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, 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 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 to increase 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.