Promote Your Entire Dealership

June 2008 — cima

By Gary Nixon for Dealer Marketing Magazine

Embrace a dealership-wide marketing approach that meets your customers’ needs and allows you to reap the maximum profit from every part of your business.  

We all know the current market situation. A decline in consumer confidence, along with high fuel prices, and the worry that the weakened market could turn into a full blown recession has hit the automotive industry hard.

According to Reuters, auto sales dropped 12 percent in March alone and predictions are that they will continue to decline through the second quarter of this year. Experts counsel that a strong focus on promoting your parts and service business is the way to keep your profits up during this down time. I’d like to offer a different perspective to ensure you focus on your entire dealership.

Although individual promotions for parts and services, vehicles sales, or any other aspect of your dealership are an integral part of your marketing plan, sending communications that promote specific departments to the exclusion of others sets you up for a roller coaster ride. For example, a marketing promotion that only touts a $9.99 oil change may make your service business rise briefly, but it may soon go right back down again, leaving you in a constant state of peaks and valleys, scrambling to come up with even better promotions.

Instead, focus on promoting your entire dealership. This approach gives you room to highlight a particular department, for instance your service department, while still tying in all the services and products you offer that meet the full gamut of customer needs. Marketing your dealership as a whole sets you up for a steady stream of revenue, so your business remains strong even during the most difficult economic conditions.

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Make 2008 your most profitable year ever: part 3

December 2007 — cima

Determine the pros and cons of each of your marketing methods for maximum success.
by Gary Nixon for Digital Dealer

In the last of my three part series on the right marketing mix for 2008, we’re going to focus on a growing and exciting portion of the automotive industry: new technology tools. This last year brought several intriguing ways to communicate with customers on a 24 by seven basis, including: text messaging, interactive chats or instant message (IM), and blogs.  I think we’ll see an explosion in these communication methods in 2008 and would like to share with you some of the pros and cons for each of these tools. My hope is that by sharing the advantages and disadvantages with you for each marketing method, you’ll be able to determine the right marketing mix for maximum success in your dealership this next year.

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Make 2008 your most profitable year ever: Part 2

November 2007 — cima

Determine the pros and cons of each of your marketing methods for maximum success.
by Gary Nixon for Digital Dealer

In my last article I shared with you some of the pros and cons of two marketing methods you’ll be considering in your marketing mix this next year, direct mail and emails to your customers. While both methods have their share of benefits and pitfalls, they are not the only method you’ll be utilizing in 2008 when reaching out to customers. This month, I’d like to focus on the advantages and disadvantages of two other lead generators, automated calls versus live calls, or Business Development Centers (BDC). My hope is that by sharing pros and cons with you for each marketing method, you’ll be able to determine the right marketing mix for maximum success in your dealership this next year.

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Make 2008 your most profitable year ever: Part 1

November 2007 — cima

Determine the pros and cons of each of your marketing methods for maximum success.
by Gary Nixon for Digital Dealer

Dealers often ask us, with the many ways to reach out to customers which channels work the best for communicating important dealership promotions/recommendations to drive customers for life? Mailers, business development centers, emails, automated calls, enewsletters and blogs are just samples of various communication possibilities. In this series I’d like to help demystify some of the more common forms of marketing communication and share with you the pros and cons of each. There’s a variety of ways to bring in customers, all of them with good and bad points. Regardless of which way you choose to pull in customers, sending the right message at the right time and in the right way is your best bet for pulling in additional leads and sales.

This month’s article will focus on the advantages and disadvantages of direct mail and email. In future articles we’ll focus on: automated phone calls, live phone calls (or Business Development Centers-BDC’s) and newer technologies such as text messages and Blogs (or timely two-way enewsletters).

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Grab Prospects Across the Nation with One Simple Tool

August 2007 — cima

With ever-changing technology in the world, more and more consumers are looking at better and faster ways of exchanging important information. In the past, dealers have exchanged information with their customers via mailed newsletters that have now progressed into e-newsletters. Although these have worked well, many dealers today are turning to blogging.

Simply put, a blog (or web log) provides interactive commentary or news on a particular subject (i.e. latest announcements from your manufacturer, dealership news/promos) to your customers. A typical dealer blog combines text, images, links and video content applicable to the auto industry. Further, the reader has the ability to leave comments in an interactive format on each of your blog subjects.

A 2006 study by PQ Media, “Blog, Podcast and RSS Advertising Outlook” showed the combined spending on blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds by companies rose from $6.8 million in 2004 to close to $50 million in 2006. In addition, a recent CapGemini study shows of the tools auto shoppers use when researching a vehicle for purchase, a healthy 16 percent used interactive marketing in the form of blogs or discussion groups when compiling information. These two studies point out a trend happening throughout the business world: as more companies adopt blogs, more consumers are visiting them and driving explosive growth in the new medium.

A blog has certain characteristics that qualify it to be a unique marketing tool above and beyond your typical marketing channels such as e-newsletters. It is timely, delivers fresh content, is quick and establishes a direct line from management to customers. Let’s identify the strengths of each of these qualifiers directly as they pertain to the automotive industry.

Timely response
Unlike any other online tool available, blogs give dealerships the opportunity to respond to their environment in an immediate way. For instance, a quick look at General Motor’s forward-thinking blog, Fastlane (www.fastlane.com), shows me I can find out the truth about the latest rumors regarding Buick breaking its contract with Tiger Woods. (Buick, in fact, did not and General Manager Jim Bunnell sets the record straight in his post, “Tiger Woods and Buick.”) In the post Bunnell candidly discusses the rumors and writes to “set the record straight”; letting Buick loyalists know that the contract is intact and the hoopla was started due to sensationalized headlines in the media.

This is a perfect example of the power of a blog when it comes to disseminating information quickly and controlling the message. GM could have chosen to continue letting the rumors fly and eventually send out a statement in their e-newsletter, but by taking the bull by the horn and posting the truth on their blog, they’ve taken the mountain and made it back into the molehill, stopping rumors in their tracks.

Fresh content
A frequent complaint heard by e-newsletter readers is they’re faced with the same content they can find on the company’s website or marketing materials. Nothing is fresh. This happens often with dealership e-newsletters as dealers recycle content used on their web site or in their online promotions. Not only does this discount the time your customers have spent reading the enewsletter, it also is a surefire way to dissuade customers and prospects from giving you their e-mail address for future communications. A blog, on the other hand, enables dealerships to add small bits of content the reader can’t find anywhere else. Due to the nature of a blog, posts are often personal comments and thoughts from leadership and can feature anything from news about the industry to their opinion on current events. It’s a view into the dealership a reader might not see through any other source.

Quick
Today’s consumers want to scan information in bite-size chunks and pull out the content that catches their interest or pertains directly to them. Some of the best media sites on the web have already invested time and energy into designing their sites to attract readers in this way. Take the Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com, for instance. One glance at the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the reader will see several headlines that make up the news of the day summarized in four lines or less.

A dealership blog taps into this trend by giving users bits of information that can be easily scanned. The best blog posts are no more than a few paragraphs long; with one paragraph being the general rule of thumb for length. Compare that with an e-newsletter that often contains three to eight feature-length articles and long lead-ins and it’s not hard to figure out why e-newsletter conversion rates are dropping.

Direct
Perhaps the most important benefit of a blog is the direct link it creates between customer and executive leadership, or in the dealership world, buyers and sellers. While an e-newsletter article may inspire a reader to shoot off a quick e-mail to whoever maintains the mailing list, a blog creates the opportunity for one on one interaction between the reader and the poster. Teddy Stephens, General Manager of Fiesta Ford Lincoln Mercury, in Indio, CA has seen the power of his blog, Fiesta Ford eNewsFlash (www.fiestaford.wordpress.com) firsthand.

Since beginning his blog in February of this year, Stephens has received positive feedback from posters all over the nation. In this way, eNewsFlash, is pulling interest into the Fiesta dealership from sources across the U.S. rather than pushing information out to those readers in his geographic area. Again looking at the Fastlane example from above, Buick was able to begin a one-on-one communication with its brand loyalists the moment the contract rumors began. No other form of marketing gives you instant, direct communication in this way.

While blogs will by no means make e-newsletters or other forms of interactive marketing extinct any time soon, they should be considered as an addition to your marketing mix due to some of the attributes noted above. Blogs, unlike any other form of online marketing, can bring fresh, timely, interesting information to the reader and establish a one-on-one communication channel that can’t be matched today. And if you need a further push, look to your competitor down the street. I’ll bet within the next year you’ll see a blog pop up on their web site. Take my advice and establish a blog to get those buyers first. Best of luck.

This article is published in Digital Dealer Magazine, here.

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(Imediaconnection) Blogs vs eNewsletters

June 2007 — cima

Gary Nixon’s article lays out the benefits of blogs over enewsletters and predicts blogs increasing strength in the industry.

While e-newsletters are many dealers’ marketing channel of choice, blogs can offer big benefits when it comes to connecting with your customer. CIMA Systems explains.

A recent CapGemini study shows that of the tools auto shoppers use when researching a vehicle for purchase, a healthy 16 percent used interactive marketing in the form of blogs or discussion groups and more than 20 percent of respondents between 18-34 years of age used web groups and social forums when compiling information. The numbers in the study point to the evolution of interactive tools like blogs, RSS (really simple syndication) feeds and social networking sites becoming as much a part of the automotive landscape as Search Engine Optimization and e-newsletters did just a few years ago.

Consumers are hungry for information and interactive marketing enables them to engage in two-way communication that traditional marketing channels just can’t match. Take the internet sensation MySpace. One of the revolutionary things MySpace enables its users to do is create a social network or virtual coffee shop where friends can check in, post comments, see videos and photos and share information.

You find the same sense of flow of information on up and coming dealership blogs like that of one of our customers: Fiesta Ford. Teddy Stephens, general manager of Fiesta Ford in California has established a dealership blog for his customers to view important information regarding their Ford dealership promotions and the latest Ford commercial(s), et cetera. Through his posts, each customer can respond to his promotions or provide important feedback to his insightful articles, driving valuable two-way communication between buyer and seller.

What makes blogs and social networks successful and other forms of marketing fall flat can be attributed to three main items: back and forth flow of information, timeliness and brevity.

It has to inspire feedback
Perhaps the best example of immediate communication versus stalled communication can be found when looking at a dealership blog versus an e-newsletter. The dealers that are taking full advantage of technology are the ones who are blogging about their own thoughts, theories and opinions of the vehicles on their lot and the industry in general. The thoughts are short, relevant and sincere.

Nothing kills a blog faster than content that was obviously written in masse for a variety of different dealerships (similar to the e-newsletters I get from two different real estate brokers with the same generic content). When sincere, thought-provoking content is posted, readers then share their thoughts and opinions back through comments on the original blog post. These can be valuable pieces of information for the dealership. They give the dealer a feel for public opinion about their dealership, the vehicles they carry and may even alert them to an upcoming customer problem or obstacle the store can solve before it becomes an issue.

On the other hand, an e-newsletter is sent to the reader as a “one-way” message, and often has more to do with the dealership specials and promotions than commentary on what’s going on in the industry or the dealership. In addition, other than the “contact us” email link at the bottom, there’s little or no invitation for the reader to share their thoughts back with the dealership; creating a one-way communication channel with little to no input back from the addressee. What’s more, e-newsletters are often planned out a month or so in advance, leaving little to no time for updated news as it happens. Which brings me to my next point…

It has to be timely
When news hits, blogs enable a dealership executive to jump online and immediately post how they feel about it, what they’re going to do about it or even how they’re going to make it right. For example, Edmunds recently announced its top 10 list of mom-friendly features for Mother’s Day. Jumping on the newly released information, Fiesta Ford posted this information immediately, just in time for Mother’s Day.

In stark contrast, many e-newsletters are on a monthly schedule or longer. Often this leads to the news story either coming out too soon before deadline or so late that the news loses its relevance by the publish date. Either way, the dealership has lost out on an opportunity to make a comment about relevant, timely information in the space.

It has to be fast
Let’s face it: we’re in a world that’s hooked on better, faster, more. We want information that can be easily digested in bite-sized chunks. We do much better scanning an article than actually sitting down to read it. In our fast paced lives we need just the facts and don’t have time for much else.

A dealership blog taps into this trend by giving users bits of information that can be easily scanned. Rarely do we see a blog post that is more than a few paragraphs long. Compare that with an e-newsletter that often contains three to eight feature-length articles and it’s not hard to figure out why e-newsletter conversion rates are dropping.

While I don’t think dealership e-newsletters are gasping their last breath just yet, there are some clear benefits of a dealership blog over an e-newsletter when it comes to two-way communication. I would encourage dealer principals to look into new tools like blogs on the market and see if there is a way to strengthen their communication throughout all of their channels. As the CapGemini study noted above clearly proves, it’s time to expand our thinking when it comes to communicating with today’s consumer. Whether it’s texting, MySpace, wikis or blogs, your customers are using interactive technology more than ever before. You need to be where the customer is in order to pull them into your dealership. Good luck!

Read the original article at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/15140.asp

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