Dean Evans & Web Marketing

Content is not the only aspect of your marketing efforts that should be cohesive. It’s also important to keep your look consistent throughout your advertising.

Once you’ve chosen a color scheme for your logo, it should not change. Just like your tagline, you want your colors to become familiar to your consumer. Ask yourself what sort of image you want to portray to the consumer, then remember that image when choosing future designs.

Each new promotion should have its own look in keeping with your dealership’s style/branding. Try not to deviate so far from your look that new ads are not immediately recognizable, but be sure to give a distinct look to each separate promotion. Use your print ads as guidelines for your promo webpage or online advertising and vice versa.

There are obviously many benefits to consistency- whether contextually or creatively. The key is to remember that there is power in repetition.

Times are tough, money is tight, consolidation is a must. Dealer ad spend is at an all time high and many dealers continue to increase their marketing budget to accommodate rising costs in print, TV and radio advertising, while also trying to make room for the growing Internet. This is probably not the best strategy, especially given the current economic situation.

When times get tough, it’s a good idea to start cutting dead weight. Sometimes dead weight is a commodity that was once very useful, e.g. newspaper advertising. It has served you well in the past, but make sure you’re evaluating based on the latest data.

I’m not suggesting that you completely obliterate your print advertising; I’m just suggesting that you tighten the belt where it needs to be tightened and continue to direct resources to the most productive media components, aka the Internet. As we’ve previously discussed, the Internet is capable of influencing each step of the sales funnel and some 90% of car buyers start with the Internet. The marriage of those two facts should be enough to merit spending your budget on the Internet primarily and supplementing with media avenues such as print and TV as your budget allows.

Thoughts, examples, etc.? Please share them with us!

Everybody knows the economy has seen better days. In times like these, we tighten our belts and try to make the most of our expenditures. Your marketing budget is one expenditure you can’t do without. However, you can do something about our increased need as a dealer manager to reduce the marketing budget during times like these.

The new length of the sales funnel gives us a good indication of where to put the majority of our marketing money. Ye old sales funnel was marked by well defined steps such as awareness, consideration, familiarity, etc. Each of these steps was fostered by separate advertising entities (TV, radio, newspaper-RIP). Today’s sales funnel incorporates the same steps, but the lines are blurred. Who do we have to blame for this expedited and inclusive funnel? The Internet. The Internet is able to foster each of these steps with increased efficiency and speed… not to mention the fact that some 90% of car buyers start their search online.

In other words, the best place for your marketing spending is online. It has the lowest cost of customer acquisition. Also look at online spend options as having different efficiencies as well. Example: your lowest cost/highest close rate lead is from the dealers’ own website. Make sure it is getting all the organic traffic possible and always be pushing for higher conversion (visitor/lead) ratios. Once you’ve covered your bases and made sure that all your online building blocks (text ads, banner ads, a good website, consumer generated content, video, etc.) are in place, use your surplus budget on specialized components like TV and radio commercials. Be sure to follow the rules of integrated marketing and send all traffic to the same location.

Dealers today are still looking at their marketing budget from the standpoint of first at their Events, Newspaper, Billboards, TV and Radio, then allocating what is left over to fund Internet. Today top performing dealers are looking at making sure the first set of marketing funds (if not all) are allocated to Internet channels, again ranked from most to least cost effective. Then after maxing that, they go to up to the more costly customer acquisition options like Print and do some Branding!

Simple really. You spend money being in front of the people that are raising their hands saying they are actively looking for your product or service (like buying text ads on Google), before putting a direct mail piece out to a zip code radius and hoping for a few people in the bunch to read your postcard.

To sum it up, save on your marketing budget and increase exposure at the same time.

Integrated marketing will without a doubt multiply your marketing efforts without multiplying your budget. However, just making a single connection between marketing elements is not really enough. The best way to lay the groundwork for integrated marketing communications is by building your brand consistency.

This simply means that your message is clear and repeated often. Your message can be repeated in several ways: visually, audibly and textually.

Visually, your logo should be consistent. It should appear everywhere your name appears. Find a design you like and stick with it. You want your logo to become synonymous with your company. It should become familiar to your key demographics, and nothing stimulates familiarity like repetition.

Your message should be the same whether on the radio, television, web or in print. Boil down your company’s mission statement to a sentence or slogan, then make sure you repeat that slogan in all your advertising. Even when listening to a radio commercial, your jingle/slogan/mission should be familiar to your potential customers.

Your message and brand should be supported textually in your print campaigns as well. Support your statements with evidence and in-depth detail. Stick to your message and use content that adheres to your mission.

The more familiar consumers with who you are, the more powerful your message becomes. How often have you found yourself singing or humming a company’s jingle? That sort of familiarity doesn’t happen without repetition, and repetition goes hand in hand with consistency.