The COVID-19 pandemic has forced several governments across the world to lock their jurisdictions completely. There are a number of reasons why this is bad for the auto and auto dealership industry.

Firstly, auto dealerships are not “essential services” which means that your business is going to stay shut till the threat from the pandemic subsides. The lockdown is going to severely hit your profitability for this year - job losses are not out of question and so is the very survivability of your business.

In addition to this, people are not driving as much as they used to; and this is going to continue for a few more months. Less people are going to have the money to buy new cars in a few months’ time.

Figuring a wise strategy to tide over these next few months is critical for your business. Here are a few things you consider working on right now.

Book orders while you can

Your dealership may be closed and prospective customers may no longer be able to take a test drive. That should however not stop you from booking orders. Consider offering impressive discounts on orders made today. This is very important for two reasons. One, it keeps your sales teams at work and allows them to be productive, albeit remotely. Two, with recession looming, people are not going to be able to afford their favorite cars a few months down the line. Giving them an impressive discount today to secure a deal is a good way to book orders while your customers can still afford it.

Work out new partnerships

A lot of companies today are bleeding money due to the lockdown. Consequently, they are going to be looking for ways to improve revenue streams over the next few months. This is the time to get out there (virtually, of course) and network.

One way to approach networking would be to reach out to businesses that are both upstream and downstream of what you offer and look for synergies. For instance, you could partner with fellow dealerships in your region to negotiate a better price for spare parts from your supplier. If you are a dealer that sells entry-level cars, you could also consider working with businesses that reach out to first-time buyers. This could be partnerships with companies that offer driving tests, license preparation, and so on.

Make your processes remote-friendly

This does not seem like a long-term necessity, but trust me, it is. Dealerships have very limited catchment areas and this poses a risk for businesses in this space. Even a road work in progress in front of your dealership could bring down business for several months or even  years. 

Building a sales process that can operate remotely is thus critical. This way, you can reach out to prospective customers even without them having to step into your dealership. You may, for instance, launch a door-step test-driving campaign so that customers can test their favorite cars from the comforts of their home. You can also train your salesmen to communicate effectively via email and video conferencing tools like Zoom so that all the negotiations and discussions can happen online without having to meet your customers face-to-face. 

A remote-friendly strategy increases your catchment area and consequently your customer base as well. You may go even further and partner with other dealerships in your city or state that offer other brands of cars. With such a partnership in place, you can house your cars at their dealership (and vice versa), and this makes your catchment area virtually limitless.

In the past fifteen years, dealerships have moved an incredibly large chunk of their marketing budgets from offline to online channels. Any search related to a car’s specs, price, features or review is met with ads from your local dealer.

One dealer I spoke to told me that online marketing has been a very big reason for car prices to stay where they are today. Without this channel, marketing costs may have ballooned in the past decade and this would have had a cascading effect on car prices; and in turn, their sales.

But digital marketing has been changing too. Google Adwords (now called Google Ads) is a lot more expensive than it used to be. There is Facebook, but while it helps reach you reach the right demographics, it does not capture buying intent as effective as Google does. Yet, Facebook continues to be very popular in capturing leads who can be nurtured over the long term.

Add to this, the fact that digital marketing is constantly evolving. MySpace gave way to Facebook that is now losing the popularity contest to Instagram and SnapChat (not to mention the emergence of the newer TikTok).

What this means is that you do not have the luxury to set a campaign up and forget it. There is a need to constantly monitor the ROI and tweak things up as performance erodes. This is not to mention that marketers also lose a part of their budget to experimentation to see which of the newer channels work.

So in this article, we are going to list out a few strategies that have worked for my clients.

Go native

Native advertising has worked really well. For the uninitiated, this refers to the use of content and format that aligns with the platform where you are advertising. Take TikTok for example. It is kind of hard to explain the native content format of this app unless you have used it yourself. Essentially, the app is popular for its short video content that often looks amateurish rather than professionally-made.

The client we worked with sold high-end cars with dealerships across the country. The objective of the campaign was to establish the brand as the ‘go to dealership’ for such cars among the Gen Z crowd who form a whopping 41% of the app’s user base. While we could have produced ads for the platform, we figured that partnering with someone that this crowd trusts would be a better return on our investment. Besides, when it comes to TikTok advertising, the minimum budget requirements did not allow for fruitful experimentation.

So, for our campaign, we partnered with influencers whose content theme was related to “living the high life” - this allowed us to position our client as the ‘go-to’ dealer for such cars. Sure, the average viewer on the app did not conform to our target market; but the objective of this campaign was to position our client and bring mainstream branding to their dealership which was established successfully. 

Rework the landing page

From a buyer’s perspective, all dealerships are basically the same. And as a result, there wasn’t anything that differentiates the landing pages of various competitors. We decided to differentiate ourselves through our value proposition.

This one Australian dealer I worked with sold pickup trucks and dealt primarily with local service businesses. One way we added value to our customers was in the way we customized our trucks to suit their specific business needs. For instance, they had partnered with a few businesses that provided rope access services - so for these buyer, the dealer customized the truck with to hold the necessary rope access equipment like headwear, flynets, haulbags and ropes.

For our ad campaign targeting these buyers, we advised our dealer to rework the landing page to showcase these specific value propositions. This was done with the help of explainer videos. These are basically short animated videos that summarize your business offerings. The average cost of explainer videos can be between $10,000 to $15,000 per minute but for this client, the expense was more than made up by the increased conversion rate for our campaigns.

By getting into the specifics of what value you provide, customers are more likely to buy from your dealership.

Invest in session cams

Session cams have been around for nearly a decade now. Still, a lot of marketers are unaware of what this is, or how it can help your marketing campaign. We installed session cams on our clients’ websites a couple of years back and this has completely changed our perspective on what our website visitors want or how to market to them. 

Earlier, we relied completely on Google Analytics to gain visitor insights. But while this told us the pages that visitors spent most time on, or which of the links they clicked, it did not tell us what exactly goes on in the visitor’s mind when they are browsing your website. Session cams essentially capture a video of the visitor browsing your site and play it to you.

For one of our clients, session cams drove their entire branding campaign including their brand colors, messaging and logo placements. We noticed that the stock photos on the top fold of the site was a major turn-off and many visitors closed their tab simply on landing. We also noticed that when we run a video highlighting our dealer’s history, it was surprisingly well-received. The average viewer watched at least 45 seconds of the 3 minute video and this was a great lesson in telling our story to the visitor. Before session cams, we did everything to push the visitor towards either the lead capture form or the car pages. But once we started telling our story, visitors were more likely to give us a call or fill out a form even if we did not push it aggressively. 

I’m interested to hear from other marketers on this blog. What are some strategies that worked for your dealerships? Please share in the comments.

Does your car dealership target B2B sales? Do you have a separate marketing strategy to target B2B clients? If not, you could be missing a crucial pie of the annual car sales. Consider car rental companies, chauffeur driven cars owned by large multi-national companies and hotels. These are essentially B2B purchases and are worth much more than regular car sales.

Why? Because the return on investment is much higher on these purchases. According to a report published on Auto Rental News, there were nearly 1.76 million rental cars in the US as of 2012. An average car rental agency has a fleet of between 4-8 cars. In a majority of the cases, these cars are homogenous in terms of model, manufacturer and in-car facilities. Given these factors, the rental agency owners are likely to make most of their new car purchases from the same dealership. For instance, Uber recently announced that their drivers will be getting exclusive financing deals for cars made by General Motors. By targeting these business owners separately, your dealership can ensure that you get multiple car sales done through a single customer.

How do you get started? The first and foremost step in developing a marketing plan is to look at the pain points of a customer and devising a way to solve this. I talked to Jay Barnett, the founder of Priority Pickup, a Perth-based passenger services business. According to Jay, “both passenger services companies and car dealerships share one thing in common. If you can demonstrate integrity and customer service as your true core values, then your customers will respond”.

As fellow business owners, small business owners looking at car purchases are aware of the common marketing gimmicks that businesses deploy to bait customers. Consequently, these gimmicks that are often received positively in a retail car sales are often seen negatively in a B2B setup. It is important to be honest and transparent in your process while pitching your cars to the business buyers.

Besides this, one of the other pain points that business car buyers face is in negotiating a bulk buy. Naturally, buyers looking at a purchase of 3-4 cars in one transaction expect a royal deal in exchange for the business they give your dealership. However, from a dealership perspective, this is a golden opportunity to make more commissions per customer. So how do you arrive at a middle point?

If your dealership offers other services like car servicing, repairs, etc., you could look at offering a combo “lifetime package” to your customer in exchange for the price. This could mean something like a lifetime 15% discount on all car servicing. Small businesses, especially those like rental agencies, spend a lot of money every year on car servicing. A deal on this front could not only sweeten your deal to them, but can also help you hook the customer for life; thus ensuring they would come back to you for more purchases in the future.

It is important that your business has a dedicated marketing team for B2B buyers. Unlike a traditional commodity, in car dealerships, the lifetime value of a customer is more or less equal to the value they bring with the first transaction. It is only in the case of B2B purchases that there is a chance to increase the lifetime value. This is an opportunity that dealerships should never miss out on. 

Does your car dealership target B2B sales? Do you have a separate marketing strategy to target B2B clients? If not, you could be missing a crucial pie of the annual car sales. Consider car rental companies, chauffeur driven cars owned by large multi-national companies and hotels. These are essentially B2B purchases and are worth much more than regular car sales.

Why? Because the return on investment is much higher on these purchases. According to a report published on Auto Rental News, there were nearly 1.76 million rental cars in the US as of 2012. An average car rental agency has a fleet of between 4-8 cars. In a majority of the cases, these cars are homogenous in terms of model, manufacturer and in-car facilities. Given these factors, the rental agency owners are likely to make most of their new car purchases from the same dealership. For instance, Uber recently announced that their drivers will be getting exclusive financing deals for cars made by General Motors. By targeting these business owners separately, your dealership can ensure that you get multiple car sales done through a single customer.

How do you get started? The first and foremost step in developing a marketing plan is to look at the pain points of a customer and devising a way to solve this. I talked to Jay Barnett, the founder of Priority Pickup, a Perth-based passenger services business. According to Jay, “both passenger services companies and car dealerships share one thing in common. If you can demonstrate integrity and customer service as your true core values, then your customers will respond”.

As fellow business owners, small business owners looking at car purchases are aware of the common marketing gimmicks that businesses deploy to bait customers. Consequently, these gimmicks that are often received positively in a retail car sales are often seen negatively in a B2B setup. It is important to be honest and transparent in your process while pitching your cars to the business buyers.

Besides this, one of the other pain points that business car buyers face is in negotiating a bulk buy. Naturally, buyers looking at a purchase of 3-4 cars in one transaction expect a royal deal in exchange for the business they give your dealership. However, from a dealership perspective, this is a golden opportunity to make more commissions per customer. So how do you arrive at a middle point?

If your dealership offers other services like car servicing, repairs, etc., you could look at offering a combo “lifetime package” to your customer in exchange for the price. This could mean something like a lifetime 15% discount on all car servicing. Small businesses, especially those like rental agencies, spend a lot of money every year on car servicing. A deal on this front could not only sweeten your deal to them, but can also help you hook the customer for life; thus ensuring they would come back to you for more purchases in the future.

It is important that your business has a dedicated marketing team for B2B buyers. Unlike a traditional commodity, in car dealerships, the lifetime value of a customer is more or less equal to the value they bring with the first transaction. It is only in the case of B2B purchases that there is a chance to increase the lifetime value. This is an opportunity that dealerships should never miss out on. 

It is commonly believed that to be a successful salesman, you need to be a naturally extroverted person. In fact, one of the dealerships I have previously been associated with scouted local events for students who are affable and extroverted and offered them an instant 6 month incentive-based dealership offer. The idea is that if you are good at talking to people, you should be able to readily find success in a job which involves selling.

But does this strategy always work? A recent study published in the journal of the Association of Psychological Science found that being an extrovert does not always guarantee a success in sales. Researcher Adam Grant found that sales is a field where neither extroverts nor introverts had significant success. People who find extraordinary success were those somewhere in the middle; what Grant calls ‘ambiverts’. Ambiverts are people who have intermediate extraversion and they were found to be 32% more successful than extroverts in terms of revenue. Compared to introverts, they were 24% more successful.

So why is this the case? According to Grant, “The ambivert advantage stems from the tendency to be assertive and enthusiastic enough to persuade and close, but at the same time, listening carefully to customers and avoiding the appearance of being overly confident or excited”.

Consider this scenario: Suppose a tall male customer walks into your dealership and is considering the purchase of a Chevrolet Cruze. Now you could be an extroverted sales person who immediately walks up to them, makes them comfortable and start talking to them about the new diesel engine and the large headroom. But if you were an ambivert, you could be a better listener who waits for the customer to talk at breadth about their requirements - maybe they prefer a petrol variant, maybe the car is intended for the visitor’s wife who is short and does not require a headroom. An ambivert possesses the listening skills of an introvert while at the same time being capable of befriending the customer enough to convert the lead into a sale.

According to Erika Andersen from Proteus International, a company that offers leadership skills training, salespeople can easily train themselves to be better ambiverts using a method that they call Social Style. One of the critical starting points for extroverts to make better salespeople is to start observing their customers and make a note of their behaviors - are they soft spoken, or are they loud? Are they affable, or are they reserved? Making this observation shall help you to tweak your own behavior to be better suited to what the customer wants - if the customer is loud and extroverted, it is recommended that the salesperson behaves in a similar manner as well. However, if they are soft-spoken, try to behave a little more formal and give the customer a little space and time for them to acclimatize to the environment. This helps you in building a level of trust that will get the customer to open up and give in their requirements.

The premise of the Social Style is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and understand how they would like to be approached. You then tweak your behavior to meet this need. Such a technique will not only enhance your trust with the customer, but also help in improving your conversion frequency.

Photo courtesy: ImipolexG, Flickr

It is commonly believed that to be a successful salesman, you need to be a naturally extroverted person. In fact, one of the dealerships I have previously been associated with scouted local events for students who are affable and extroverted and offered them an instant 6 month incentive-based dealership offer. The idea is that if you are good at talking to people, you should be able to readily find success in a job which involves selling.

But does this strategy always work? A recent study published in the journal of the Association of Psychological Science found that being an extrovert does not always guarantee a success in sales. Researcher Adam Grant found that sales is a field where neither extroverts nor introverts had significant success. People who find extraordinary success were those somewhere in the middle; what Grant calls ‘ambiverts’. Ambiverts are people who have intermediate extraversion and they were found to be 32% more successful than extroverts in terms of revenue. Compared to introverts, they were 24% more successful.

So why is this the case? According to Grant, “The ambivert advantage stems from the tendency to be assertive and enthusiastic enough to persuade and close, but at the same time, listening carefully to customers and avoiding the appearance of being overly confident or excited”.

Consider this scenario: Suppose a tall male customer walks into your dealership and is considering the purchase of a Chevrolet Cruze. Now you could be an extroverted sales person who immediately walks up to them, makes them comfortable and start talking to them about the new diesel engine and the large headroom. But if you were an ambivert, you could be a better listener who waits for the customer to talk at breadth about their requirements - maybe they prefer a petrol variant, maybe the car is intended for the visitor’s wife who is short and does not require a headroom. An ambivert possesses the listening skills of an introvert while at the same time being capable of befriending the customer enough to convert the lead into a sale.

According to Erika Andersen from Proteus International, a company that offers leadership skills training, salespeople can easily train themselves to be better ambiverts using a method that they call Social Style. One of the critical starting points for extroverts to make better salespeople is to start observing their customers and make a note of their behaviors - are they soft spoken, or are they loud? Are they affable, or are they reserved? Making this observation shall help you to tweak your own behavior to be better suited to what the customer wants - if the customer is loud and extroverted, it is recommended that the salesperson behaves in a similar manner as well. However, if they are soft-spoken, try to behave a little more formal and give the customer a little space and time for them to acclimatize to the environment. This helps you in building a level of trust that will get the customer to open up and give in their requirements.

The premise of the Social Style is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and understand how they would like to be approached. You then tweak your behavior to meet this need. Such a technique will not only enhance your trust with the customer, but also help in improving your conversion frequency.

Photo courtesy: ImipolexG, Flickr