Jim Flint, CEO and Founder of Local Search Group, discusses the three pillars that his company focuses on to ensure the success of his organization for employees, clients, and their consumers. 

In the Game of Thrones world that’s arguably as intense as the competitive retail space, it’s a scenario where “Kill or be Killed” is replaced by “Sell or Be Sold”.  As we closed out Season 8 of GOT, we saw first hand what happened when a dragon flew through the city and redefined “hot seat”.

Avoid the hot seat at your dealership by eliminating your advertising waste.

So how do you make your Google Ads more valuable?

I’ve seen the SEO’s who increase the overall activity to a dealer’s website with blog articles that yield searches out of state and out of the country. Feels good. Looks good, but we’d be mistaking activity for achievement.

And then your agency partner mesmerizes you into multi-channel funnel tracking? Last click. First click. Time decay. Those only predict online conversions. Sure text, form fills and phone calls—matter at some level. They are symptoms, not solutions though.

This is the uncertainty of the current dimension of Google Ads that so many Car Gurus miss. All the artists, rock stars, kings and queens can offer up the different thoughts, but their best bet is to understand the shopper journey and the ultimate trackable source of ROI. Sales.

As we dive deep into all the possibilities consider the following. Learn something. Build something. Unlearn it. Rebuild it.

We are in the process of rebuilding where shoppers are in the car buying journey. How many cars are going to locations via digital retailing? How many sales without leads are being submitted?

Start embracing zip codes as the ultimate conversion. It’s no more absurd than the new king of the seven--or did it become six--kingdoms. This is the primary, if not only, conversion metric to drive toward. Is my bidding by zip code resulting in a ratio for profitability? As sales tighten it’s a KEY consideration, if not THE consideration.

Where did you sell the car answers all the questions in one fell swoop--without getting burned.

The power of the pixel is immeasurable. It’s why CEOs of digital powerhouses are being summoned to testify in Washington, DC.

Congressional testimony aside, companies use pixels to track consumer behavior throughout their web journey in order to understand, advertise and monetize.

Facebook and Google tracking don’t stop with their own sites. They along with AT&T, for example, are along for the ENTIRE consumer journey via smartphones.

Pixels help advertisers reach the people at the right places and at the right times.

It’s one thing to show up on the Google Display network and quite another to show up – specifically so – on the local ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates websites. It’s still another to show up on ESPN.com as well as the local college scoreboard for your customer’s favorite team.

Use the power of the pixel for good via a full disclosure of your use of cookies at your earliest convenience. It will help you be in front of the right people at the right times more frequently.

Tonight four of the top draft picks in the NFL Draft are expected to be quarterbacks. Meanwhile, two of the top 32 will be wide receivers.

Recently I visited with one of the top collegiate quarterback coaches in the nation.

“There’s a saying in football that the further away you get from the ball, the less a part of the team you are. Quarterbacks are team leaders and offensive lineman are typically good teammates. On the other hand, wide receivers and cornerbacks, they do their own thing. They live on an island and aren’t really all that connected to the team as you might otherwise think,” he said.

It made me think. Would we be better off to look at “Marketing” as the Quarterback and “Sales” as the Wide Receiver in today’s automotive retail environment?

When the quarterback comes to the line of scrimmage, he assesses the situation, makes an adjustment, calls out an audible and starts the play. Further out, the wide receiver hears the adjustment, runs the route and maybe out of their five teammates the play results in a completed pass. Call it 20% odds. Even steeper odds, the wide receiver might catch a touchdown pass. When the big play does come, we celebrate the success. Sales anyone?

The football analogy works for a sales environment where marketing functions as the QB. Read the analytics, connect with the people, adjust the view and deliver the plan. Sales becomes the wide receiver. Marketing becomes the QB and knows what everyone is doing; however, the wide receiver just knows his route and that the goal is to score points.

Not unlike the NFL Draft, in today’s Big Data world, who you select as your quarterback will impact your team much more so than who’s playing wide receiver.

Who is the quarterback at your dealership? 

If given three wishes by a genie to help better support our clients’ goals, I’d ask these three questions:

1.  What’s your cost per sale?

2.  What’s your impression share for your name?

3.  How many salespeople do you have?

Sure, there are hundreds of questions to ask. Millions of data points.

Knowing these three things month in and month out, I’d be able to deliver the best marketing and advertising to our clients.

With those three answers, a calendar, Google Analytics and the Internet available to count the client’s cars, I’d be able to stack the odds in favor of our clients. Just like counting cards in Vegas.

For guidance on each of the above, think about targets of less than $350, impression share greater than 80% and 10 sales per staffed person. How the plans get assembled, how the creative gets executed, and how the sales results get measured helps to take the wish out of the marketing.

On any given day, weathercasters in our area predict a 20% chance of rain. It’s a safe bet with a one in five chance of being correct.

In an industry that tends to reward “Strong Wrong” more often than “Soft Right,” the bold and the brave may tell you that they can predict your sales with amazing accuracy via their proprietary algorithms.

But like the weathercaster that falls back to “scattered showers,” what are the odds that your sales opportunities can be forecasted by the mountains of big data that are available to you today?

Ironically, the weather is actually more predictive of car sales than the predictive models you may be hearing about.

Think not? It may be time to change your Weather Channel.

For sales teams in the Midwest and central US, they know that hail storms bring buyers. Most typically and quite extensively, hurricane arrivals drive away purchases before and upon arrival. Then the storms actually help to consolidate years of business into weeks of frenzied buying for stores along the Gulf Coast and on the Atlantic seaboard when consumers need replacement units for their flooded out cars, trucks and SUVs.

Sure we all want a rainmaker on the sales front, but be ever more cautious with bold proclamations on predictive sales modeling. Think it through—what are the odds?

Change matters. The speed of change matters. Don’t change for change’s sake.  How to sort through it all?

Change matters and can be successfully and intelligently integrated into your lifestyle and work habits by answering three quick questions:

   *Do you know your peak performance times?
   *Are you prototyping for progress?
   *Will you pilot the change?

Knowing your personal peak performance times is HUGE.  You should know this for yourself and your team. You can time your day to optimize your performance and introduce change intelligently to you and your organization. For example, if you know that your least favorite task is number-crunching, do your administrative tasks earlier in the day when you are fresh and less likely to make mistakes.  Daniel Pink has written a wonderful book on the topic, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

Next, proactively allocate some time, energy and resources to prototyping technologies. Most of the advances in productivity in the last 50 years have come from technological innovation.  What new app or device is out there that can help speed you through your day?

Third, pilot the change. Don’t look to change things for everybody just because you tested that cool new app or you heard a cool, new sound bite at a conference. Slow down to gain speed later, and make sure that the something is scalable and useful beyond just your personal ideation.

Piloting for success requires you to go with one test pilot, and self-pilots don’t count.  That will ensure that you secure the necessary feedback loop to make the change right by the customer or the client. Then add a second. At this point you’ll be much more prepared to scale the change to 10, 100 or even a 1,000 cars or customers.

CEO Jim Flint continues sharing why dealerships need to alter their social media strategies in order to maximize effectiveness in this video blog.

CEO Jim Flint shares how social media has transformed and why dealers should alter their strategies to maximize their effectiveness in this video blog.

There are three huge ways to transform the Social Media at your Dealership

Tell Your Story

Telling your Digital Story is a huge step in the right direction. In the most recent quarterly conference call, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that stories were the next big thing, and he’s a guy that knows the next big thing when he sees it.

Not surprisingly, going vertical with your phone, planning for NO audio, and capturing users’ attention in 3 seconds or less are key. Stories can be skipped. Think accordingly.

Transform the Story

Many stories struggle with the command and control concepts of industrial business. The goal of corporations, after having established a competitive advantage, is to prevent risk and avoid failure. Thus, communication is approved and controlled by the business entity’s marketing department.

In a world of social media, the game has changed even though the decision-makers haven’t. As such, the command and control approach ironically gives the power to the dissatisfied few. Employees that leave on less than friendly terms can be a detriment; they will, can, and do leave negative comments. It happens - and those negative comments stand out!

A better approach is to drown out the naysayers. Align all employees with the company’s culture and how they should share their stories and experiences via the various platforms - the good stuff.

Think about it. Silence allows the squeaky wheel to get the social media oil.

If everyone at the store—say 100 employees—has 150 or more friends, the good—and it is good—will decidedly outweigh the occasional bad.

Boost the Posts

Organic traction on dealership posts is non-existent. Set aside a minimum of $100 to boost your own posts. Otherwise no one, but your employees and competitors, will see them.

I also recommend setting aside at least that much money, if not more, to incentivize employees to post perhaps by giving out a $25 Starbucks gift card to the employee with the best weekly post, then sit back and watch the healthy competition transform your culture in meaningful ways.

Sure, it’s scary at first, but what powerful, meaningful transformation isn’t?

Local Search Group provides dealership training on this topic for the entire store over a two-day period. The curriculum was developed in a university-style environment and delivered in the dealership - more importantly it works. Money back guarantee. If you’d like to discuss, we’re happy to engage.