If you’re like several dealers nowadays, 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 changed?” And most importantly-“Where have all the business, ups and traffic gone?”
Well those are great queries which I’ll cover now as part of the necessary marketing CPR techniques you wish to bring health, life and vitality back to your auto business.
The “traditional model” of car dealer marketing is broken and no longer yields the results it once did. Call it the economy, call it the age of the internet…call it whatever you wish…but simply know times have changed.
The second problem is that automotive marketing incest is rampant. Instead of testing the effectiveness of various marketing strategies for themselves, dealers merely copy what everybody else is doing… and they too get stuck during this dead, outdated model as a result.
So how can you reverse the code blue and turn things around this year? Contemplate the subsequent:
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 well liked media right currently?” And after they assume they’ve found it, they recklessly spend cash while not knowing HOW or WHY that medium should work in the primary place. Till of course they don’t see the results they wanted and declare triumphantly, “______ doesn’t work.” Fill in the blank with whatever media you have tried and were disappointed with. Then that media gets crossed off the list of attainable choices and you’re one step closer to finding the magic media. Or so you think.
Well I’m here to inform you it’s not the media that’s the problem— it’s the broken, ancient model of car dealership marketing.
You have got to stop where to place your ads and instead concentrate on WHY you’re shopping for them in the primary place. The sooner you progress beyond the WHERE and into the WHY, the quicker you’ll pump out better and cheaper campaigns than the magic media you’ve tried within the past.
2. Move Beyond Make, Model and Price
If you can’t assume of anything else to put in your ads other than make, model and price you are in SERIOUS need of intervention and very close to flat lining in business.
Why? Because everybody sells vehicles and features. If you provide clients no other reason for choosing you outside of make, model and price, you may wind up right in the middle of the commodity market where logic dictates the sale and you’re left short changed at the end of the day.
Therefore if you want to remove yourself from the commodities market and differentiate yourself from the competition, you’ll would like to….
3. Start Selling Outcomes
Instead of harping on the options of your products and services, focus on the specific 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 once you focus on and build your marketing around something the customer wants. Therefore how do you are doing that?
Ask yourself the subsequent questions, “What are the large obstacles your customers face right currently? How are you going to fix them? What do people have to achieve by working with you? What do they lose by going with the guy down the road? What are your competitors missing? What do you do potentially higher than anyone else?” Package that up, tie it to a powerful offer and you’re one step closer to resurrecting your car business from the dead.
Another “lifesaving” distinction I’d like to create as you perform emergency CPR on your dealership this year is that marketing under the new model doesn’t require shopping for ad house simply to “get your name out there” or “build brand.” That’s ancient and tends to be a waste of cash for smaller businesses.
Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller are the nation’s leading experts on attracting customers and the co-authors of Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers. Get important automotive advertising tips for FREE by requesting their FREE video training called The New Rules Of Automotive Marketing created especially for Car Dealers and Managers by visiting www.RichDealers.com
