Success Story
100%
NET PROFIT SINCE 2012 (Sales Department)
DePaula Chevrolet Bold Moves! How DePaula Chevrolet jumped 90 spots to join America’s top 2% Have a conversation with Paul Lynch, GSM at DePaula Chevrolet in Albany, NY and it will take you exactly 2 seconds to see why he has been able to lead his organization into the nation’s top 2 percent for new car sales. This is a man with passion, focus and a relentless thirst for understanding of what separates America’s top performers from the rest of the pack.
Under Lynch’s leadership, DePaula Chevrolet has won the prestigious “Dealer of the Year” award four consecutive times and has climbed over 90 spots in Chevrolet’s national rankings in just two years. Over that same period, DePaula Chevrolet also became the number one CPO dealership in the Northeast and increased net profits by 100 percent in the sales department. This is an impressive accomplishment, given that there are 15 other Chevrolet stores within 50 miles of DePaula. IMITATe AND INNovATe “I went to school on all the dealerships I thought were really doing it right,” says Lynch, “I started out by researching the nation’s top 10 Chevrolet stores and dissected everything. I set up computers with their zip codes and performed searches. I mystery shopped them. I interviewed them - you name it, I did it.”
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“During this process, I found that many of the top Chevy stores had contributing factors that I could not duplicate here in Albany, like having thousands of GM factory workers living 10 miles from my dealership. So, I shifted my focus to the top import dealers. The top guys like Paragon Honda in New York and Rick Case Honda in rural Florida were all very successful even though their markets were all very different. They had strategy-driven competitive advantages, not just geographic advantages, so I positioned our store to imitate a lot of what they are doing.” MAke MISTAkeS vISIbLe One of the first things DePaula Chevrolet did was to start monitoring 100 percent of their phone calls so they could identify where every lead source was succeeding or breaking down. This allowed them to adjust their internal processes and put safeguards in place to plug profit leaks. “I immediately understood why so many of the dealerships I studied use this methodology [of monitoring 100 percent of calls versus samples],” Lynch says enthusiastically, “It was amazing what we didn’t know.” “This is very common,” says Chip King, managing partner of CallRevu.com, the company that DePaula uses to manage their phone calls and who monitors over two million dealership calls every year. “53
Notes: Caller wants to speak with the Sales Manager. Dennis’s VM answers. Caller hangs up without leaving a message. Call ends.
percent of customers who call a dealership never reach a live person. Of the 47 percent of sales calls that connect with a live agent, only 50 percent produce usable contact information and only 11 percent get entered into the dealer’s CRM,” he says. To address these problems, DePaula Chevrolet put processes in place to reconnect with customers in real time, when calls are missed or mishandled and reorganized their management process so that managers are personally responsible for establishing the dealership’s first interaction with new customers. As part of this process, the dealership is sent “actionable” text alerts every time a sales opportunity has been missed or mishandled. This allows his sales teams to take immediate action from any cell phone without having to manage app downloads or updates. New customers, who contact the dealership via email are personally handled by sales managers before being introduced to a sales person. In both cases, DePaula Chevrolet makes sure that their most capable team members are handling the dealership’s most important interactions. PuSH RIvALS off of PAGe oNe “Regardless of where we spend our marketing dollars the majority of our opportunities were coming from digital sources”, Lynch says. “This was a big eye opener for us. We adjusted our ad budget and set out to dominate the search engines. We were confident in our team and in our processes so we knew that if we could own the search engines, we could own our market.” According to Google, consumers are 55 times more likely to click on a video listing versus a text listing so search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing prioritize video content over text content on search results pages. To maximize this preferential treatment, DePaula Chevrolet put together a targeted video marketing strategy designed to engage in-market shoppers during every phase of the shopping process – in-market and actively shopping, in-market and not actively shopping, and In-market and engaging with dealerships.
To engage in-market shoppers when they are actively using search engines, Lynch uses video search engine optimization to increase page-one listings and push his competitors to page 2. Because search engines are constantly changing their rules, they use a system that monitors the most popular search phrases being used every month for the vehicles they sell and service. These search terms are then used to create OEM compliant, dealership specific videos that are optimized to appear on page one and distributed to all of the major search engines.
“We knew that if we could own the search engines, we could own our market!” - Paul Lynch GM, DePaula Chevy
Every one of these dealer-specific videos is uniquely created to work in unison with all past and future video content. This creates a cumulative impact that began producing results very quickly and continues to improve over time. uSe CoMPeTIToRS To YouR ADvANTAGe Although consumers continue to use the Internet for nearly 70 percent of the car shopping process, what they do and their choice of content continues to evolve. According to Google, over 60 percent of the time consumers spend online shopping for a car is now spent comparing vehicles and dealerships. Video content, especially editorial content that compares one vehicle to another is very much in demand. To take advantage of this, Lynch and his team launched a series of conquest campaigns designed to interrupt the shopping process for potential customers who are searching for competitive makes and models. These videos have helped them capture conquest customers by showing
dePaula Chevrolet side-by-side comparisons that get top placement for popular search phrases used by Ford and GM shoppers. As a result of this, DePaula Chevy’s conquest trade-in’s increased 24 percent for Ford, 25 percent for GMC, and 46 percent for Dodge year over year. “These side-by-side comparisons result in more conquest trade-ins for dealerships and ultimately increase their overall market share,” says AJ LeBlanc, Managing Partner of Car-Mercial.com, the company that DePaula Chevrolet uses for their online video strategy. “This is a big deal for DePaula and Chevrolet as a whole,” LeBlanc states. TuRN eNTeRTAINMeNT INTo eNGAGeMeNT The second part of DePaula’s video marketing strategy is designed to engage customers who are in-market but not actively shopping for a car. To increase their influence with consumers when they are doing non-automotive activities, DePaula Chevy began putting clickable, direct response videos in front of news stories, highlight reels, entertainment videos and other video content on popular lifestyle sites. Lynch uses a pre-roll network that has over 300 popular sports, news, automotive and lifestyle websites and that allows him to control their ad spend by only serving content to those who meet the ideal criteria for each campaign. This includes the ability to target customers by make, model, year, payment range, geographic location, number of payments remaining and many other criteria. “Using Video SEO and pre-roll together has been very effective. Within 60 days of implementing this strategy, we increased our website traffic by 7,000 unique visitors a month. Once we recognized the impact video content was having on our traffic, we also started incorporating more video content directly into our website. That’s when things got really interesting because the same appetite (for video content) that led the consumer to our site was now keeping them engaged longer and increasing conversion.”
WIN THe APPoINTMeNT The final part of DePaula’s three-part video marketing strategy is designed to increase conversion with customers who are inmarket and engaging with dealerships. Studies show that auto shoppers consider multiple dealerships but only visit 1.4 before making a purchase. This makes the window of opportunity between first contact and showroom visit extremely important. To give his dealership a competitive advantage, Lynch gave his sales teams a video content library with over 300 full-motion, dealership specific, OEM compliant videos. These videos answer the questions customers commonly ask throughout the buying process and are designed so that they are easy to insert into social media sites, email communications and text messages. As a result, customers get high-quality answers to their questions and sales persons get higher appointment rates and show rates. “This strategy has been a big win for us”, says Lynch. “We are showing up on more searches, we are getting more customers to our website, we are getting more leads and our sales teams are generating more appointments. Most importantly, all of this helping us sell more cars.”
For the rest of this story or to learn more about the strategies used by DePaula Chevy, email: successstories@autosuccessonline.com
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DePaula Chevrolet is certainly is on the path to success. They have achieved a 30 percent growth rate two consecutive years in a row and they have no intention of stopping. “I’m constantly looking for holes in our armor and keeping an eye on our competition. I’m proud of our results, but this is only the beginning for DePaula Chevy,” said Lynch.
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IN THE LAST 2 YEARS We sell over 40 cars a month to customers who
initially searched Google for a competitive brand.
(Chevy’s National Ranking)
- Paul Lynch, General Manager | DePaula Chevy
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NATIONAL RANKING
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17,000/mo to website
Top 2% in America
2x Growth in Sales
70% 90
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In a nutshell
Bold Moves! How DePaula Chevrolet jumped 90 spots to join America’s top 2% • Imitate and Innovate: Studied the most successful dealerships in the country and recreated their processes and marketing strategies to focus on targeted, measurable media. • Make Mistakes Visible: Implemented a call monitoring system that monitors 100 percent of all calls
to identify when sales opportunities are missed or mishandled and setup real-time alerts so that the dealership can reconnect with customers before they defect to their competition. This allowed DePaula to increase sales without increasing advertising.
• Push Others Off Page One: Implemented a targeted video marketing strategy designed to increase page-one
real estate for DePaula Chevrolet and push their competitors to page 2 of the search engines for the most popular search phrases being used in their market.
• Use Competitors To Your Advantage: Launched targeted video marketing campaigns designed to interrupt
the shopping process for consumers who are searching for competitive makes and models.
• Turn Entertainment Into Engagement: Placed clickable, direct response videos in front of news stories,
highlight reels, entertainment videos and other video content on popular lifestyle sites.
• Win the Appointment: Incorporated video content into their website and communications so that
customers get high-quality answers to their questions and sales persons get higher appointment rates and show rates.
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