We Apologize. The Free Social Media Trial Was More Successful Than We Could Bear.

As Harry Doyle would say, the expectations we set for our social media trial was, “Juuuuust a bit outside.” Bob Uecker‘s iconic play-by-play character in Major League watched a pitch fly seven feet off the plate, which is about how far away our estimates were.

We thought we would get a handful and run the special for a full month. The goal is to jumpstart our social media client base; as a new company, it’s easier to sell a product when you have dealers using it successfully. Getting going is the hardest part.

The reason that we assumed we wouldn’t get a ton is because it’s a free one month trial of the service, but there’s still an expenditure involved in the form of Facebook ads. Dealers would have to pay at least $150 for the month for their Facebook budget to make sure that they were getting a taste of the full product.  We didn’t lose much money from the trial itself, either. That small barrier of entry was, in our opinion, enough to keep all but the truly serious about their social media off of the trial. Again, we thought that we’d get one or two per week.

Our goal for the month was achieved… on the 3rd day of the promotion.

Apparently, there are more dealers than we expected out there who realize that an aggressively positioned social media presence combined with properly managed social advertising can definitely help a dealership to sell more cars. That’s a good thing! Unfortunately, it has put us in a pickle.

As a new company, we have the advantage of being nimble and hands-on with our clients but there’s a downside. We can’t scale to 100 extra clients in a month at this point, so we are forced to cut the offer short. Rather than running it through the end of April, we’re going to stop taking new signups this week.

For the sake of fairness, we’re keeping it open until end of business Friday. Those who sign up before then can take advantage of it, but unfortunately that’s the best fair warning we can give. Otherwise, we risk having too much business to give the best-in-class social media marketing in the automotive industry until we get more people hired and trained.

It’s the two minute warning. If you’re in, head on over to the signup sheet.