We are creatures of habit. Unfortunately, the habits of the general population has changed over the last decade to create a separation between where they buy cars and where they have them serviced.

What's more unfortunate is that dealers have really started pushing in the same direction. They have service customers and they have sales customers. They divide them up into two groups and treat them completely differently with their marketing. The assumption that someone will service the car at the place that they buy it has gone to the wayside.

In a post I wrote that asked what happened to calling them 'customers', I laid out our internal perspective:

We have a philosophy here at Visible Customer. We do not believe in "service customers" and "sales customers". We believe in "customers". If they're getting their car serviced at your dealership, they should be buying from you as well. If they're buying cars at your dealership, they should probably be having their cars serviced at your dealership (unless they're simply too far away, but even in that situation there are ways to get them to drive to you for certain services).

You don't need to settle. Your goal should be to make everyone a "true customer", one who does everything automotive-related at your dealership. It's about creating a new habit that your customers adopt to make you their only source of car information and the only place they go to meet their needs.

To do this, dealers must first establish that mentality within the dealership. The service drive walk, for example, isn't just another checkbox item in the sales process. It's not something that should be skipped, nor is it something that they should be performing halfheartedly. The sales process is the ideal time to build value within the dealership itself, to set it apart as being a completely different experience from start to finish.

From there, the marketing message to your database must take both sales and service into account. You shouldn't just be sending your oil change specials to your service customers. In fact, it makes more sense to populate more sales messages to your service customers than just about any dealership is doing right now. Why? Because people who are having their cars serviced at the dealership but who are not buying there are doing it out of convenience. They went to a dealership further away from than you are to buy, but they like the convenience of servicing it closer to home. By letting them reasons to consider you for sales, you're giving your dealership an opportunity to earn the business that should have been yours in the first place.

Building true customers out of service or sales customers is an old school way of thinking, but it still works in the digital age. You just have to keep putting out the right messages to the right people at the right time.

We are creatures of habit. Unfortunately, the habits of the general population has changed over the last decade to create a separation between where they buy cars and where they have them serviced.

What's more unfortunate is that dealers have really started pushing in the same direction. They have service customers and they have sales customers. They divide them up into two groups and treat them completely differently with their marketing. The assumption that someone will service the car at the place that they buy it has gone to the wayside.

In a post I wrote that asked what happened to calling them 'customers', I laid out our internal perspective:

We have a philosophy here at Visible Customer. We do not believe in "service customers" and "sales customers". We believe in "customers". If they're getting their car serviced at your dealership, they should be buying from you as well. If they're buying cars at your dealership, they should probably be having their cars serviced at your dealership (unless they're simply too far away, but even in that situation there are ways to get them to drive to you for certain services).

You don't need to settle. Your goal should be to make everyone a "true customer", one who does everything automotive-related at your dealership. It's about creating a new habit that your customers adopt to make you their only source of car information and the only place they go to meet their needs.

To do this, dealers must first establish that mentality within the dealership. The service drive walk, for example, isn't just another checkbox item in the sales process. It's not something that should be skipped, nor is it something that they should be performing halfheartedly. The sales process is the ideal time to build value within the dealership itself, to set it apart as being a completely different experience from start to finish.

From there, the marketing message to your database must take both sales and service into account. You shouldn't just be sending your oil change specials to your service customers. In fact, it makes more sense to populate more sales messages to your service customers than just about any dealership is doing right now. Why? Because people who are having their cars serviced at the dealership but who are not buying there are doing it out of convenience. They went to a dealership further away from than you are to buy, but they like the convenience of servicing it closer to home. By letting them reasons to consider you for sales, you're giving your dealership an opportunity to earn the business that should have been yours in the first place.

Building true customers out of service or sales customers is an old school way of thinking, but it still works in the digital age. You just have to keep putting out the right messages to the right people at the right time.

In my travels, I've found that dealers are often complacent about their past customer database marketing. It's usually not a flaw in their strategic thinking. It's confidence that they are treating their customers properly and that they see plenty of return business. I'm not going to argue that point today though I believe I can make a strong argument for the need to be constantly visible to them.

Today, let's talk about new business. Let's talk about the bulk of your marketing and advertising dollars that are being spent on getting people in the market today to come into your dealership. Most importantly, let's talk about the influencing factors that compel new business.

There are plenty of debates raging on the various automotive networks surrounding the effectiveness of influential types of advertising like social media, video pre-roll, and retargeting, but there is never a debate about the importance of good ol' fashioned word of mouth. People still talk to other people they trust when it's time to buy a car.

This is where the appropriate messages can come into play that help you to generate new business. You're already spending money on getting in front of potential new customers, but so is you competitor down the block. You can try to separate yourself with the right message, but who's to say that your competitor isn't putting out a better message or reaching more buyers?

By taking advantage of the influential factors associated with word of mouth, you get a leg up on most of your competitors. This requires the constant communication with your past customers that I talked about before. You aren't just trying to get them to buy their next vehicle from you. You're also trying to make them feel as comfortable as possible recommending you to their friends and family, particularly when they're in the market and asking for advice.

This is, in many ways, an ADHD society with a short memory. They probably remember where they bought their car a couple of years ago and they may remember whether or not it was a good experience, but it might not be enough to get them excited about recommending you when their coworker tells them they're in the market or when their brother's car finally breaks down. By staying in front of them with important and relevant messages across multiple advertising venues, you'll be much more likely to get them to recommend you proactively when the time hits them, even if it has been two or three years.

Staying visible to your past customers is more than just a best practice for grabbing them next time as the low-hanging fruit that they are. It can also benefit you greatly when it comes to getting new business. If you have a message about a $189/mo lease and your competitor is advertising $4500 off, it's hit or miss about which message will resonate more. The one message that gives you the advantage in nearly every circumstance is the personal recommendation that you can garner by keeping your past customers remembering who you are and why they bought their last vehicle from you.

In this industry, every advantage is crucial and can be the difference between success and failure in getting new business.

In my travels, I've found that dealers are often complacent about their past customer database marketing. It's usually not a flaw in their strategic thinking. It's confidence that they are treating their customers properly and that they see plenty of return business. I'm not going to argue that point today though I believe I can make a strong argument for the need to be constantly visible to them.

Today, let's talk about new business. Let's talk about the bulk of your marketing and advertising dollars that are being spent on getting people in the market today to come into your dealership. Most importantly, let's talk about the influencing factors that compel new business.

There are plenty of debates raging on the various automotive networks surrounding the effectiveness of influential types of advertising like social media, video pre-roll, and retargeting, but there is never a debate about the importance of good ol' fashioned word of mouth. People still talk to other people they trust when it's time to buy a car.

This is where the appropriate messages can come into play that help you to generate new business. You're already spending money on getting in front of potential new customers, but so is you competitor down the block. You can try to separate yourself with the right message, but who's to say that your competitor isn't putting out a better message or reaching more buyers?

By taking advantage of the influential factors associated with word of mouth, you get a leg up on most of your competitors. This requires the constant communication with your past customers that I talked about before. You aren't just trying to get them to buy their next vehicle from you. You're also trying to make them feel as comfortable as possible recommending you to their friends and family, particularly when they're in the market and asking for advice.

This is, in many ways, an ADHD society with a short memory. They probably remember where they bought their car a couple of years ago and they may remember whether or not it was a good experience, but it might not be enough to get them excited about recommending you when their coworker tells them they're in the market or when their brother's car finally breaks down. By staying in front of them with important and relevant messages across multiple advertising venues, you'll be much more likely to get them to recommend you proactively when the time hits them, even if it has been two or three years.

Staying visible to your past customers is more than just a best practice for grabbing them next time as the low-hanging fruit that they are. It can also benefit you greatly when it comes to getting new business. If you have a message about a $189/mo lease and your competitor is advertising $4500 off, it's hit or miss about which message will resonate more. The one message that gives you the advantage in nearly every circumstance is the personal recommendation that you can garner by keeping your past customers remembering who you are and why they bought their last vehicle from you.

In this industry, every advantage is crucial and can be the difference between success and failure in getting new business.

Repetition can get annoying. When we see the same message over and over again, it has a tendency to get on our nerves. That's not what you're trying to do by putting out consistent messages multiple times through diverse channels. In today's ever-shifting world, it's important to risk repetition for the sake of having them see your message at all.

I originally published this article over at AutomotiveSocial.com but thought it would fit in nicely at DrivingSales:

Customer loyalty is a tough cookie to crack nowadays. It's not like before when things were more predictable, when you could make assumptions about timing and situations. Today, you never know when the situation will change to where someone is in the market to buy a car immediately. The standard buying cycle has been replaced by a chaotic weaving of changes to job, relationships, and circumstance.

Another thing has changed. People are not inherently loyal to any particular dealership. Sure, there are regular customers who will only buy a car from one dealership, but the number of people who self-maintain loyalty is going down. Today, every customer is a free agent waiting to happen and the only way you can keep them from jumping ship is to be in front of them regularly.

The bad news is that there are so many ways for people to communicate today that it's hard to focus on one way or another. There were dealerships that lived off of mailers, for example, and built the company around being in their customers' mailboxes regularly. For others, email has been a golden ticket, but even that ticket has waned in the wake of advanced spam filters that often exclude messages simply because they have the wrong wording. Today, it's important to get in front of your customers with the right message through multiple channels.

Loyalty is a funny thing. Earlier, I noted that people are less likely to be loyal today than before, but that's not just a function of society's shift towards a digital world that gives them more choices than they can handle. It's also a function of dealerships getting complacent with their messaging and either not sending them out enough or doing so with inferior techniques in an effort to simply "check the box" on having a database marketing plan. If it's not a good plan, you're often better off not trying at all. With spam filters the way they are today, it's possible to do damage to your database by using amateur techniques while trying to reach people.

One of the reasons that I joined Visible Customer in the first place was because they had the right plan. Dealers can apply this plan to multiple portions of their marketing beyond loyalty and conquest. They can take advantage of the concepts of analytics and intelligence marketing, proper dealership management, and building loyalty through referrals and sharing of their positive experiences to better position the rest of their marketing efforts. Whether it's social media, website presence, television ads, or just about anything else they're doing with their marketing, knowing how to engage your customers (past, present, and future) can be the difference between succeeding and failing.

With everything that you're doing, don't assume that any one channel is enough to make it work. You can get great results from this, that, or the other, but when you start combining the different channels to put the messages out there in front of the right people. you can dramatically improve the way that the messages are getting through. You can send messages to people or you can reach people. There's a difference. It's all about strategy.

The market is thriving. Some dealerships are taking advantage of these times. Others are simply reaping some of the benefits without aggressively moving forward.

Repetition can get annoying. When we see the same message over and over again, it has a tendency to get on our nerves. That's not what you're trying to do by putting out consistent messages multiple times through diverse channels. In today's ever-shifting world, it's important to risk repetition for the sake of having them see your message at all.

I originally published this article over at AutomotiveSocial.com but thought it would fit in nicely at DrivingSales:

Customer loyalty is a tough cookie to crack nowadays. It's not like before when things were more predictable, when you could make assumptions about timing and situations. Today, you never know when the situation will change to where someone is in the market to buy a car immediately. The standard buying cycle has been replaced by a chaotic weaving of changes to job, relationships, and circumstance.

Another thing has changed. People are not inherently loyal to any particular dealership. Sure, there are regular customers who will only buy a car from one dealership, but the number of people who self-maintain loyalty is going down. Today, every customer is a free agent waiting to happen and the only way you can keep them from jumping ship is to be in front of them regularly.

The bad news is that there are so many ways for people to communicate today that it's hard to focus on one way or another. There were dealerships that lived off of mailers, for example, and built the company around being in their customers' mailboxes regularly. For others, email has been a golden ticket, but even that ticket has waned in the wake of advanced spam filters that often exclude messages simply because they have the wrong wording. Today, it's important to get in front of your customers with the right message through multiple channels.

Loyalty is a funny thing. Earlier, I noted that people are less likely to be loyal today than before, but that's not just a function of society's shift towards a digital world that gives them more choices than they can handle. It's also a function of dealerships getting complacent with their messaging and either not sending them out enough or doing so with inferior techniques in an effort to simply "check the box" on having a database marketing plan. If it's not a good plan, you're often better off not trying at all. With spam filters the way they are today, it's possible to do damage to your database by using amateur techniques while trying to reach people.

One of the reasons that I joined Visible Customer in the first place was because they had the right plan. Dealers can apply this plan to multiple portions of their marketing beyond loyalty and conquest. They can take advantage of the concepts of analytics and intelligence marketing, proper dealership management, and building loyalty through referrals and sharing of their positive experiences to better position the rest of their marketing efforts. Whether it's social media, website presence, television ads, or just about anything else they're doing with their marketing, knowing how to engage your customers (past, present, and future) can be the difference between succeeding and failing.

With everything that you're doing, don't assume that any one channel is enough to make it work. You can get great results from this, that, or the other, but when you start combining the different channels to put the messages out there in front of the right people. you can dramatically improve the way that the messages are getting through. You can send messages to people or you can reach people. There's a difference. It's all about strategy.

The market is thriving. Some dealerships are taking advantage of these times. Others are simply reaping some of the benefits without aggressively moving forward.

It's hard to run a successful dealership in the 21st century. Things aren't as simple as they used to be, but there's one major advantage that we didn't have a couple of decades ago. The trend data when it comes to sales, customer interaction, and advertising choices is far beyond anything we've had in the past.

This strength can turn into a weakness. We see it every day when dealers make decisions about trends they see in their numbers or information they receive from vendors, OEMs, and the huge number of "expert" sources out there that often contradict. When do we make the jump and when is it better to avoid the precipice altogether?

A good example of this stems from the data that dealers get from the various sources that point to sales trends for different areas. While it's important to stay on top of these trends and allocate your advertising dollars in the areas with the greatest potential, it's equally important to position the messages the right ways and at the right times.

Let's say that your data tells you that mid-sized sedans are selling like hotcakes in a particular zip code. Conventional wisdom would say that you should position your pay-per-click, television, radio, direct mail, and email marketing in that area with a message about the type of vehicle that matches the sales trends. However, it goes much deeper than that. A properly researched strategy might call for a strategy that isn't simply, "fire all weapons at the target!"

A proper strategy might include staggering the message, testing one advertising venue before trying another, or hitting your customer database first before going for conquest sales. These are decisions that can be made based upon a combination of the data and some sound market research to help you formulate a plan to hit the targets rather than blasting the zip code with everything you've got all at once.

It's a subtle distinction but one that can make a world of difference when it comes to the success of the initiative.

In the situation above, the combination of the data plus a little market research could reveal that an email and direct mail blast should go out initially to get the awareness rolling. That research could then reveal that television is not as effective for reaching the target audience, so rather than a costly television commercial, you could follow it up with a newspaper campaign that coincides with a temporary boost to your pay-per-click campaign. Lastly, you shoot out one more email blast with a more urgent message and the result is a sustained grouping of mid-sized sedan sales from that zip code as well as the nice carryover of used car sales that would be generated as a result.

It's more complicated than a paragraph, but I think you get the picture. There's nothing wrong with making leaps and getting aggressive, but don't let the raw trend data guide your actions. Make it work by examining the data and devising a proper strategy.

It's hard to run a successful dealership in the 21st century. Things aren't as simple as they used to be, but there's one major advantage that we didn't have a couple of decades ago. The trend data when it comes to sales, customer interaction, and advertising choices is far beyond anything we've had in the past.

This strength can turn into a weakness. We see it every day when dealers make decisions about trends they see in their numbers or information they receive from vendors, OEMs, and the huge number of "expert" sources out there that often contradict. When do we make the jump and when is it better to avoid the precipice altogether?

A good example of this stems from the data that dealers get from the various sources that point to sales trends for different areas. While it's important to stay on top of these trends and allocate your advertising dollars in the areas with the greatest potential, it's equally important to position the messages the right ways and at the right times.

Let's say that your data tells you that mid-sized sedans are selling like hotcakes in a particular zip code. Conventional wisdom would say that you should position your pay-per-click, television, radio, direct mail, and email marketing in that area with a message about the type of vehicle that matches the sales trends. However, it goes much deeper than that. A properly researched strategy might call for a strategy that isn't simply, "fire all weapons at the target!"

A proper strategy might include staggering the message, testing one advertising venue before trying another, or hitting your customer database first before going for conquest sales. These are decisions that can be made based upon a combination of the data and some sound market research to help you formulate a plan to hit the targets rather than blasting the zip code with everything you've got all at once.

It's a subtle distinction but one that can make a world of difference when it comes to the success of the initiative.

In the situation above, the combination of the data plus a little market research could reveal that an email and direct mail blast should go out initially to get the awareness rolling. That research could then reveal that television is not as effective for reaching the target audience, so rather than a costly television commercial, you could follow it up with a newspaper campaign that coincides with a temporary boost to your pay-per-click campaign. Lastly, you shoot out one more email blast with a more urgent message and the result is a sustained grouping of mid-sized sedan sales from that zip code as well as the nice carryover of used car sales that would be generated as a result.

It's more complicated than a paragraph, but I think you get the picture. There's nothing wrong with making leaps and getting aggressive, but don't let the raw trend data guide your actions. Make it work by examining the data and devising a proper strategy.