Let’s face it, pre-owned vehicles are hard to find and it’s even harder to pay the price that you, Mr. Dealer, want to pay.  Pre-owned vehicles are a competitive market because every dealer wants a lot full of vehicles at $10k and under and the prices at auction continue to increase.

Let’s face it, pre-owned vehicles are hard to find and it’s even harder to pay the price that you, Mr. Dealer, want to pay.  Pre-owned vehicles are a competitive market because every dealer wants a lot full of vehicles at $10k and under and the prices at auction continue to increase.

Since the basic premise of a science project is to discover “what happens if,” the key element is to track the results so you can make such a determination.

Automotive marketing is no really different.  Every month automotive dealers (and marketing vendors) spend a considerable amount of time, effort and money manipulating various messages, calls to actions and incentives in their automotive marketing pieces…all with the intention to push traffic to the lot and service drive!  Though many dealerships spend hundreds of thousands on advertising and direct marketing, most marginally know the effectiveness of it.

The best way to understand the effectiveness of your marketing efforts – to ascertain what form, message, incentive (and heck, even the best target audience) - is to implement tracking.  By tracking the results, you can determine whether your marketing message is reaching your target audience and encouraging them to take action.  In other words, you can better understand your “what happens if.” What happens if I offer a $19.95 Oil Change to customers who haven’t been in for x number of months? What happens if I send a targeted direct mail piece that is followed up by live calls?  What happens if I communicate with my lost customers via multiple communication channels?

At this time, how do you know if and what ads are driving traffic to your dealership?  Are you requiring sales people to source where a customer is coming from?  Does your F&I department ask the customer?  And how many times do you see “Drive By” and “Paper” as the answer?  You and I both know there are better ways of doing this!

If you’re not doing it already, you must employ 800 phone numbers on every form of advertising.  But don’t stop there…use specific 800 numbers on each specific advertising piece.  In other words, for every newspaper ad, email piece, and targeted direct mail piece, you must have a different 800 number for each.  If you have 5 different mailers going out, use 5 different 800 numbers.  Other dealers are using QR codes, PURLS and barcodes.  By using such tracking components, your dealership is able to assess which ad is effectively causing your register to ring.

Determine ROI by cross-referencing your customer data with the targeted list used for that particular campaign.  Is it by coincidence that Ms. Smith was in your service department 5 days ago or did you send her a mailer to promote a $29.95 lube, oil filter and tire rotation a few weeks ago? Are you reviewing the click-through-rates of your emails?  Additionally if you use a third-party marketing vendor, force them to perform ROI reports to show response rates.  If you’ve never done so, I also strongly recommend an advertising audit on a quarterly basis to know what is working in your advertising efforts.  You have to require that your vendors (and even internal marketing staff) show how their products and services are working by driving revenue to your dealership.  Perhaps the ROI isn’t as high as you’d like it to be and by no means am I suggesting you fire that vendor on the spot. However, you may find that it’s not the form of advertising that is the problem, it’s the messaging that needs a little tweaking.

Lastly, a great way to track your marketing and advertising is by requiring your sales and service staff to accurately source customers to see where they came from.  A dealership group in Colorado required that each and every customer had a source code (advertising), which was tied into the bonus plan for the F&I department.  Within a short time, the dealership was able to source 75% of where the customers came from.

No one, and I mean no one, wants to invest a great deal of money into marketing and advertising that doesn’t work.  But if you don’t investigate and monitor what is working how can you determine if it’s the medium that you’re using, the message/incentive you’ve sent or a combination of both?  It’s critical to track the results by utilizing unique 800 numbers, requiring ROI reports and mandating that your staff precisely and truthfully report customer source information.

How is your dealership tracking marketing efforts to ascertain what is working and what is not?

~ Missy Jensen, Social Media Manager at DMEautomotive

Bio:
Missy designs, deploys and maintains the social media initiatives for DMEautomotive in an effort to increase brand awareness, distribute company and industry news, provide updates on products and services and promote consumer engagement. Missy enjoys the process of learning; researching and watching projects come to fruition!

Prior to her transformation into a web specialist and work with DMEautomotive, she has 10 years of experience in the marketing and communications industry. Missy served as the Director, Handicapping & Communications for a regional golf association and helped successfully launch and maintain a cutting edge technology-based ticket resale program on behalf of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Missy attended St. Lawrence University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Psychology. She also holds a Master’s Degree from Miami University in Oxford, OH. She can be reached at missy.jensen@dmeautomotive.com and check her out on LinkedIn.

Since the basic premise of a science project is to discover “what happens if,” the key element is to track the results so you can make such a determination.

Automotive marketing is no really different.  Every month automotive dealers (and marketing vendors) spend a considerable amount of time, effort and money manipulating various messages, calls to actions and incentives in their automotive marketing pieces…all with the intention to push traffic to the lot and service drive!  Though many dealerships spend hundreds of thousands on advertising and direct marketing, most marginally know the effectiveness of it.

The best way to understand the effectiveness of your marketing efforts – to ascertain what form, message, incentive (and heck, even the best target audience) - is to implement tracking.  By tracking the results, you can determine whether your marketing message is reaching your target audience and encouraging them to take action.  In other words, you can better understand your “what happens if.” What happens if I offer a $19.95 Oil Change to customers who haven’t been in for x number of months? What happens if I send a targeted direct mail piece that is followed up by live calls?  What happens if I communicate with my lost customers via multiple communication channels?

At this time, how do you know if and what ads are driving traffic to your dealership?  Are you requiring sales people to source where a customer is coming from?  Does your F&I department ask the customer?  And how many times do you see “Drive By” and “Paper” as the answer?  You and I both know there are better ways of doing this!

If you’re not doing it already, you must employ 800 phone numbers on every form of advertising.  But don’t stop there…use specific 800 numbers on each specific advertising piece.  In other words, for every newspaper ad, email piece, and targeted direct mail piece, you must have a different 800 number for each.  If you have 5 different mailers going out, use 5 different 800 numbers.  Other dealers are using QR codes, PURLS and barcodes.  By using such tracking components, your dealership is able to assess which ad is effectively causing your register to ring.

Determine ROI by cross-referencing your customer data with the targeted list used for that particular campaign.  Is it by coincidence that Ms. Smith was in your service department 5 days ago or did you send her a mailer to promote a $29.95 lube, oil filter and tire rotation a few weeks ago? Are you reviewing the click-through-rates of your emails?  Additionally if you use a third-party marketing vendor, force them to perform ROI reports to show response rates.  If you’ve never done so, I also strongly recommend an advertising audit on a quarterly basis to know what is working in your advertising efforts.  You have to require that your vendors (and even internal marketing staff) show how their products and services are working by driving revenue to your dealership.  Perhaps the ROI isn’t as high as you’d like it to be and by no means am I suggesting you fire that vendor on the spot. However, you may find that it’s not the form of advertising that is the problem, it’s the messaging that needs a little tweaking.

Lastly, a great way to track your marketing and advertising is by requiring your sales and service staff to accurately source customers to see where they came from.  A dealership group in Colorado required that each and every customer had a source code (advertising), which was tied into the bonus plan for the F&I department.  Within a short time, the dealership was able to source 75% of where the customers came from.

No one, and I mean no one, wants to invest a great deal of money into marketing and advertising that doesn’t work.  But if you don’t investigate and monitor what is working how can you determine if it’s the medium that you’re using, the message/incentive you’ve sent or a combination of both?  It’s critical to track the results by utilizing unique 800 numbers, requiring ROI reports and mandating that your staff precisely and truthfully report customer source information.

How is your dealership tracking marketing efforts to ascertain what is working and what is not?

~ Missy Jensen, Social Media Manager at DMEautomotive

Bio:
Missy designs, deploys and maintains the social media initiatives for DMEautomotive in an effort to increase brand awareness, distribute company and industry news, provide updates on products and services and promote consumer engagement. Missy enjoys the process of learning; researching and watching projects come to fruition!

Prior to her transformation into a web specialist and work with DMEautomotive, she has 10 years of experience in the marketing and communications industry. Missy served as the Director, Handicapping & Communications for a regional golf association and helped successfully launch and maintain a cutting edge technology-based ticket resale program on behalf of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Missy attended St. Lawrence University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Psychology. She also holds a Master’s Degree from Miami University in Oxford, OH. She can be reached at missy.jensen@dmeautomotive.com and check her out on LinkedIn.

Your dealership’s reputation is something that has taken years and probably millions of dollars to build.  It is something that your dealership likely considers to be one of the most important assets of the company.  So let me ask you this…are you prepared to let someone…and I mean someone you may not even know…somewhere ruin your reputation, because in today’s world anyone with a beef about your dealership and internet access can destroy you in minutes with a few keystrokes.  

So, how can your dealership monitor and protect its reputation?

1. Track your reputation online. Listen to everything that people are saying about your dealership by using some of the free tools available online (i.e., Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts).  Using keywords oriented around your dealership name, owner’s name, the brand(s) you carry, models, geographic location and competitor names, you can monitor what is being said in an organized, efficient manner.
2. Analyze activity. As the alerts start rolling in from online, it’s critical to organize, analyze and prioritize the activity.  Hopefully your dealership’s reputation management inquiries will yield more positive than negative but even then it’s important to determine which need to be addressed first. For instance, you may take a look at your findings and realize that one person has voiced their ire on multiple sites. Or perhaps you’ll find that an individual’s complaint on DealerRater.com has yielded 5 similar complaints about slow service during oil changes. Whatever the results may be, your dealership must determine what can be addressed and how it can be rectified.
3. Respond in a timely fashion. If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that negative remarks about your dealership are bound to occur.  Since you cannot avoid them, it’s critical that you are prepared to respond...and to respond quickly.  When you find a negative remark or review, your goal should be to acknowledge the problem and respond in a timely and appropriate manner. When you take the time to address negative comments and proactively attempt to resolve the customer’s issue, you will find yourself with a very loyal fan in the end and you’ll also show others who may be reading the post that your dealership’s customer service is of utmost importance.
4. Be Proactive.  The best way to counteract negative criticisms as well as simultaneously promote a positive image for your dealership is to become active online, interact on social sites with an open-dialogue and provide relevant content that puts you in a positive light with your current customers as well as prospects. Here are some ways to accomplish that:

-     Create a blog where you can really present yourself as the most knowledgeable, capable and trustworthy dealership in town.

-     Create social network profiles and content - A cost-effective way to improve search engine results is via social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr (to name a few). The important thing to remember is to provide meaningful and resourceful information and include keywords.

-     Publish press releases - for any newsworthy event at your dealership or one your dealership is affiliated with (i.e., community fundraiser) a press release should be written. When submitted online to press release sites, the content is distributed all over the Internet very quickly, and is subsequently picked up by search engines.

-     Encourage your satisfied customers to review your dealership online.

Online reputation management is a challenge that faces the automotive industry, more so now than any other point in history. Though the answer seems obvious, it’s worth another explanation. The Internet is a ferocious player in today’s world.Search engines and social media sites act as trusted sources of information. Who you are online influences public perception and the longer you wait to start your online reputation management program, the harder it will be to get under control and to counteract any negativity. The good news is that it is indeed possible, with a bit of direction, persistence, motivation and creativity, to monitor conversations, engage with both your advocates and dissenters, and ultimately take ownership of your brand online.

For more detailed information, please download our white paper, Online Reputation Management for the Automotive Industry, by DMEautomotive Direct Marketing Experts in the Automotive Industry.

~ Missy Jensen, Social Media Manager at DMEautomotive

Bio:

Missy designs, deploys and maintains the social media initiatives for DMEautomotive in an effort to increase brand awareness, distribute company and industry news, provide updates on products and services and promote consumer engagement. Missy enjoys the process of learning; researching and watching projects come to fruition! Prior to her transformation into a web specialist and work with DMEautomotive, she has 10 years of experience in the marketing and communications industry.

Missy served as the Director, Handicapping & Communications for a regional golf association and helped successfully launch and maintain a cutting edge technology-based ticket resale program on behalf of the St. Louis Cardinals. Missy attended St. Lawrence University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Psychology. She also holds a Master’s Degree from Miami University in Oxford, OH. She can be reached at missy.jensen@dmeautomotive.com and check her out on LinkedIn.

About DMEautomotive DMEautomotive provides multi-channel, variable communications for automobile dealers and aftermarket franchises nationwide. Their robust product and service offering includes: data driven, multi-channel acquisition and retention marketing, best-in-class campaign reporting, data management and analytics via the Red Rocket Portal, Virtual BDC call applications, and complete on-site mail and email fulfillment services.  Headquartered in Daytona Beach, Fla., DMEautomotive also has major operations in Jacksonville, Fla.  

Original Source:  DMEautomotive Direct Marketing Expert Blog

Your dealership’s reputation is something that has taken years and probably millions of dollars to build.  It is something that your dealership likely considers to be one of the most important assets of the company.  So let me ask you this…are you prepared to let someone…and I mean someone you may not even know…somewhere ruin your reputation, because in today’s world anyone with a beef about your dealership and internet access can destroy you in minutes with a few keystrokes.  

So, how can your dealership monitor and protect its reputation?

1. Track your reputation online. Listen to everything that people are saying about your dealership by using some of the free tools available online (i.e., Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts).  Using keywords oriented around your dealership name, owner’s name, the brand(s) you carry, models, geographic location and competitor names, you can monitor what is being said in an organized, efficient manner.
2. Analyze activity. As the alerts start rolling in from online, it’s critical to organize, analyze and prioritize the activity.  Hopefully your dealership’s reputation management inquiries will yield more positive than negative but even then it’s important to determine which need to be addressed first. For instance, you may take a look at your findings and realize that one person has voiced their ire on multiple sites. Or perhaps you’ll find that an individual’s complaint on DealerRater.com has yielded 5 similar complaints about slow service during oil changes. Whatever the results may be, your dealership must determine what can be addressed and how it can be rectified.
3. Respond in a timely fashion. If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that negative remarks about your dealership are bound to occur.  Since you cannot avoid them, it’s critical that you are prepared to respond...and to respond quickly.  When you find a negative remark or review, your goal should be to acknowledge the problem and respond in a timely and appropriate manner. When you take the time to address negative comments and proactively attempt to resolve the customer’s issue, you will find yourself with a very loyal fan in the end and you’ll also show others who may be reading the post that your dealership’s customer service is of utmost importance.
4. Be Proactive.  The best way to counteract negative criticisms as well as simultaneously promote a positive image for your dealership is to become active online, interact on social sites with an open-dialogue and provide relevant content that puts you in a positive light with your current customers as well as prospects. Here are some ways to accomplish that:

-     Create a blog where you can really present yourself as the most knowledgeable, capable and trustworthy dealership in town.

-     Create social network profiles and content - A cost-effective way to improve search engine results is via social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr (to name a few). The important thing to remember is to provide meaningful and resourceful information and include keywords.

-     Publish press releases - for any newsworthy event at your dealership or one your dealership is affiliated with (i.e., community fundraiser) a press release should be written. When submitted online to press release sites, the content is distributed all over the Internet very quickly, and is subsequently picked up by search engines.

-     Encourage your satisfied customers to review your dealership online.

Online reputation management is a challenge that faces the automotive industry, more so now than any other point in history. Though the answer seems obvious, it’s worth another explanation. The Internet is a ferocious player in today’s world.Search engines and social media sites act as trusted sources of information. Who you are online influences public perception and the longer you wait to start your online reputation management program, the harder it will be to get under control and to counteract any negativity. The good news is that it is indeed possible, with a bit of direction, persistence, motivation and creativity, to monitor conversations, engage with both your advocates and dissenters, and ultimately take ownership of your brand online.

For more detailed information, please download our white paper, Online Reputation Management for the Automotive Industry, by DMEautomotive Direct Marketing Experts in the Automotive Industry.

~ Missy Jensen, Social Media Manager at DMEautomotive

Bio:

Missy designs, deploys and maintains the social media initiatives for DMEautomotive in an effort to increase brand awareness, distribute company and industry news, provide updates on products and services and promote consumer engagement. Missy enjoys the process of learning; researching and watching projects come to fruition! Prior to her transformation into a web specialist and work with DMEautomotive, she has 10 years of experience in the marketing and communications industry.

Missy served as the Director, Handicapping & Communications for a regional golf association and helped successfully launch and maintain a cutting edge technology-based ticket resale program on behalf of the St. Louis Cardinals. Missy attended St. Lawrence University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS in Psychology. She also holds a Master’s Degree from Miami University in Oxford, OH. She can be reached at missy.jensen@dmeautomotive.com and check her out on LinkedIn.

About DMEautomotive DMEautomotive provides multi-channel, variable communications for automobile dealers and aftermarket franchises nationwide. Their robust product and service offering includes: data driven, multi-channel acquisition and retention marketing, best-in-class campaign reporting, data management and analytics via the Red Rocket Portal, Virtual BDC call applications, and complete on-site mail and email fulfillment services.  Headquartered in Daytona Beach, Fla., DMEautomotive also has major operations in Jacksonville, Fla.  

Original Source:  DMEautomotive Direct Marketing Expert Blog

Bio:

Paul Ryan brings over 25 years of experience in sales, sales management, marketing, and client services. He joined DMEautomotive in February of 2008, as a Regional Territory Manager. With proven success as an inside sales representative selling the FullCircle Solutions’ Bullseye program, he was recognized frequently as Sales Person of the Month and received the highest honor of Sales Person of the Year for 2008. In August of 2009, Paul managed, “Direct-To-Dealer” – Mail Division, responsible for overseeing the sales for the “Direct-To-Dealer” Mail Division. Currently he is traveling in the Midwest as Field Account Manager. Paul graduated with a B.B.A, in Business Administration from Iowa State University in 1982.

Bio:

Paul Ryan brings over 25 years of experience in sales, sales management, marketing, and client services. He joined DMEautomotive in February of 2008, as a Regional Territory Manager. With proven success as an inside sales representative selling the FullCircle Solutions’ Bullseye program, he was recognized frequently as Sales Person of the Month and received the highest honor of Sales Person of the Year for 2008. In August of 2009, Paul managed, “Direct-To-Dealer” – Mail Division, responsible for overseeing the sales for the “Direct-To-Dealer” Mail Division. Currently he is traveling in the Midwest as Field Account Manager. Paul graduated with a B.B.A, in Business Administration from Iowa State University in 1982.

Understanding that managing your dealership's reputation is tougher than ever in today's technology-driven society, DMEautomotive has addressed this very issue in the "Online Reputation Management for the Automotive Industry" white paper.  

The intent of this white paper is to help your dealership realize that the daunting task of protecting your reputation online can be done by keeping your ear to the ground (or in this case the computer monitor) with online reputation management strategies.

To obtain a copy of the white paper, please download at DMEautomotive.

Understanding that managing your dealership's reputation is tougher than ever in today's technology-driven society, DMEautomotive has addressed this very issue in the "Online Reputation Management for the Automotive Industry" white paper.  

The intent of this white paper is to help your dealership realize that the daunting task of protecting your reputation online can be done by keeping your ear to the ground (or in this case the computer monitor) with online reputation management strategies.

To obtain a copy of the white paper, please download at DMEautomotive.