On this week's Think Tank Tuesday:
What is SOS? (It doesn't mean what you think!)
How much is it costing your business?
What can you do to avoid it?
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Establishing long-term relationships with you customers is becoming more challenging than ever before. You can't rely on any single channel to get in front of them and truly reach them with your messages if you're only hitting them from one or two fronts. You need to be in front of them regularly in the places that they're checking.
I originally published this article over at AutomotiveSocial.com but thought it would fit in nicely at ADM:
Customer loyalty is a tough cookie to crack nowadays. It's not like before when things were more predictable, when you could make assumptions about timing and situations. Today, you never know when the situation will change to where someone is in the market to buy a car immediately. The standard buying cycle has been replaced by a chaotic weaving of changes to job, relationships, and circumstance.
Another thing has changed. People are not inherently loyal to any particular dealership. Sure, there are regular customers who will only buy a car from one dealership, but the number of people who self-maintain loyalty is going down. Today, every customer is a free agent waiting to happen and the only way you can keep them from jumping ship is to be in front of them regularly.
The bad news is that there are so many ways for people to communicate today that it's hard to focus on one way or another. There were dealerships that lived off of mailers, for example, and built the company around being in their customers' mailboxes regularly. For others, email has been a golden ticket, but even that ticket has waned in the wake of advanced spam filters that often exclude messages simply because they have the wrong wording. Today, it's important to get in front of your customers with the right message through multiple channels.
Loyalty is a funny thing. Earlier, I noted that people are less likely to be loyal today than before, but that's not just a function of society's shift towards a digital world that gives them more choices than they can handle. It's also a function of dealerships getting complacent with their messaging and either not sending them out enough or doing so with inferior techniques in an effort to simply "check the box" on having a database marketing plan. If it's not a good plan, you're often better off not trying at all. With spam filters the way they are today, it's possible to do damage to your database by using amateur techniques while trying to reach people.
One of the reasons that I joined Visible Customer in the first place was because they had the right plan. Dealers can apply this plan to multiple portions of their marketing beyond loyalty and conquest. They can take advantage of the concepts of analytics and intelligence marketing, proper dealership management, and building loyalty through referrals and sharing of their positive experiences to better position the rest of their marketing efforts. Whether it's social media, website presence, television ads, or just about anything else they're doing with their marketing, knowing how to engage your customers (past, present, and future) can be the difference between succeeding and failing.
With everything that you're doing, don't assume that any one channel is enough to make it work. You can get great results from this, that, or the other, but when you start combining the different channels to put the messages out there in front of the right people. you can dramatically improve the way that the messages are getting through. You can send messages to people or you can reach people. There's a difference. It's all about strategy.
The market is thriving. Some dealerships are taking advantage of these times. Others are simply reaping some of the benefits without aggressively moving forward.
Many people have the common thought that if they are not good at writing they are good at math and vice versa. While this is not a fact, it is said quite often. However, what people who think this fail to realize is math and their big social media marketing campaigns are related. If you are a business on a larger scale, this especially applies.
The proper way to use economics in social media is to identify which specific posts or investments are resulting in the greatest number of engagement. You can figure out how to reach the greatest number of people in doing so. By knowing which activities increase results you will know how much money you need to spend or how many posts or words you need in a post to reach the amount of people you want in your target audience. Instead of guessing how you can receive more social shares, calculate it. If you are marketing and seeing results you are using math. If you are not, you need to start applying it to your social media marketing efforts today.
For more information, check out the original article here.
If you read our blog post from Tuesday (if you haven’t yet, you should) you had a chance to get familiar with native advertising. To recap it is basically just a form of advertising that is used to promote your ad without your audience knowing it is an ad. Essentially it is an ad that blends into your newsfeed, twitter feed, or instafeed by looking like a picture a friend of yours would post. Typically this form of advertising is paid for in order to reach more people, but content and creation are key. In today’s podcast we take an in-depth look into what this form of advertising is and why it is so great! We break down the essential facts into numbers and try to convince you, it's something you should be looking into.
Also, we clear up some of the confusion for those of you who have a spinning head right now. Enjoy, and if you want to read further into this topic you can check out the sources for this podcast here. http://ow.ly/zxcHE http://ow.ly/zxcLB
Stop Freaking Out; Marketing does not have to be difficult. Sure, it can be tedious and require a lot of trial and error, but it does not need to be hard, especially as the mediums of marketing evolve. Traditional forms of marketing may be different than the fresher forms of marketing on social media, but the premise remains the same. You want whatever it is you are marketing to see a return on investment from your efforts or finical output. According to inc.com there are only 31 words you need to know.
“Marketing, reduced to its absolute basics, is remarkably simple: You figure out whom you want to sell to, and then you determine how you are going to get them to buy.”
That’s it. Of course you can get into the plethora of questions that need to be answered within this quote, because that’s what we do as humans. We complicate things. Of course there will always be more worked involved in asking and answering the questions laced into such a simple quote, but really it’s not difficult once you realize that a good product or service should sell itself. All you’re really responsible for is making sure people know it exists, aka your branding; enter social media. It’s not advertising, it’s branding and public awareness. I know you are probably looking for the rest of the article or waiting for some grand advice to show up. The good news is, you’ve already read it.
http://www.internetsales20group.com
http://www.dealersynergy.com 856-546-2440
Digital Marketing & Social Media Trends "2014 - 2015" - Car Dealerships
This is a great video / info graphic for Digital Marketing and Social Media trends for not only 2014 but also going into 2015. This is some powerful information that you can use for your car dealership's marketing and advertising initiative.
There are muffins, and there are great muffins. The kind we get our of a plastic package from a vending machine or at a continental breakfast at a hotel usually meets the hunger requirements, but it's usually not exceptionally enjoyable. Compare that to a muffin from your favorite bakery and the experience can be like night and day.
Why is that? They have the same basic ingredients. There's the freshness component, but even packaged muffins are usually not that old because the shelf-life is so short on them. It really comes down to the way that they're prepared and baked. It comes down quality.
The difference between muffins is like the difference between customer database marketing solutions. When I speak to dealers across the nation, there is a good number of you who have some sort of customer database marketing in place. Perhaps it's an automated follow-up system through your CRM. Maybe you have a BDC procedure that tries to cultivate the relationship over time. These are fine and they're (usually) better than nothing, but they're usually result in very little tangible value as far is increasing sales and service business.
They're packaged muffins.
A true customer database marketing strategy requires quality, care, and strategy. It requires taking your database and improving on it based upon referencing other data that is available. It's about appending the data to make it more accurate and therefore more effective.
It also requires proper messaging. One of the biggest mistakes that I see dealers and even other vendors make is that they separate out their databases to target service customers and sales customers. The reality is that you have customers. Your service customers should be buying cars from you. Your sales customers should be getting their cars serviced through you. The strategies that can take the two types of customers and turn them into a strong set of "whole" customers is something that simply cannot be done through standard automated systems.
The packaged muffins won't get the job done.
A great muffin means putting together the right recipe (strategy) to nurture them properly. It's about staying in front of them with the right messages and being relevant to their needs before, during, and after they're fulfilled.
As you think about all of this, ask yourself if you're taking full advantage of your customer database in a way that is translating into dramatic increases in business and customer loyalty. Today, the loyalty factor has been abandoned by many simply because customers in the digital age seem to be less willing to do business with the same companies over and over again. They've broadened their horizons thanks to the internet. You can take advantage of this by nurturing them appropriately and constantly. The most successful dealers in the coming years will not be the ones that are relying on getting new business. The most successful dealers will have a strong balance between acquiring new customers and keeping their current ones.
Look at your strategy and decide whether it's really going after your current and past customers with the fervor it deserves. If not, it's time to explore a new strategy.
It's time to bake a great muffin.
Beginning July 1, new Canadian Anti Spam Legislation will go into effect, enforcing strict regulations on the way emails are sent, as well as how lists are collected and maintained. For most businesses, this means rethinking the way they structure their email marketing strategies to be in compliance.
Whether your business is located in Canada or not, these new regulations are good practice for email marketing in any country. Canada is not the first country to impose regulations on unsolicited emails. Several European countries have been enforcing email spam laws for quite some time, and with electronic media taking off, it’s a matter of time before new legislation is passed in the United States.
On this episode of Hard Facts, Samantha details exactly what’s in store for Canadian businesses facing these new laws, and how to best prepare for the coming changes. Learn how you can make the transition as painless as possible when legislation goes into effect, and how your business can avoid hefty penalties and fines.
25 Things Veteran Managers Need to Hear
(But don’t want to…)
In life, we all need someone to just tell us the hard truth. Even when it’s something we really don’t want to know. Call it tough love, a reality check, or the ugly truth.. It is what it is.
My wife is talented beyond measure in this department. For example, if it is apparent that I need a Kleenex (I think you know what I mean) my wife will give me a subtle elbow to the ribs and say, “Hey Batman, you have a bat in the cave.” She finds this un-naturally entertaining, I might add. The next exchange goes a little like this.
“Gone?”
“Nope”
“Now?”
“Still there.”
“Damnit!”
“Got it.”
“Thanks”
But even though I am a little embarrassed, I’m glad I didn’t walk around the party for two hours with an uninvited guest hanging out of my nostril like a baby kangaroo.
The bottom line is this. The longer that you have been in the car business, the more you need this list. You are guaranteed to disagree with me on some or all of this list. It’s just my opinion. Remember, I’m the guy who can’t even keep his nose clean…
- Quit worrying about the number of leads you’re getting and worry about HOW your handling the leads you currently have. There’s a good chance you’ve got this backwards.
- Trust me, you’re not spending enough time or money on training. How about consistently spending wasted, untracked advertising dollars on good training?
- Quit worrying so much about Average Gross Profit per unit and start measuring Spread. (Published Internet Price minus What you actually ended up selling it for, including under/over allowance.) You’ll find out who your strong ones are.
- There is practically no such thing as a “Walk-In” or “Drive By”. Assume all of your customers are from the internet. You’ll only be wrong 1 out of 10 times.
- You don’t HAVE to use 900lbGorilla.com. I think we all know the providers I’m talking about. You have the ability to create more of your own leads, you know.
- Stop generalizing about advertising. (“XYZ never works” or “ABC always works”) It’s all in the offer.
- Stop using clichés: “This is the way we’ve always done it.” “We tried that once and it didn’t work.” “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” I don’t care if they’re true, I’m just sick of hearing them.
- Stop only looking at your desktop when thinking about your website. Wake up, we live in a handheld world. The average person looks at their mobile device 104 times a day.
- Quit procrastinating on using video to communicate with customers. Start creating a video culture, now.
- You DON’T need more inventory. You DO need better inventory. This IS a net profit thing, right?
- Shut up about having to give cars away on the internet. It’s getting old and it’s making you look silly. No matter how loud you cry, the internet is not going away. Just make sure your customers don’t.
- Stop managing petty things and start managing your people’s habits and expectation levels. People produce exactly what they expect to produce.
- Stop saying that Facebook doesn’t sell cars. Read “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” by Gary Vaynerchuk. He is smarter than you.
- Start treating your employees better. Get them involved. We all want to feel like a part of something bigger.
- Quit being lazy and implement a strict aging policy and a turn policy on your vehicles. Quit managing cars and start managing parking spaces and ROI on your inventory dollars. Does the term “Holding Cost” mean anything to you?
- Get your cars cleaned and online within 48 hours of getting them. If your vehicle is not online with pictures, thoughtful pricing, and good descriptions, it’s invisible to EVERYONE but you. (and your floorplan company)
- Stop talking so much about units. Start talking about net profit. This goes for vendors, too.
- Your pay-plans probably suck. I just said probably. I have seen poorly constructed pay plans derail good intentions.
- Start treating your Internet/BDC Department like a REAL Department. If 90% of your customers are online, why are you spending 10% of your time thinking about this department. The Internet Manager needs to be treated and paid like the rest of your managers.
- Take off your bib and put on an apron. Practice servant management. Serve, serve, listen, listen. Cook your damn employees a hamburger, for goodness sake!
- Start paying more attention to retention. Quit ignoring your OWN dealership’s owner base. Your sitting on a treasure chest. Get off your butt and open it.
- Start listening to your incoming phone calls. Just make sure there are no sharp objects nearby. Then hold your vendors accountable for REAL number of leads.
- There’s a sales GOLDMINE on your service drive right now. Next time you’re bored, count the number of ROs in your service department versus the amount of showroom traffic for the month. Where’s the opportunities?
- Stop teaching the “Silent Appraisal”. While you’re at it, stop using VHS tapes, Sony Walkmans, and rotary dial phones.
- Stop getting upset when someone hires the superstar you developed. It’s the ultimate compliment. When people leave you better than they came, you’re doing your job and your company is getting better.
I hope I didn’t ruffle your feathers. I just don’t want you walking around with a bat in the cave.
Who’s your Danny?
@Danny_Benites
Google and Bing are constantly fine-tuning their search engine algorithms to provide better results for users. With all the recent changes in search, it's easy to get confused on how search engines work, and how businesses should be using them to get the best results from their search campaigns.On this episode of Think Tank Tuesday, Paul explains how you can take advantage of search in your marketing strategies. Learn what algorithms are, how they work, and what you should know before starting your own search campaigns.
Whether positive or negative, customer reviews have a major impact on your brand’s reputation. It’s important to understand how to handle both positive and negative reviews.
On this episode of Hard Facts, Samantha discusses:
- How to tackle negative reviews from customers
- Client experiences with negative reviews
- Actionable items for building a response strategy
Okay, check it out.
In my last article I wrote about how most dealerships come across a little conceited online, but say that they are a customer-centric organization.
I mentioned that it's alright to talk about yourself, but ONLY in a way that demonstrates maximum benefit to your customers.
Well now I'm going to reveal how to kick your website up a notch and dominate the web, (and your market).
Like I was saying, people don't care about you nearly as much as they care about themselves.
That means that the name of the game is presenting information on your website that people care about.
But how can you produce content and information that EVERYONE will find interesting?
It's more simple than you think.
Unlike traditional media, your website has the power to cover a wide array of topics that address the needs and wants of different customer segments AT THE SAME TIME.
How do you get started? Fhugetaboudit, it's easy peasy.
1.) Look at your current customer portfolio and identify the variety of customer segments that you already serve.
These could include Seniors, Young Families, Bachelors, Bachelorettes, College Students, Union Workers, Military/Veterans etc.
2.) Create a list of topics that those various segments would find interest. Use logic and common sense.
What I mean by that is this:
If you want to create content topics geared toward Seniors, think about the things that they are interested in.
a.) Vehicles that are easy to get in and out of (maybe just had a knee surgery or something)
b.) Vehicles that can tow a travel trailer
c.) Vehicles with a little more luxury (they're done raising children and have a little more money to keep for themselves etc.)
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Once you've identified the topics for each segment do this:
3.) Identify the objectives for each piece of content that you want to create.
If it's a video, figure out what the call-to-action will be so that you can track the effectiveness of it.
If it's a blog, think of the path you want that customer segment to take and what action you want them to complete.
Here's why this is important:
Everyday, millions of automotive shoppers around the globe go online to find information that addresses their concerns or answers their questions.
Right now, there aren't really any dealer websites that provide the content that automotive consumers are looking for.
You're giving the OEMs and other third party websites the power to scoop up qualified vehicle shoppers and distribute them how they please. Most of the time, to your competitors.
By segmenting your content, you're empowered to reach various people with the topics that they care most about.
In my next article, I'm going to reveal why this strategy works so extremely well and why you HAVE to start doing it.
Want help identifying your customer segments? Send me a friend request and we can set up a time to get connected.
This photo cracks me up because it looks as if the guy wants to make sure that you've noticed how good he looks in the reflection of the car!
What a stupid, selfish, conceited sounding question, right? "What do you think about me?"...
Yet this is what I see on the majority of dealership websites that I visit.
A whole lot of "We're so awesome" and "Look at how pretty we are" or "We are the best"...
Okay, so you aren't using those words exactly, but you're using words that nobody cares about like these:
"We're a family-owned and operated facility with 35 years of experience" OR
"We have the best team of professional sales people ready to work with you..." OR
"Come visit our state-of-the-art facility to find out why we're the best choice for new and used cars in [location]"
Man oh man, I'm cringing just writing those phrases.
But why are they so bad?
BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS.
And then after all of that crap, you have the nerve to put a "Rate us" page or link on your site.
"But enough about me, let's talk about you. What do YOU think about me?"
Sounds more stupid the longer you think about it right? So let's talk about how to turn things around so that you can kick you dealership website up a notch.
First things first.
You MUST understand that every individual on the planet has a favorite word and letter. Their name and the letter 'i'.
Why? Because nobody cares about you as much as they care about themselves.
Now I'm not saying it's entirely bad to talk about yourself, but you need to focus on presenting yourself in a way that demonstrates maximum benefit to your customers.
"Great, you are an award winning dealership. What does that mean for me?"
"Fantastic, you have the best leasing specialist in the entire state - that benefits me HOW?"
"Wonderful, you have a state-of-the-art facitility - how does that have a positive impact on me?"
The information you present on your website needs to be carefully thought out for maximum market penetration and benefit to your customers.
Think about the message you are conveying about your dealership to the largest traffic source you have.
Are you presenting yourself as a truly customer-centric dealership, or are you like the rest of the pack?
In my next article, I'm going to talk about how you can take this concept and really ramp up your game.
It's all about setting yourself apart from what others are doing, and I'm going to show you how to do that through your dealership website.
Stay tuned...
Actually, scratch that.
This isn't just going to be about Bounce rate, but all of your dealer website's metrics in general.
Starting with Bounce Rate.
First, you MUST understand what bounce rate is exactly.
Bounce rate is measured by the number of people that visit your website (or a specific page on your site) and leave without a second interaction.
An interaction is measured by how deep a visitor travels through your site. A click-through from a call-to-action button on one page to another is considered an interaction. So, if your site visitors are clicking from link to link on your site and viewing a lot of pages, your bounce rate will be LOW.
BUT, there are so many people out there trying to teach you how to lower websites bounce rate, arguing that doing so will somehow help you see an increase in leads, but I'm here to prove them wrong.
While I will agree that getting deep within a site provides more opportunity for the site visitor to complete an action, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will complete an action. Catch my drift?
If you really want to get your website producing quality traffic and leads, you need to consider two things.
1.) What's the overall objective of the site as a whole, and
2.) What's the objective of each individual page on the website
Without those two things clearly defined, it doesn't matter what your bounce rate, click-through-rate, behavior flow, time on site, visitors vs. unique visitors and the butt load of other metrics are. Your website will never perform the way you want it to.
Why? Because you won't even know for yourself what the definition of performance is.
So, do me a favor right now. Take some time to identify what the objectives of your website are.
Now back to bounce rate.
There are hundreds of high-traffic blogs out there that have near 100% bounce rates.
Any idea why?
Because, even though they didn't create a second interaction, the page or blog post that the visitor landed on had the primary objective on the same page.
In other words, they completed the desired action on the first page that they landed on.
It might've been a lead submission form to download a free whitepaper or ebook, it might even just be a sign up form to stay connected via a newsletter.
What you MUST understand is that your website's bounce rate is directly proportionate to your objectives and the path you desire the visitor to take to get to those objectives.
Understand that if your objective (the desired action) happens on the same page that the visitor lands on, your bounce rate will be higher.
If you want the customer to click through a funnel of links before they get to the final desired action on your site, your bounce rate will be lower.
There's a reason that some website providers refuse to place your dealership's phone number on the homepage of your website. Because they are trying to force the user to create a second interaction to find it, causing them to click deeper into your website...
If your bounce rate is low, your provider get's to boast how effective they made your website perform, and so far, a ton of you are buying into it.
STOP!
Here's the problem. Your website isn't performing the way it should or you wouldn't even be reading this.
Are you picking up what I'm putting down?
Before you worry about bounce rate and the plethora of other metrics to track on your website, focus on what the objective of your website is in the first place.
Identify what path you want the customer to follow that will lead them to your desired end result.
That path may be going deep on your site from page to page, or it may be on the same page they land on.
Once you know what you want the customer to accomplish, understand what normal bounce rates look like in those scenarios.
Have questions about tracking bounce rates properly? Hit me up in the comments below.
In order to be a highly successful business, you need to have a solid organizational hierarchy. Learn what you need to create an organizational chart and how it will effect your organization's growth.
Chances are, there’s already been a Google account created for your business, but are you correctly using Google Places and Google+ Local to increase your exposure? Find out how you should be setting up these features to market your dealership.
Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn strategies for increasing your dealership’s online visibility.
Do you ever find yourself asking: How long should a video walk around be? When do you have too much content in an email blast? What makes a great landing page? On this week's Think Tank Tuesday, I'll cover these questions and more!
Tune in now and learn how long you should be making your content on several different marketing channels.
There is something going on with dealership websites that needs to stop ASAP!
It’s something that should be pretty obvious, but clearly isn’t.
Know what I’m talking about?
Most websites for car dealers look, feel and flow the same way as each other.
They all have the same messaging, calls-to-action, design concepts and lack the site traffic needed to make a big impact on gross or net profits.
The problem is that automotive consumers are much more web-savvy than they’ve ever been.
They have been conditioned to use the internet in a specific way based on the sites they visit on a regular basis.
Sites like Amazon, eBay, Facebook and other ecommerce and social sites.
Most dealer websites are not providing the experience that online users are already used to. They are playing catchup.
I think most dealers would agree that the objective of their website is to get more leads from their website. After all, more leads = more sales opportunities, right?
Well here’s a secret that will get your website converting traffic like a machine.
I must warn you, that this secret will require...WORK.
Nonetheless, it’s a tried and tested strategy that will separate your dealership from the vast majority of other dealers and help you dominate your market online.
If you look at the other websites out there that your consumers are visiting on a regular basis, what do they all have in common?
Information in the form of content.
You see, every day MILLIONS of automotive consumers are going online to research your products and services. You know what they’re finding? Your competitors.
Why? Because your competitors are providing more information on their websites than you are.
Why is it that I can go online and find more information about a $20 cell phone case than most consumers can about the second largest investment of their life?
Think about it!
You need to get more content on your website that covers a variety of topics.
Blog about the latest vehicles on your lot. Do video test drives. Talk about your products and services in a way that provides REAL value to your customers. Leave the pitch out.
Just focus on value, value, value and more value.
The cool thing about providing value in the form of content is that you’ll attract the right type of customers to your site.
All you need to do is identify the type of customer you wish to attract and then create content that speaks to them.
When you know who you’re speaking to, it gets that much easier to know what to ask them as well. All you have to do is line up the call-to-action with the content that you’ve created.
This strategy will give you an immediate increase in leads because you’ll be able to leverage your existing site traffic.
So here’s the breakdown on how to get started:
1.) Figure out what type of customer you want to speak to (vehicle sales, parts, services, finance etc.)
2.) Create content in the form of a blog, videos, images etc that speak to them about what they’re interested in
3.) Keep the pitch out of your content - just focus on providing REAL value to the customer
4.) Include a call-to-action that’s relevant to your content
Doing so will allow you to:
1.) Leverage your existing site traffic
2.) Attract new Qualified site traffic
3.) Increase leads from your website
Have fun with this, and feel free to comment with your questions if you’d like some help getting started.
You can't control the weather, but you can control how your dealership responds to major weather events. Find out how your dealership can be the sunshine after the storm by helping shoppers who have recently been affected by these conditions.
Get the Hard Facts from Samantha Cunningham at POTRATZ, and learn strategies for responding to bad weather in your area.
