7 DEALER MARKETING STRATEGIES BEYOND THE HYPE By Don Dalrymple
THE TRUTH IS THAT CARS, LIKE MANY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TODAY, ARE BOUGHT, NOT SOLD. THE BUYER IS IN CHARGE. Dealer marketing has a major reset every month. Everything is built around the monthly sales cycles. It is a relentless treadmill that is built on old school rules of selling hard and driving hype. It始s understandable that working the old mediums to drive emotion via TV, direct mail, radio and
advertising are still in play. However, car buyers today can turn off the messages. We have been inundated with interruptions by marketing. We have do not call, TV recordings, channel switchers and a host of other tools as buyers designed to avoid advertising.
Furthermore, your messaging has to hit at the right time. If not, then your message is irrelevant. What can you really do to get a person to buy a vehicle when they are not ready? The truth is that cars, like many products and services today, are bought, not sold. The buyer is in charge. We live in the information age. Access to information is easy and readily available online. Everything from technical details to customer complaints can be found easily. Many dealers can feel the change. Yet, their strategies are still from the old days of doing business. It is highly tactical and centered around selling. Here are 7 strategies which we have implemented with dealers to increase revenue and experience a better result from your marketing investments.
1. Get Found When a buyer is looking for something, they go online and search. If you are not found on the first page of what they are searching for, then everything else is irrelevant. When they are searching, they are looking for information. The information is less likely about buying something now. It is much more about becoming educated. This process involves producing remarkable content which is indexed and optimized for someone to find you. Your dealership needs to be a resource online which engages the buyer at the very beginning of their research in order to build trust. 2. Produce Remarkable Content Content is critical for getting found. It is what connects with the buyers needs initially and ongoing. They are looking for information. Boring content will not work. It will be clicked away from. Novel, insightful and remarkable content which helps the buyer make a decision needs to be packaged and presented for building trust. If you have content which your buyers engage with, your authority and credibility will be established. You will be positioned in the mind of the buyer as the expert. Experts win over salespeople all the
time. We trust the former. We have our guard up with the latter. 3. Measure And Analyze An outbound marketing strategy typically is focused on emotion. It has to in order to get attention. You must interrupt with your message and hope someone is paying attention. In contrast, inbound marketing gives you the ability to measure visitors, leads, sales, behaviors and everything related to the digital movements of a person. This data needs to be analyzed and acted upon. You might start with outbound techniques to catalyze initial interest. However, a monthly campaign which is built only on outbound marketing has a short shelf life. It expires within a few days. Having a system which is able to measure inbound responses to getting found or outbound marketing equips you to take more targeted approaches. 4. Use Targeted Marketing We live in an age where we can manage databases and measure everything. If you are not leveraging your data in an intelligent and actionable way, then it is just a novelty. Everything your buyers are doing are giving you signals of
what their needs and interests are. Ensure your next messages and actions are specific, relevant and personal for them. This is a targeted marketing approach and is much more efficient. Using variable data printing to send the precise offer on a postcard which is personal works far more effectively than mass mailing. Triggering the right email with a timely service offer will win a sale before a mass coupon offer on service that is irrelevant. This is all possible and yields a much higher return on investment of your marketing dollars. 5. Redefine Your Pipeline If your sales pipeline is merely an event, this can become a roller coaster ride from month to month. It is because you may be defining your sales pipeline as who visits your store. You have to see a person始s physical body language to qualify them for a sale. When your salespeople work in your DMS or CRM system, they are logging calls and communications with prospects. Many unready prospects want value, not sales. Watching their digital body language is a logged call. Every article they read, email they open, page they visit, or offer they are looking at should be logged in their buyer profile. Your pipeline is built less on what your salesperson is doing and more on what your buyer is doing naturally. This is all transparent for you if you have the right systems in place. 6. Implement Marketing Automation Marketing automation (see www.whatismarketingautomation.com) is the system which allows you to drive targeted, timely and personal communications and actions with your buyers. Your truly interested buyers move through a funnel which they self-select with based on their readiness and interest. A decision tree which automates the next actions and communications moves the buyer further down the funnel and triggers your sales team to connect at the right time. Without this system, it is like flying blind without instruments. There is nothing to navigate with. This system helps nurture and convert your prospects into ready buyers. 7. Continually Build And Nurture Your database is your largest asset. It is the source of repeat customers, referrals, cross-selling service and building loyalty. As your inbound and outbound campaigns work, automated offers and nurturing of your database needs to occur from intelligent programming and analysis. The truth is that if you continually had the right message at the right time with each person in your database, your dealership would experience a dramatic increase in revenue. This is what leading dealerships are doing. They are using the tools of the new economy.
By building and effectively nurturing your database, your sales pipeline will be continuous rather than month to month. You can rely less on the vicious monthly emotional hype of campaigns and gain a better return with automation that continues to nurture. This creates ongoing business that builds on itself.
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