If you are like many dealers these days, your auto marketing strategy is on life support, one breath away from the grave. You as the owner or manager are possibly terrified, wondering “What will I do to resurrect my marketing efforts?!” “What’s modified?” And most importantly-“Where have all the business, ups and traffic gone?”
Well those are nice questions that I’ll cover now as part of the necessary marketing CPR techniques you need to bring health, life and vitality back to your auto business.
The “ancient model” of car dealer marketing is broken and not yields the results it once did. Call it the economy, call it the age of the it whatever you just know times have changed.
The second drawback is that automotive marketing incest is rampant. Instead of testing the effectiveness of various selling strategies for themselves, dealers merely copy what everyone else is doing… and they too get stuck during this dead, outdated model as a result.
So how will you reverse the code blue and turn things around this year? Consider the following:
1. Concentrate on the WHY, not the WHERE of Advertising
Most dealers obsessively wonder, “Where should I place my ad?” or “What’s the most popular media right currently?” And when they think they’ve found it, they recklessly spend cash without knowing HOW or WHY that medium should work in the first place. Till of course they don’t see the results they wished and declare triumphantly, “______ does not work.” Fill in the blank with whatever media you have tried and were disappointed with. Then that media gets crossed off the list of possible choices and you’re one step closer to finding the magic media. Or therefore you think.
Well I’m here to tell you it’s not the media that’s the matter— it’s the broken, ancient model of car dealership marketing.
You have got to stop where to position your ads and instead concentrate on WHY you’re shopping for them in the primary place. The sooner you move beyond the WHERE and into the WHY, the quicker you’ll pump out better and cheaper campaigns than the magic media you’ve tried in the past.
2. Move Beyond Make, Model and Price
If you’ll not be able to assume of anything else to place in your ads other than make, model and price you are in SERIOUS want of intervention and very close to flat lining in business.
Why? Because everyone sells vehicles and features. If you offer clients no other reason for choosing you outside of make, model and price, you may land up right in the center of the commodity market where logic dictates the sale and you’re left short changed at the end of the day.
Therefore if you would like to get rid of yourself from the commodities market and differentiate yourself from the competition, you’ll need to….
3. Begin Selling Outcomes
Rather than harping on the features of your products and services, focus on the particular reasons a prospect should select you over everybody else and what they have to realize by doing business with your store. Declare to the globe, “I’m the obvious choice! Doing business with anyone else would be foolish.”
After all this strategy is much more effective when you specialize in and build your selling around something the client wants. Thus how do you are doing that?
Ask yourself the following questions, “What are the big obstacles your customers face right currently? How are you going to fix them? What do folks have to achieve by operating with you? What do they lose by going with the guy down the street? What are your competitors missing? What do you do potentially better than anyone else?” Package that up, tie it to a strong offer and you’re one step nearer to resurrecting your car business from the dead.
Another “lifesaving” distinction I’d like to make as you perform emergency CPR on your dealership this year is that marketing under the new model doesn’t require shopping for ad area simply to “get your name out there” or “build brand.” That’s traditional and tends to be a waste of cash for smaller businesses.
