when I started seeing the amount of inbound traffic I started to think CONVERSION! Linking the image to specific pages on our website was the mother load! It started with just a few leads being generated but it wasn’t until I figured out the magic formula of combining great images, compelling-keyword rich descriptive text and targeted routing that made the time intensive project pay off.

When you start thinking about social media marketing don’t over look Flickr’s social communities. They are extremely rich with potential clients too. It pays to get involved in groups, adding contacts (friends) and tagging others’ photos as part of your favorites list. I’ve sold several cars to people I’ve met as a result of “favoriting” one of their images. Of course I usually would only favorite the makes and models the company sold!

Right now, as you read this those images are working as SEO tools. They are also working as an after hours sales team delivering positive and engaging messages to potential customers. The text is at work offering trial closes in the form of clickable links to a website that is also working around the clock to convert prospects into leads and leads into paying customers.

Don't ask me about ROI! Flickr is under $25 a year, a good quality digital camera is under $100 and your time is better spent growing your business than creating yet another report you won't use.

I now highly recommend image search optimization to every client I work with. The process takes some time but when you start seeing your google analytics report show referral traffic you can’t help but get excited about your home grown organic SEO.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, why not share a few million new words with your prospects today?

To borrow a girlfriend phrase, "Take a picture, it'll last longer!"


If you still have doubts about launching into Social Media and you need a pep-talk please feel free to e-mail me with your concerns and contact information.

~Jay Huffschmidt

Comments or suggestions?
e-mail Jay Huffschmidt
BuzzwickMedia@gmail.com

"You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want."
— Zig Ziglar

Classified Intelligence Case For Social Media

The advertising world, more importantly the classified-ad media space is watching web 2.0 closely and they have noticed a few Marketing Managers successfully using Social Media. The Auto Gallery and Galpin Motors were both featured in the front page story of this month's Classified Intelligence Report.

The article talks about the success we've had at The Auto Gallery in providing our customers with a more involved experience. It also mentions how a simple video walk-around posted to YouTube helped to close a deal in a matter of minutes that was destine to take days.

If traditional advertising is looking this closely at what we're up to, we must be doing something right!

If you still have doubts about launching into Social Media and you need a pep-talk please feel free to e-mail me with your concerns and contact information.

~Jay Huffschmidt

Comments or suggestions?
e-mail Jay Huffschmidt
BuzzwickMedia@gmail.com

"You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want."
— Zig Ziglar

Can You Really Sell Cars (or anything else) Using Social Media?

Yes you can!

With a bit of trial and error I was able to prove that you can indeed sell cars using social media sites like mySpace, Facebook and Twitter.

A couple of years ago I started selling Audi and Porsche at The Auto Gallery in Woodland Hills, California. I created a profile on mySpace and named it AUDiGUYS! I put up some pictures of the dealership, the cars and the staff. Over time I started to build a nice small group of friends. I focused my bulletin and blog posts around news about the product and customer involved events. I did very little promotion of the actual dealership.

One day I received a message on mySpcae form a 15 year old asking about the soon to be released Audi S5. I let him know that we had one sitting in the service department being prepped for a media tour. I then informed him it was not ours to sell but if he wanted to get a sneak peek I’d be glad to show him the car. That one gesture led to a sale. On his 16th birthday mom and dad came in and bought him a brand new Audi. He became the envy of his high school social circle and I had a new Brand Ambassador!

I decided to jump into the social media space with both feet. I opened a twitter account, started a facebook page and launched two more mySpace pages for our Porsche and Ferrari stores. Those pages were soon followed by profiles on Flickr, YouTube and Yelp for Business. I even started an Auto Gallery blog. In just a few months several more sales were made to friends we had met using these sites.

The residual effects of using social media came to light when I was going over my google analytics report and noticed a small but consistent blip on the Traffic Source data. I started looking into it and discovered a regular burst of traffic every time I posted a bulletin, blog entry or a new set of pictures. The social media content was driving traffic to my web site!

Needless to say the ROI story is what everyone in upper management really cares about and I’ve been hard pressed to come up with a real metrics model that shows a complete cost/benefit ratio for using social media. The higher visibility factor, the improved customer relations in both sales and service and the increase in your market reach are all residual benefits of using these sites but how do you measure them? If we looked at just the new car sales we made to prospects directly connected to these sites, the time investment might not seem worth it. But when compared to the time and dollars spent doing a shopping mall promotion or a charity fund raiser ....… Yeah you do the math!

Keep in mind that most of the content you produce for the Internet will be working for you 24/7 from now until the servers it resides on dies. How can you measure ROI on a time line that long and still get your GM to believe in you enough to keep you on the payroll? You most likely can’t. Does this mean you should avoid the social media space? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Get involved and keep pressing on. There are so many opportunities to connect with your customers and the best sales professionals know it’s all about the connections.

I believe the success comes from within so if you are a Business Owner, Dealer, GM or CMO and you have talent inside your organization ENCOURAGE, SUPPORT and FUND them adequately to take full advantage of all social media has to offer. I’m thankful I have a DP that gets it and I’m doing everything I can to make sure he stays fat n’ happy. (sorry boss but….)

~Jay Huffschmidt


Comments or suggestions?
e-mail Jay Huffschmidt
BuzzwickMedia@gmail.com