SOCIALDEALER & Price Automotive Group ft. on Auto Success: Mining Industry Experience & Data to Excel Today & Into the Future
Growing up working on cars and bikes with his father, Jon Dietz never dreamed his interest in automobiles would develop into the passion and career he has as the director of IT and marketing at Price Automotive Group in Delaware.
The history of Price Automotive Group began in 1967, when Warren A. Price founded a dealership, which is now Diamond Motorsports in Dover, Delaware. Today, the group operates five locations throughout the state, with an upcoming sixth location to be named Price Premier in Lewes. Their current stores include two Toyota locations — Newark ToyotaWorld and Price Toyota of New Castle — and three locations in Dover — Price Honda, Price Acura, and Diamond Motorsports.
In the early stages of his role at the dealership, Dietz faced various marketing challenges, particularly with social media, its initial adoption within the group, and curating engaging content for their diverse audience and demographics.
“We were in the infancy of dynamic vehicle advertisements and most of the content we were posting would become stale very quickly,” Dietz says.
With a change in leadership, Price Automotive Group embraced a cultural shift and collaboratively defined their desired brand image. Their goals shifted toward dynamic inventory posting, customer education, and highlighting philanthropic efforts. They launched a new brand with the slogan “Don’t Think Twice… GO PRICE” and introduced a dealership mascot, “Captain Price,” featured prominently in their advertising campaigns.
As traditional media lost its impact, Price Automotive Group had to heavily rely on social media platforms to reach their target audience.
“In today’s day and age, we no longer splatter advertising across radio and newspaper hoping for people to barge in on Saturday,” Dietz says.
The team experimented with various platforms, including TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They faced the inevitable challenges of marketing campaigns, necessitating frequent pivots, logo redesigns, voice-overs, character creation, and video production.
Price Automotive Group began working with SocialDealer in 2020, coinciding with their collaboration with a new marketing company.
“SOCIALDEALER has been a big piece of success for the Price Automotive Group,” Dietz says. “John McAdams (president of SOCIALDEALER) and the SOCIALDEALER team have become part of the Price family.”
SOCIALDEALER helped implement a revamped social media process, facilitating the posting of post-sales photos, graphics for events, and local partnerships and aligning social strategies with market needs.
Dietz shares that they leveraged customer data from various sources and targeted unsold customers who had visited the store but had not made a purchase. They saw increased customer re-engagement, mainly bringing in customers for service and parts. However, this effectively maintained customer relationships even during a time when the dealership experienced low new-vehicle inventory.
“During inventory shortages, we were not always going to have the vehicle that the customer wants or needs, but we could still be there for them even if they bought elsewhere in the fixed operations side of the business,” Dietz says.
The dealership group’s data-driven approach also leveraged information like “for sale by owners” and safety recalls increasing customer engagement.
The ability to maintain customer relationships through targeted marketing efforts was highly valued in the dealer group. Price Automotive offered additional discounts on major services and encouraged customers to join their rewards program, where they could earn 20% back on service spending, redeemable in sales, service, and restoration. Despite fluctuations in used car pricing and new car inventory challenges, the dealership continues to see consistent results.
“We are working toward growing our organic footprint and continually providing our audiences with more custom content,” Dietz says.
Price Automotive Group’s marketing journey illustrates the transformative impact of embracing social media and leveraging data-driven strategies. Through partnerships with SOCIALDEALER and a commitment to customer engagement, the dealership has successfully navigated challenges and achieved notable results in their marketing and social media campaigns.
John McAdams Named as President of SOCIALDEALER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ – John McAdams, one of the most recognized leaders in the automotive industry, has been appointed President of the intelligent social advertising platform SOCIALDEALER.
McAdams brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in the automotive industry, including at CDK and DealerON, and is moving up from his current role as Vice President of Sales at SOCIALDEALER. In his first action as President, McAdams is launching SkyLab, a cutting-edge paid social platform, to continue to execute successful organic and paid campaigns in the fast-paced and integral social sphere.
“I am excited to be taking this next step in my journey at SOCIALDEALER,” said John McAdams. “This is a pivotal time for the company, as we embark on the next stage of our accelerated growth journey. I’ll be working to integrate our new paid social platform, SkyLab, along with proprietary data sets to deliver cutting-edge social solutions to our dealer partners. SkyLab will revolutionize the way automotive dealers can leverage paid and organic social media to exponentially drive more traffic and leads while delivering a frictionless process for auto intenders. In addition, I’ll lead the sales and operations teams as we deliver our next-generation, best-in-class social and reputation management solutions that enable our customers to be more efficient and profitable.”
With more than 15 years of expertise, SOCIALDEALER is the automotive industry’s premier social media agency, helping clients sell and service more vehicles by utilizing proprietary in-market shopper data to build insightful, relevant social campaigns. Notable partnerships, including Meta, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, combined with certified strategists and coordinators, position SOCIALDEALER at the forefront of social media in the automotive industry.
For more information about SOCIALDEALER or to schedule a demo at NADA, please visit www.socialdealer.com.
SOCIALDEALER announces the addition of automotive industry veteran Eric Keith Wilson as the company’s National Sales Director. Eric, a seasoned automotive sales executive, brings over three decades of automotive industry experience that includes General Manager and Director level positions with large and smaller dealer groups. For the last 10 years, Eric has been collaborating with various automotive leading partners and has most recently served as the Director of OEM Partnerships.
As the National Sales Director, Eric will oversee all national sales efforts including OEM relationships, dealers, and potential strategic partners. His responsibilities will include managing SOCIALDEALER’s new innovative technology SKYLAB throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as developing and executing a sales strategy to help manage the Company’s continued growth projections for 2023 and beyond.
With more than 15 years of expertise, SOCIALDEALER is the automotive industry’s premier social media agency, helping clients sell and service more vehicles by utilizing proprietary in-market shopper data to build insightful, relevant social campaigns. Notable partnerships, including Meta, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, combined with certified strategists and coordinators, position SOCIALDEALER at the forefront of social media in the automotive industry.
John McAdams, President of SOCIALDEALER said, “We are extremely excited to have Eric join our team as we continue our exponential growth in providing our clients with the best-in-class social media and reputation management solutions in the automotive space. Eric brings with him an incredibly deep knowledge of the automotive industry and we are especially excited about his tenure working with OEMs.”
For more information about SOCIALDEALER or to schedule a demo, please visit www.socialdealer.com.