City Chrysler Digital Magazine-Interactive

AUGUST 2020 CITY CHRYSLER Social Media & Marketing Work Term

 CONTENTS 1. ABOUT THE DEALERSHIP 2. ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES 3. VEHICLE PHOTOGRAPHY 4. SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT 2

 5. THE HAT’S CULTURE 6. THE NEW WEBSITE 7. PARTS AND SERVICE 8. STRENGTH & WEAKNESS 9. GROWTH & LEARNING 3

 ABOUTTH DEALER 4

 EXCEST ES UT HE City Chrysler has been a er feels right at home and part of the Medicine Hat comfortable when they community for nearly 45 enter the dealership. years. The dealership was started on December 15, 1975, and has been running ever since. City Chrysler is a small down to earth dealership that makes the customers feel at home. Not only do they sell used vehicles, but new Dodge, Jeep, RAM, and Chrysler vehicles. They pride themselves on an non-pressure atmosphere to make sure the custom- RSHIP 5

Excest es ut ROLES& RESPONSIBILITIES way cheaper compared to print ad- City Chrysler is a high functioning vertising. The odd time I may find busy dealership. With that in mind, myself working with mediums in print digitally this dealership needs some- advertising, but most of the time, it is one regularly updating their online digital. My roles and responsibilities presence. It is important in this time are vehicle photography, social me- and age with the online world and dia management, website manage- social media, that businesses have ment, as well as creating certain someone there to stay current with projects and completeing them. their online audience. Not only, does it help their business because their business looks more professional, but having someone active in managing their social media presence causes potential customers. This is where I come in. My role at the dealership is a Digital Marketing Specialist. This line of work is more than ever important in this time and age when it comes to business. Almost everyone you know has a social media account. There may be the odd person you know that doesn’t have an account, but chanc- es are most of the people you know are on social media. What does that tell us? That tells us, there is a huge opportunity to connect directly to our audience and have them engage with our content in a way that is honestly 6

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Excest es ut 8

 VEHICLE PHOTOGRAPHY A big part of my work term is vehi- goals in my photos is to have a clean cle photography. City Chrysler used background. A background without a to have someone come in and do the bunch of other vehicle’s in the pho- photos when I first started. However, to by the City Chrysler sign. A clean it did not work because she would background with the product helps come in part-time. The result was sell the product because the product unfinished photos on our website. In sticks out compared to a background result, I volunteered to do the pho- with a bunch of vehicles. Every day, I tography for the vehicles. I thought am checking to see if any new trades it made sense for me to take on the come in, which ones are detailed, responsibility of vehicle photography. and which ones are new stock. For The photos will be professional look- our used units, it is important that ing compared to before and also it they are being shown on our lead gives the ability to keep close track sites such as Kijiji, Facebook Mar- to the vehicles that are coming and ketplace, and Car-gurus. Even when going in the inventory. After doing the vehicles are not detailed, it is my the photos for a while, I can honest- responsibility to take 2-3 photos of ly say, the photography takes time the outside of the vehicle so custom- because of the process. First, you ers can still see the vehicle. The idea have to make sure the lot is clear by is to have a picture so customers can the City Chrysler sign, then park your easily see the trade right away oth- vehicle, then take your pictures (out- erwise the listing looks unorganized side and inside), then upload them without a photo. The more organized & adjust key locations in the back and professional we appear (aka. our end of the FCA website. One of my pictures), the more chances we will receive potential customers. 9

Excest es ut Social Media can be a powerful ning, not beforehand. This program tool for businesses, especially vehicle is perfect for videos on social media dealerships. I extensively use social because it quickly gets the job done. media to enhance our business. My With promotions going on with vehi- main strategy with our social media cles, or even parts and service, I use is to keep the content fun, informa- the program Adobe Illustrator. I find tive, and interesting. Regularly I look that I have creative control when it at what types of promotions we are comes to designing things such as running in our month and start plan- posts, digital ads, etc. If I am taking ning how to implement that into my professional photos for a design, I social media strategy. One program use Photoshop if needed (lighting is- that I use and enjoy for our videos is sues) to edit the photo. For pre-plan- Adobe Premiere Rush. It is a quick ning posts out, I found the website video editing program that gets the Hootsuite to be quite useful to plan job done quickly. There will be times out content. I can pre-plan my con- where incentives change from month tent and post the correct times and to month. With that in mind, I need to social platforms such as Facebook quickly go to the drawing board, plan & Instagram. With social media, it is how I am going to film my video, and useful to break up the types of social create my video. I must be using a media you put on your accounts. An program that looks professional yet example is if I have a bunch of made quick to create the video because up videos on our Facebook, people incentives are revealed at the begin- get used to seeing the same type of content & tend to not take notice of it. However, if you break up the content with something like a pic- ture(ex.a customer with their vehicle), it breaks up the content and makes it different. People in general get bored easily, so they need different types of content to stay interested. Another platform I use from time to time is Youtube. I have made differ- ent videos such as how to videos or walk through videos. The reason why is to get the customer to engage with the video as well make us a stronger more known dealership. 10

 SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT 11



THE CULHTAUTR’SE

Excest es ut LOCAL 14

 City Chrysler has been a local business for at least 45 years and counting. Keeping that in mind, one of the strategies as a Marketing Specialist is to highlight that fact. There is a lot of proud people of Medicine Hat that appre- ciate local businesses. When highlighting our product, from time to time, I focus on Medicine Hat’s culture and community. That can be a vehicle be- side our famous teepee, the Medicine Hat Murals, or even teaming up with some of the local food truck businesses to support each other. It is import- ant as a part of a business to show the people of our local community that we are here and we are good supportive people to work with. COMMUNITY 15

Excest es ut A website can be a make or break of a business. A unprofessional looking website an leave off the wrong impression. I am a stronger believer that how- ever the viewer see’s the website, is the impression that they will have of the business or company. I know myself, if I look at a very messy, unorganized website, I will pre-judge that business. It is complete human nature. Before my work term, my manager and I were looking into either staying with dealer.com as a web provider or switching to Convertus. We found there was a lot of technical and design issues not being fulfilled with dealer.com. Earlier in the year, my boss went to a convention in Las Vegas specifically for vehicle dealerships called NADA.(National Automobile Dealers Association) In the convention, he came across London Derry Dodge’s website. He loved how interactive and how accessible all the pages were. THE NEW WEBSITE 16

 There was easy to see buttons on the hours to do. Before hand, I re-did website for viewers such as, Our New numerous winter photos and older Specials, Value Your Trade, Book Ser- photos. Some of the photos did not vice, Get Pre-Approved, plus more. load or some were showing the older With that inspiration in mind, we previous photos. I could not accept went to dealer.com, and gave them a that this was happening. I logged into chance to deliver a design that would our old dealer.com account to see give the same type of idea. They gave if the updated ones were still there. us the impression that there would Thankfully, they were. I called Conver- be no problem, and sent a bunch of tus and let them know so they began website designs of different deal- to re-upload the picture files. There erships to us. When going over the was a few other glitches not proper- designs with Warren (my manger), ly functioning with the website. An we picked out one design that had examples is Facebook Mrketplace. the famous buttons that showed the Newer ad listings for the inventory viewer the accessible pages. When I was not showing up, but showing up notified them they said unfortunately, on older ads. These vehicles were the design was a customized design also not properly downloading in our & would cost more to create. The lead websites such as kjjii, car gurus, problem was that they never speci- and auto trader. Later, they fixed the fied anything about extra costs. In my issue because there was two differ- opinion, if they knew this, they should ent files. of never showed that website as an option or at least told us right away. With that being said, we switched to Conertus. With Convertus, we showed them our inspiration of London Der- ry’s website. We went through meets afer meetings on the design,color, what we were looking for,etc. When the website first went live, there was a lot of technical difficulties. Exam- ples are there was a bunch of miss- ing pictures on the website that took 17

Excest es ut Regularly, one of the main prior- prices on our website is a program ities is keeping track of our web- called 1-Source. This website is a pro- site. Since I do not have a good gram under the company Auto-Trader. amount of experience with Word- I use it to download photos & also do Press, the company Convertus any possible price changes from time also works with the management to time. Under the website, the pro- of the website. I make sure every- gram of choice is wordpress. I tend to thing is functioning smoothly such use wordpress if I want to add some as pictures, prices, and making sort of special such as a parts spe- sure there is no glitches in the cial ad, or a banner advertisement system. Since Convertus has a on the front of the page or some good number of clients, they may type of switch in grammar or photos. not always notice when a problem occurs. It is so important that our WEBSITE website is functioning smoothly. If we have glitches in the sys- tem, that could cost a sale since people in general have a short 18attention span and do not want to spend a good amount of time waiting for a website to function. One of the main programs I use MANAwhen managing the pictures and

 E AGEMENT

PSAERRTVSI&CE Every month, one of my main ojectives is to advertise some type of spe- cial or advertisement for parts and service. We put our brains together, and come up with a special that we will advertise for these departments. Once we have figured out what we are going to advertise. I start doing my research online about this product or idea, and I start sketching out ideas. Usually I find a main idea I believe is the strongest, then design a variety of different variations of the design to get the best design. After, I take it to service or parts and get their agreement on advertising the product through the design. Some of the forms of media I use to advertise parts and service ads are google my business, Facebook, and Instagram.



GROWTH& LEARNING My work term experience supports my professional growth because it has caused me to exercise my lead- ership skills. An example is when I direct the salespeo- ple what to do in a sales video or how-to video. I guide them on how to position themselves in the video. We also may team up together to collaborate on any ideas for videos or social media content. Examples are walk- through videos, how-to videos, or even giveaway videos. This experience itself helps me with leadership and having the ability to direct others. This work term experience has supported me learning wise by giving me skills as a professional, such as vid- eo editing, photography, social media content skills. I have skills in the marketing world to speak to different audiences because you notice trends in social media or what people like vs don't like when putting posts up. One thing about a social media manager, is you have to pay attention to your analytics, what works, what doesn’t, the psychology of how people think and act. Then you apply that to the type of work you put out on your platform. Whatever business I work with, I will take the steps to understand the brand or customer. I also know how to catch people’s eyes with what I say and the types of images that are presented.

STRENGTH& WEAKNESS My strengths that I A lot of dealerships obtained in my job, was around, will just have that I was very creative. a basic idea of their I really wanted to por- photos. I really focused tray City Chrysler as on getting clear, good a fun family. I believe quality photos that I have done this sim- were pleasing to the ply through branding, customers. My weak- content, creative work. nesses that I need to I believe my strength work on I would say is is that I want to make communicating more something stand out. I with my colleges with am open to being cre- ideas and organizing ative. An example is my and managing times so designs, the energy in everyone can regularly my designs. I was not brainstorm. However, afraid of playing around I do have to say, it is a with the photogra- bit of a weakness, but I phy(product) to create believe it is getting way the best angles, etc. better. I do feel that our communication is better.