I will begin this by saying that I’ve never been a cheerleader, but at my last in-store mobile app training session I wish I had their contagiously enthusiastic charm. I’m working on it. So why the “cheerleader’s guide” you may ask? Well first of all, every dealer rolling out a new mobile app needs a cheerleader, and secondly, I’m going to see if all the cheerleaders who read my blog will let me get away with presuming to know anything about cheerleading. Here I go…

One of the biggest opportunities car dealers are missing when it comes to promoting their mobile app is perfecting the in-store processes necessary to drive continual downloads. More specifically, service associates need to get customers to download the app. Right now a majority of dealer mobile app downloads are driven from email campaigns, online advertisements, and sweepstakes. These methods, although effective, pale in comparison to having service associates engaging every single customer who comes onto the drive every single day.

Keep it short and repetitive so you can remember and they don’t forget

A typical cheer is short and to the point. Don’t overcomplicate it. Start by doing short, 20 to 30 minute, training sessions with your service team. Multiple sessions allow everyone to participate while customers are still being helped. Train them on the features and functionality. Make sure they’re familiar with the special offers available in your app as well as a short talk track that can be used to encourage a customer to download the app. They should be able to easily repeat a few key features and an incentive (or offer) available for downloading. With the knowledge of how your app works and this easily rehearsed talk track, associates are armed and ready to encourage customers to download the app.

Practice, practice, practice so you don’t trip or drop the pretty girl (or guy)

Your service team needs to practice with your app. Have everyone who has a smartphone download the app and play with it. Have them set up an account and a fake service appointment. Firsthand experience using the app is the best way to get associates comfortable with talking to customers about the app.

Help develop enthusiasm internally – eventually it will spread to your customers

A cheerleader’s enthusiasm is contagious and although we don’t expect your service team to be able to form a perfect pyramid, a little genuine enthusiasm goes a long way. In the first training session I did, it was as if I was asking high school kids to get excited about math club. I associate this with my inability to do a full scorpion (look I even did research for this blog). So how do you get them excited? Talk to them about how your app will make their job easier. How many calls do they get a day from someone asking them to look up their service history? It’s not always an easy task especially when they’ve got customers waiting on them. They could suggest a customer download the app, which would give them instant access to their service history right on their smartphone. Make sure your service team knows how your app helps make their lives easier.

Make it Eye Catching

When cheerleaders cheer you just can’t look away. It could be from what has been coined the cheerleader effect or maybe we’re all secretly hoping they fall, but either way we’re captivated. When customers enter your service center make sure they’re greeted with more than just the smell of rubber and gasoline. Make sure they’re greeted with eye catching signage encouraging them to download the app. Include QR codes so tech savvy smartphone users can scan and download quickly.

Everyone Parties When We Win

I’m not exactly sure what happens when you cheer for a whole game and then your team loses. I’m assuming it involves ice cream, chick flicks, and 5 extra hours at the gym but one can only guess.

But I know that when your team wins, everyone parties and with a few small incentives you can go home a winner. Get your service team to promote your app by incentivizing them. It can be as simple as making your number of downloads visible during daily meetings and rewarding the team when certain download thresholds are met. Consider doing an iPad raffle where associates get a raffle ticket for every customer they get to download the app, or a small spiff can help motivate your team to participate.

Building strong internal app promotion processes in your service department will yield long term results.

1. Arm your service associates with easy to remember talk tracks to get customers to download your app
2. Encourage associates to download your app and get comfortable with it on their phone
3. Make sure they understand how your app helps them do their job better
4. Hang eye catching point-of-purchase materials throughout your service center
5. Celebrate success by incentivizing your team to reach your mobile app download goals.

Remember, cheer on your service team and before long they’ll “sell it” to every customer that walks through your service department.

I will begin this by saying that I’ve never been a cheerleader, but at my last in-store mobile app training session I wish I had their contagiously enthusiastic charm. I’m working on it. So why the “cheerleader’s guide” you may ask? Well first of all, every dealer rolling out a new mobile app needs a cheerleader, and secondly, I’m going to see if all the cheerleaders who read my blog will let me get away with presuming to know anything about cheerleading. Here I go…

One of the biggest opportunities car dealers are missing when it comes to promoting their mobile app is perfecting the in-store processes necessary to drive continual downloads. More specifically, service associates need to get customers to download the app. Right now a majority of dealer mobile app downloads are driven from email campaigns, online advertisements, and sweepstakes. These methods, although effective, pale in comparison to having service associates engaging every single customer who comes onto the drive every single day.

Keep it short and repetitive so you can remember and they don’t forget

A typical cheer is short and to the point. Don’t overcomplicate it. Start by doing short, 20 to 30 minute, training sessions with your service team. Multiple sessions allow everyone to participate while customers are still being helped. Train them on the features and functionality. Make sure they’re familiar with the special offers available in your app as well as a short talk track that can be used to encourage a customer to download the app. They should be able to easily repeat a few key features and an incentive (or offer) available for downloading. With the knowledge of how your app works and this easily rehearsed talk track, associates are armed and ready to encourage customers to download the app.

Practice, practice, practice so you don’t trip or drop the pretty girl (or guy)

Your service team needs to practice with your app. Have everyone who has a smartphone download the app and play with it. Have them set up an account and a fake service appointment. Firsthand experience using the app is the best way to get associates comfortable with talking to customers about the app.

Help develop enthusiasm internally – eventually it will spread to your customers

A cheerleader’s enthusiasm is contagious and although we don’t expect your service team to be able to form a perfect pyramid, a little genuine enthusiasm goes a long way. In the first training session I did, it was as if I was asking high school kids to get excited about math club. I associate this with my inability to do a full scorpion (look I even did research for this blog). So how do you get them excited? Talk to them about how your app will make their job easier. How many calls do they get a day from someone asking them to look up their service history? It’s not always an easy task especially when they’ve got customers waiting on them. They could suggest a customer download the app, which would give them instant access to their service history right on their smartphone. Make sure your service team knows how your app helps make their lives easier.

Make it Eye Catching

When cheerleaders cheer you just can’t look away. It could be from what has been coined the cheerleader effect or maybe we’re all secretly hoping they fall, but either way we’re captivated. When customers enter your service center make sure they’re greeted with more than just the smell of rubber and gasoline. Make sure they’re greeted with eye catching signage encouraging them to download the app. Include QR codes so tech savvy smartphone users can scan and download quickly.

Everyone Parties When We Win

I’m not exactly sure what happens when you cheer for a whole game and then your team loses. I’m assuming it involves ice cream, chick flicks, and 5 extra hours at the gym but one can only guess.

But I know that when your team wins, everyone parties and with a few small incentives you can go home a winner. Get your service team to promote your app by incentivizing them. It can be as simple as making your number of downloads visible during daily meetings and rewarding the team when certain download thresholds are met. Consider doing an iPad raffle where associates get a raffle ticket for every customer they get to download the app, or a small spiff can help motivate your team to participate.

Building strong internal app promotion processes in your service department will yield long term results.

1. Arm your service associates with easy to remember talk tracks to get customers to download your app
2. Encourage associates to download your app and get comfortable with it on their phone
3. Make sure they understand how your app helps them do their job better
4. Hang eye catching point-of-purchase materials throughout your service center
5. Celebrate success by incentivizing your team to reach your mobile app download goals.

Remember, cheer on your service team and before long they’ll “sell it” to every customer that walks through your service department.

I was shopping in Target the other day with my 3 year old when a gentleman commented, “Wow, does she really know how to use that?” I looked down to see my daughter playing with “her” iPhone (ok technically it’s my old iPhone 3 that can still muster enough strength for some great apps, but I digress) and I was like, “oh… um… yeah, she can.”

My daughter can play with an iPhone because it’s easy to use; easy enough for a 3 year old, and if you want customers to download your app then you need to make it easy too. And part of making it easy is giving them functionality they trust, like Smart App Banners.

Now, my 3 year old doesn’t worry about clicking on a random pop-up that prompts her to download the $4.99 Disney Princess Royal Salon app because she is still trusting in nature (and desperate to be a princess), where as those of us over the age of 13 had our trusting nature shattered somewhere in middle school and only a few of us got to be princesses (damn you Kate Middleton!), but again, I digress. The point I’m trying to make (you thought I didn’t have one for a minute there didn’t you) is that consumers need to TRUST that what they click on is not a scam, and Smart App Banners are the best way to do that.

Smart App Banners are small rectangular banners that can display across the top of your mobile website that prompt a visitor to download your mobile app. The Banners are technically only an Apple functionality, however you can easily get similar functionality for Android devices with a slight variation of code. Smart App Banners greatly improve a user’s browsing experience compared to other promotional methods, as Apple has provided a consistent look and feel for these banners across the web, and users have come to trust that these banners will take them to the App Store and not a third-party site. Users appreciate that banners show up unobtrusively at the top of a webpage, instead of a full-screen ad interrupting the web content.

App Banners are super easy to add to your website. Your web admin just needs to add a small snippet of code (that can be found online) to your website and you’re good to go. And if the app is already installed on the user’s device, the Smart App Banner can intelligently change its action to open the app instead. Also if the device loading the banner does not support your app, or if your app is not available in the user's location, the banner will not display.

The bottom line is that Smart App Banners are one of the best ways to drive downloads for your mobile app. Now, you may run into a situation where your mobile website vendor (who created your mobile site and thinks it’s just the best thing ever) doesn’t want to drive traffic away from your mobile site to your mobile app vendor (who created your mobile app and thinks it’s just the best thing ever). Only you know why you have both and that’s to give your customers the experience that works best for them. So give them the choice right up front to continue to surf your site or download your app. If they trust in the functionality, which they will with the Smart App Banner, then you’ve given them an experience almost as great as the Disney Princess Royal Salon is to a 3-year old; an experience that’s easy, fun, and gets them that much closer to getting everything they want out of life… whether it’s a great mobile app or their handsome prince.

-Kelly Krause, Director of Customer Engagement, Driver Connect at DMEautomotive

I was shopping in Target the other day with my 3 year old when a gentleman commented, “Wow, does she really know how to use that?” I looked down to see my daughter playing with “her” iPhone (ok technically it’s my old iPhone 3 that can still muster enough strength for some great apps, but I digress) and I was like, “oh… um… yeah, she can.”

My daughter can play with an iPhone because it’s easy to use; easy enough for a 3 year old, and if you want customers to download your app then you need to make it easy too. And part of making it easy is giving them functionality they trust, like Smart App Banners.

Now, my 3 year old doesn’t worry about clicking on a random pop-up that prompts her to download the $4.99 Disney Princess Royal Salon app because she is still trusting in nature (and desperate to be a princess), where as those of us over the age of 13 had our trusting nature shattered somewhere in middle school and only a few of us got to be princesses (damn you Kate Middleton!), but again, I digress. The point I’m trying to make (you thought I didn’t have one for a minute there didn’t you) is that consumers need to TRUST that what they click on is not a scam, and Smart App Banners are the best way to do that.

Smart App Banners are small rectangular banners that can display across the top of your mobile website that prompt a visitor to download your mobile app. The Banners are technically only an Apple functionality, however you can easily get similar functionality for Android devices with a slight variation of code. Smart App Banners greatly improve a user’s browsing experience compared to other promotional methods, as Apple has provided a consistent look and feel for these banners across the web, and users have come to trust that these banners will take them to the App Store and not a third-party site. Users appreciate that banners show up unobtrusively at the top of a webpage, instead of a full-screen ad interrupting the web content.

App Banners are super easy to add to your website. Your web admin just needs to add a small snippet of code (that can be found online) to your website and you’re good to go. And if the app is already installed on the user’s device, the Smart App Banner can intelligently change its action to open the app instead. Also if the device loading the banner does not support your app, or if your app is not available in the user's location, the banner will not display.

The bottom line is that Smart App Banners are one of the best ways to drive downloads for your mobile app. Now, you may run into a situation where your mobile website vendor (who created your mobile site and thinks it’s just the best thing ever) doesn’t want to drive traffic away from your mobile site to your mobile app vendor (who created your mobile app and thinks it’s just the best thing ever). Only you know why you have both and that’s to give your customers the experience that works best for them. So give them the choice right up front to continue to surf your site or download your app. If they trust in the functionality, which they will with the Smart App Banner, then you’ve given them an experience almost as great as the Disney Princess Royal Salon is to a 3-year old; an experience that’s easy, fun, and gets them that much closer to getting everything they want out of life… whether it’s a great mobile app or their handsome prince.

-Kelly Krause, Director of Customer Engagement, Driver Connect at DMEautomotive