Can you believe it? The back-to-school season is already in full swing. If you’ve visited any major retail outlet, checked your mailbox, or watched commercials, you’ve probably noticed that marketers are promoting back-to-school savings. This means, now is the perfect time for your dealership to capitalize on the season with relevant back-to-school marketing. Here are three ways you can promote your dealership, drive business to your store, and generate additional traffic and revenue to keep your summer momentum going.

Offer Back-to-School Tips
With the hustle and bustle of the back-to-school season, many parents are thinking about new schedules, prepping their kids for the first day, and getting organized. Chances are these parents are not thinking about their vehicles or the maintenance it will need to be ready for the carpool lane. Think about offering customers helpful back-to-school vehicle tips and service savings to ensure their vehicles are in proper working order for the new school year.

Host a Back-to-School Supply Drive
According to the National Retail Federation, an average family will spend more than $600 on back-to-school supplies for their children in grades kindergarten through 12th. Although these numbers account for all economic statuses, it’s no secret that many families just don’t have this kind of money. Your dealership can help these less fortunate students by hosting a school supply drive. All you need to do is work with your local school district to determine what items are needed, communicate your efforts to your customers, and setup bins in your dealership to collect the donated school supplies.

Show Your School Spirit
A great way to promote your dealership and form ties with your community is by getting involved with your local school district. You can do this in several different ways, but it will most likely depend on your school’s need and your dealership’s budget. An easy way to get involved with your local school district is by sponsoring a particular sport like football or basketball, but be sure in return you get an advertisement on the field or court. Another way to get involved and raise funds for your local school district is by giving away a certain dollar amount for every test drive. The possibilities for getting involved and connecting with your local community are endless, but you’ll want to speak with your local school district to see how your efforts will make the most impact.

The back-to-school season is here, make sure to leverage the new school year to drive more traffic and revenue to your door.

Can you believe it? The back-to-school season is already in full swing. If you’ve visited any major retail outlet, checked your mailbox, or watched commercials, you’ve probably noticed that marketers are promoting back-to-school savings. This means, now is the perfect time for your dealership to capitalize on the season with relevant back-to-school marketing. Here are three ways you can promote your dealership, drive business to your store, and generate additional traffic and revenue to keep your summer momentum going.

Offer Back-to-School Tips
With the hustle and bustle of the back-to-school season, many parents are thinking about new schedules, prepping their kids for the first day, and getting organized. Chances are these parents are not thinking about their vehicles or the maintenance it will need to be ready for the carpool lane. Think about offering customers helpful back-to-school vehicle tips and service savings to ensure their vehicles are in proper working order for the new school year.

Host a Back-to-School Supply Drive
According to the National Retail Federation, an average family will spend more than $600 on back-to-school supplies for their children in grades kindergarten through 12th. Although these numbers account for all economic statuses, it’s no secret that many families just don’t have this kind of money. Your dealership can help these less fortunate students by hosting a school supply drive. All you need to do is work with your local school district to determine what items are needed, communicate your efforts to your customers, and setup bins in your dealership to collect the donated school supplies.

Show Your School Spirit
A great way to promote your dealership and form ties with your community is by getting involved with your local school district. You can do this in several different ways, but it will most likely depend on your school’s need and your dealership’s budget. An easy way to get involved with your local school district is by sponsoring a particular sport like football or basketball, but be sure in return you get an advertisement on the field or court. Another way to get involved and raise funds for your local school district is by giving away a certain dollar amount for every test drive. The possibilities for getting involved and connecting with your local community are endless, but you’ll want to speak with your local school district to see how your efforts will make the most impact.

The back-to-school season is here, make sure to leverage the new school year to drive more traffic and revenue to your door.

Is your dealership looking for more vehicle sales? Do you spend an exorbitant amount on advertising and marketing to acquire new prospects? How many times have you lost a potential sale because you don’t have a proper follow-up process for these incoming prospects? The only way to truly master your dealership’s follow-up is to figure out a way to maximize results and minimize effort. Check out these six easy tips to revive your unsold prospect follow-up.

Implement Data Collection
One of the most important things a business can do to improve prospect follow-up is collect pertinent information. So many times salespeople are unable to follow up with a prospect because they don’t have all the necessary information to do so. You’ll want to set a standard for data collection among your sales team. This standard should reflect what type of marketing you’ll be doing to follow up with these potential buyers. For example, if you plan to use email marketing to communicate with potential buyers and bring them back to your dealership, then you’ll want to make sure your salespeople are always collecting an email address. Other data points to think about collecting are physical address, phone number, vehicles of interest, trade information, and financing details. With all necessary information about your prospects, you can properly follow up with them and encourage meaningful interactions with your sales team.

Qualify Prospects Properly
The truth is there are plenty of prospects who walk through your doors and visit your website every day, but this doesn’t mean these individuals are all potential buyers. Properly qualifying prospects can save your sales team a lot of time and energy. How you qualify a particular prospect should also dictate that specific prospect’s follow-up process. For example, if your team qualifies someone as a “hot lead,” then the salesperson should follow up with them almost immediately, otherwise they may find themselves at your competitor’s dealership to do business. On the flip-side, if someone is qualified as “just looking,” then you may want to follow up with them differently and probably not as aggressively. This tip is one of the most important in this article because without properly qualifying each prospect, your team is literally shooting in the dark, which causes missed opportunities and wasted time spent on unqualified prospects. If your sales team is properly qualifying each prospect, then they understand what that individual is looking for and how to sell to them.

Measure Follow-Up Process
The statistics show prospect conversion goes up significantly after six contact attempts have been made; however, statistics also show most salespeople give up after making one or two attempts. Do you know how many follow-up attempts your salespeople are making to bring prospects back to your dealership? Do you know how many attempts they should be making to convert prospects? With a measureable follow-up process, you can rest assured that no opportunity gets lost in the shuffle and each prospect is followed up with enough times to generate a conversion. Think about it, if each prospect receives the same follow-up for their specific lead type, then you can begin to see trends for how much follow-up is needed and begin to tweak your process to receive optimal conversion.

Make To-Do Lists
In a perfect world, your sales team would come to work each day and they would have a follow up item in their to-do list for each unsold prospect. Depending on your specific process, they should have calls to make, emails to send, and notes to take to move each prospect closer to the sale of a vehicle. A salesperson’s to-do list must be very easy to follow and execute, although it may have a couple dozen tasks to complete. The to-do list for a salesperson should be ready for them each morning and be worked on throughout the day when they aren’t attending to new prospects. If possible, to-do lists need to be finished before your sales personnel leave for the day. By making daily actionable to-do lists, your team is not wasting time but rather working each prospect to ensure they purchase their next vehicle from you.

Enforce Prospect Follow-Up
This tip is easier said than done, but should definitely not be taken lightly. Probably the most important tip for maximizing your dealership’s follow-up process is to enforce it among your entire sales team. From collecting the proper data to following a precise follow-up sequence, from qualifying each prospect properly to creating daily to-do lists, each and every step you designate in your follow-up process is important and should be accounted for and required. It’s easier to enforce rules and processes when using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. With a CRM solution, you can set up your ideal follow-up process for each type of lead and then have the system enforce the rules.

Utilize a Dashboard
Visibility is important when trying to run an efficient and actionable sales team. Without a dashboard, you will have a difficult time figuring out where each customer is in the process, how they are being qualified, who is responsible for the next to-do item, how many prospects have been converted today, and so on. If you don’t have one already, now is the time to create a customer dashboard. Ideally you should be able to use your current CRM to compile all pertinent metrics for your sales team into one location for easy viewing. Just think about it, if all the information you needed on a daily basis was presented to you in one spot without having to pull and re-pull report after report, you’d save time and increase the overall performance of your sales team.

If you’re looking to sell more vehicles, it’s time to revive your unsold prospect follow-up process. Really focus on maximizing the results from your sales team and minimizing their efforts needed to close a deal. Organization, recording proper information, and timely follow up are the keys to the solution. With these six tips, it’s time to track more, bring back more, and ultimately close more.

Is your dealership looking for more vehicle sales? Do you spend an exorbitant amount on advertising and marketing to acquire new prospects? How many times have you lost a potential sale because you don’t have a proper follow-up process for these incoming prospects? The only way to truly master your dealership’s follow-up is to figure out a way to maximize results and minimize effort. Check out these six easy tips to revive your unsold prospect follow-up.

Implement Data Collection
One of the most important things a business can do to improve prospect follow-up is collect pertinent information. So many times salespeople are unable to follow up with a prospect because they don’t have all the necessary information to do so. You’ll want to set a standard for data collection among your sales team. This standard should reflect what type of marketing you’ll be doing to follow up with these potential buyers. For example, if you plan to use email marketing to communicate with potential buyers and bring them back to your dealership, then you’ll want to make sure your salespeople are always collecting an email address. Other data points to think about collecting are physical address, phone number, vehicles of interest, trade information, and financing details. With all necessary information about your prospects, you can properly follow up with them and encourage meaningful interactions with your sales team.

Qualify Prospects Properly
The truth is there are plenty of prospects who walk through your doors and visit your website every day, but this doesn’t mean these individuals are all potential buyers. Properly qualifying prospects can save your sales team a lot of time and energy. How you qualify a particular prospect should also dictate that specific prospect’s follow-up process. For example, if your team qualifies someone as a “hot lead,” then the salesperson should follow up with them almost immediately, otherwise they may find themselves at your competitor’s dealership to do business. On the flip-side, if someone is qualified as “just looking,” then you may want to follow up with them differently and probably not as aggressively. This tip is one of the most important in this article because without properly qualifying each prospect, your team is literally shooting in the dark, which causes missed opportunities and wasted time spent on unqualified prospects. If your sales team is properly qualifying each prospect, then they understand what that individual is looking for and how to sell to them.

Measure Follow-Up Process
The statistics show prospect conversion goes up significantly after six contact attempts have been made; however, statistics also show most salespeople give up after making one or two attempts. Do you know how many follow-up attempts your salespeople are making to bring prospects back to your dealership? Do you know how many attempts they should be making to convert prospects? With a measureable follow-up process, you can rest assured that no opportunity gets lost in the shuffle and each prospect is followed up with enough times to generate a conversion. Think about it, if each prospect receives the same follow-up for their specific lead type, then you can begin to see trends for how much follow-up is needed and begin to tweak your process to receive optimal conversion.

Make To-Do Lists
In a perfect world, your sales team would come to work each day and they would have a follow up item in their to-do list for each unsold prospect. Depending on your specific process, they should have calls to make, emails to send, and notes to take to move each prospect closer to the sale of a vehicle. A salesperson’s to-do list must be very easy to follow and execute, although it may have a couple dozen tasks to complete. The to-do list for a salesperson should be ready for them each morning and be worked on throughout the day when they aren’t attending to new prospects. If possible, to-do lists need to be finished before your sales personnel leave for the day. By making daily actionable to-do lists, your team is not wasting time but rather working each prospect to ensure they purchase their next vehicle from you.

Enforce Prospect Follow-Up
This tip is easier said than done, but should definitely not be taken lightly. Probably the most important tip for maximizing your dealership’s follow-up process is to enforce it among your entire sales team. From collecting the proper data to following a precise follow-up sequence, from qualifying each prospect properly to creating daily to-do lists, each and every step you designate in your follow-up process is important and should be accounted for and required. It’s easier to enforce rules and processes when using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. With a CRM solution, you can set up your ideal follow-up process for each type of lead and then have the system enforce the rules.

Utilize a Dashboard
Visibility is important when trying to run an efficient and actionable sales team. Without a dashboard, you will have a difficult time figuring out where each customer is in the process, how they are being qualified, who is responsible for the next to-do item, how many prospects have been converted today, and so on. If you don’t have one already, now is the time to create a customer dashboard. Ideally you should be able to use your current CRM to compile all pertinent metrics for your sales team into one location for easy viewing. Just think about it, if all the information you needed on a daily basis was presented to you in one spot without having to pull and re-pull report after report, you’d save time and increase the overall performance of your sales team.

If you’re looking to sell more vehicles, it’s time to revive your unsold prospect follow-up process. Really focus on maximizing the results from your sales team and minimizing their efforts needed to close a deal. Organization, recording proper information, and timely follow up are the keys to the solution. With these six tips, it’s time to track more, bring back more, and ultimately close more.

Every year, thousands of Major League Baseball games are played with millions in attendance. These same baseball fans are gearing up for the long awaited All-Star Game coming up July 14^th.  Believe it or not, your dealership can leverage these enthusiasts’ excitement to drive sales and service business. How, you ask? With creative, relevant marketing. Check out these three ideas to celebrate summer with All-Star baseball.

Get Active
Here in Cincinnati, if the Reds combine 11 strikeouts during a home game, LaRosa’s (a local pizzeria) allows every fan with a ticket from that game to redeem it for a free pizza. This is an example of how a local business can get involved with the sport of baseball to promote their brand. Similarly, your dealership could offer discounts for events that transpire during the All-Star Game, such as offering $10 oil changes if a local player hits a home run or a similar promotion that may fit your particular business model. 

Create a Contest
Everybody loves to participate in a contest, especially if the contest does not cost anything to enter. There are so many ways your dealership can leverage the All-Star Game to create a contest and drive top-of-mind awareness for your store. Your contest could be guessing the final score of the All-Star Game or who will hit the first or most home runs; the possibilities for a contest are really only limited by your imagination. Whichever contest you decide, be sure to leverage social media to extend the reach of your campaign, clearly advertise how the winner will be selected, and what participants and the winner will receive.

Have Fun
If you can’t decide how you will leverage the All-Star Game to promote your dealership, just remember to have fun with your marketing. You could simply utilize baseball imagery in your email or direct mail campaigns, supply your audience with interesting baseball trivia, or even sprinkle in some baseball terminology, like home run savings, to spruce up your marketing. Not only will having fun with baseball themed marketing create interest from your audience, but it will also grab the attention of any customers who are baseball lovers.

Regardless of your affinity for America’s favorite pastime, the upcoming All-Star Game provides your dealership the opportunity to drive additional traffic, brand awareness, and revenue to your door, all while celebrating summer.

Every year, thousands of Major League Baseball games are played with millions in attendance. These same baseball fans are gearing up for the long awaited All-Star Game coming up July 14^th.  Believe it or not, your dealership can leverage these enthusiasts’ excitement to drive sales and service business. How, you ask? With creative, relevant marketing. Check out these three ideas to celebrate summer with All-Star baseball.

Get Active
Here in Cincinnati, if the Reds combine 11 strikeouts during a home game, LaRosa’s (a local pizzeria) allows every fan with a ticket from that game to redeem it for a free pizza. This is an example of how a local business can get involved with the sport of baseball to promote their brand. Similarly, your dealership could offer discounts for events that transpire during the All-Star Game, such as offering $10 oil changes if a local player hits a home run or a similar promotion that may fit your particular business model. 

Create a Contest
Everybody loves to participate in a contest, especially if the contest does not cost anything to enter. There are so many ways your dealership can leverage the All-Star Game to create a contest and drive top-of-mind awareness for your store. Your contest could be guessing the final score of the All-Star Game or who will hit the first or most home runs; the possibilities for a contest are really only limited by your imagination. Whichever contest you decide, be sure to leverage social media to extend the reach of your campaign, clearly advertise how the winner will be selected, and what participants and the winner will receive.

Have Fun
If you can’t decide how you will leverage the All-Star Game to promote your dealership, just remember to have fun with your marketing. You could simply utilize baseball imagery in your email or direct mail campaigns, supply your audience with interesting baseball trivia, or even sprinkle in some baseball terminology, like home run savings, to spruce up your marketing. Not only will having fun with baseball themed marketing create interest from your audience, but it will also grab the attention of any customers who are baseball lovers.

Regardless of your affinity for America’s favorite pastime, the upcoming All-Star Game provides your dealership the opportunity to drive additional traffic, brand awareness, and revenue to your door, all while celebrating summer.

Video has become one of the most important mediums for marketers and is quickly becoming the preferred method of media consumption for consumers. Every marketer dreams of the day when they produce a video with content worthy of thousands and possibly millions of viral shares. But let’s dial these dreams back a little and save ourselves the pain of wasting endless hours devising the perfect video scenario to be viewed by the world wide web. Instead let’s focus on how your dealership can utilize video in everyday marketing to engage current customers and keep them coming back to you for future vehicle needs. Today we’ll share six things you need to know about marketing with video.

Get Noticed with Video
It’s no secret that people like to consume their content through video. When looking at major video platforms like YouTube, you quickly understand the impact video has on our society; YouTube reports every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube to generate billions of views and this number each month is up 50% year over year. Video popularity is definitely not dying, but quite the reverse; more people are posting and watching videos daily. Are you leveraging this powerful medium to reach out and connect with your customers?

Power Your Marketing with Video
How do the growing numbers of video consumption affect your marketing strategy? Great question! Similar to how people prefer to consume content, marketers are finding video marketing to be highly effective. In fact, 70% of marketing professionals report video converts better than any other medium and 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. These statistics demonstrate how video makes a brand relatable to consumers; it puts a face or personality to a brand and allows the audience to connect and build trust with the brand. And let’s be honest, everyone prefers to buy from someone they know and trust.

Determine Your Goals with Video
If you decide to venture into video marketing, you’ll need to lay out what your goals are, otherwise you can waste a lot of time and money. Dealerships across the nation are using video in a variety of ways, but just because they are using it doesn’t mean they are seeing any results. Will you use video to put a face to your dealership and build brand awareness? Will you use it to deliver short, sweet, concise messages to your clients for things like service reminders? Will you use video marketing to set your dealership apart from your competition? Only 24% of brands are actually using online video to market to consumers today, which means there’s a huge opportunity to reach out, connect, and be different.

Understand Your Hosting Needs
Once you understand your goals and have chosen your content, it’s time to figure out the logistics of how your videos will reach your customers. You can’t simply create videos and, poof, they appear for your customers. You first have to decide where your videos will live online. There are really two options, free or paid hosting sites. There are pros and cons to both; for example, YouTube is free, but you aren’t able to control the entire user experience, whereas paid hosting sites give you full control of the user experience, but they can also be very costly. This decision is totally up to you and there is no right or wrong answer. It’s really about your specific needs and budget.

Share Videos with Customers
Next, you’ve got to determine how you will share your videos with your ideal audience. There are several ways to do this, but if we’re staying with the idea to create videos for your current customers, then email is the best channel to use. This is mostly because it’s a one-to-one direct marketing channel that links you directly with your customers. Email also provides you access to increased analytics, like impressions of people who saw your content but didn’t view your video. But always remember, the method used for delivery will depend on the content of your video and the audience you are trying to reach.

Benefit from Video in Email
If you decide that email is the best delivery method to reach your ideal audience, then you should know that marketers who are currently using this method are seeing open rates increase by 20% and click-through rates increase by 200% to 300%. Simply put, pairing video with email turbo charges your marketing and creates more interaction with your content. We all know that consumers have overflowing inboxes and it is more important than ever to stand out in the inbox and get your message heard. With these statistics, video is a clear answer.

If you haven’t ventured into video marketing, now may be the time to jump in. Be sure to plan out your marketing to determine the best content and delivery method that supports your goals before you get started. Although that perfect viral video would bring a lot of brand recognition to your dealership, it may not be the best way to return the results you desire.

Source:
"Statistics." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 23 June 2015.
"The Top 15 Video Marketing Statistics for 2015." Adelie Studios. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 June 2015.
Cote, Sabrina. "10 Powerful Video Marketing Statistics (and What They Mean to You)." Brainshark. 11, 11 Mar. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.
 

Video has become one of the most important mediums for marketers and is quickly becoming the preferred method of media consumption for consumers. Every marketer dreams of the day when they produce a video with content worthy of thousands and possibly millions of viral shares. But let’s dial these dreams back a little and save ourselves the pain of wasting endless hours devising the perfect video scenario to be viewed by the world wide web. Instead let’s focus on how your dealership can utilize video in everyday marketing to engage current customers and keep them coming back to you for future vehicle needs. Today we’ll share six things you need to know about marketing with video.

Get Noticed with Video
It’s no secret that people like to consume their content through video. When looking at major video platforms like YouTube, you quickly understand the impact video has on our society; YouTube reports every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube to generate billions of views and this number each month is up 50% year over year. Video popularity is definitely not dying, but quite the reverse; more people are posting and watching videos daily. Are you leveraging this powerful medium to reach out and connect with your customers?

Power Your Marketing with Video
How do the growing numbers of video consumption affect your marketing strategy? Great question! Similar to how people prefer to consume content, marketers are finding video marketing to be highly effective. In fact, 70% of marketing professionals report video converts better than any other medium and 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. These statistics demonstrate how video makes a brand relatable to consumers; it puts a face or personality to a brand and allows the audience to connect and build trust with the brand. And let’s be honest, everyone prefers to buy from someone they know and trust.

Determine Your Goals with Video
If you decide to venture into video marketing, you’ll need to lay out what your goals are, otherwise you can waste a lot of time and money. Dealerships across the nation are using video in a variety of ways, but just because they are using it doesn’t mean they are seeing any results. Will you use video to put a face to your dealership and build brand awareness? Will you use it to deliver short, sweet, concise messages to your clients for things like service reminders? Will you use video marketing to set your dealership apart from your competition? Only 24% of brands are actually using online video to market to consumers today, which means there’s a huge opportunity to reach out, connect, and be different.

Understand Your Hosting Needs
Once you understand your goals and have chosen your content, it’s time to figure out the logistics of how your videos will reach your customers. You can’t simply create videos and, poof, they appear for your customers. You first have to decide where your videos will live online. There are really two options, free or paid hosting sites. There are pros and cons to both; for example, YouTube is free, but you aren’t able to control the entire user experience, whereas paid hosting sites give you full control of the user experience, but they can also be very costly. This decision is totally up to you and there is no right or wrong answer. It’s really about your specific needs and budget.

Share Videos with Customers
Next, you’ve got to determine how you will share your videos with your ideal audience. There are several ways to do this, but if we’re staying with the idea to create videos for your current customers, then email is the best channel to use. This is mostly because it’s a one-to-one direct marketing channel that links you directly with your customers. Email also provides you access to increased analytics, like impressions of people who saw your content but didn’t view your video. But always remember, the method used for delivery will depend on the content of your video and the audience you are trying to reach.

Benefit from Video in Email
If you decide that email is the best delivery method to reach your ideal audience, then you should know that marketers who are currently using this method are seeing open rates increase by 20% and click-through rates increase by 200% to 300%. Simply put, pairing video with email turbo charges your marketing and creates more interaction with your content. We all know that consumers have overflowing inboxes and it is more important than ever to stand out in the inbox and get your message heard. With these statistics, video is a clear answer.

If you haven’t ventured into video marketing, now may be the time to jump in. Be sure to plan out your marketing to determine the best content and delivery method that supports your goals before you get started. Although that perfect viral video would bring a lot of brand recognition to your dealership, it may not be the best way to return the results you desire.

Source:
"Statistics." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 23 June 2015.
"The Top 15 Video Marketing Statistics for 2015." Adelie Studios. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 June 2015.
Cote, Sabrina. "10 Powerful Video Marketing Statistics (and What They Mean to You)." Brainshark. 11, 11 Mar. 2014. Web. 24 June 2015.
 

The official start to summer is Sunday, June 21^st and this day presents the perfect opportunity to reach out to customers with a seasonally relevant campaign. For many American families, the summer months mean packing up the kids and heading on a road trip to see family or spend some time vacationing. Today we’ll share three ways you can leverage these summer road trips to make your marketing shine.

Leverage Timely Marketing
When families pack for a trip to the beach or a week at grandma’s house, they think about essential items they will need for their trip. Some families even remember to have their vehicle serviced and maintenance items inspected before hitting the road. You can drive these families to your dealership by delivering a timely message with service discounts specific to their needs. Think about it; if you know most families will be taking a vacation in the next 60 days, then right now is the time when you should be communicating a road trip service package that will ensure their safe arrival.

Help Customers Be Prepared
Some families are super prepared for road trips, remembering to check their spare tire, engine fluid levels, tire pressure, and have their recommended maintenance performed. Often times these families don’t have any emergency backup in case of a vehicle breakdown. Think about offering customers an emergency vehicle kit with every service over $100 or selling them in your Service Department. These emergency kits can include things like roadside flares, a first-aid kit, jumper cables, etc. with your dealership’s branding.

Remember Roadside Assistance
Getting ready to take a family road trip can be overwhelming. There are so many things to remember to pack, endless errands to run, and don’t forget the directions to get to the destination. Sometimes information for roadside assistance is not always stowed in the vehicle and can be forgotten in the clutter of to-dos before a big road trip. Send a helpful reminder to customers to remember their roadside assistance information when traveling this summer. If applicable, offer the roadside assistance information from your dealership’s manufacturer so it’s handy and accessible for customers. For customers who may not have roadside assistance for their vehicle, offer up a recommendation for where they can purchase it.

The summer travel season is in full swing and families everywhere are loading up the kids and hitting the road. Don’t miss this opportunity to drive additional business to your Service Department and top of mind awareness for your dealership.

The official start to summer is Sunday, June 21^st and this day presents the perfect opportunity to reach out to customers with a seasonally relevant campaign. For many American families, the summer months mean packing up the kids and heading on a road trip to see family or spend some time vacationing. Today we’ll share three ways you can leverage these summer road trips to make your marketing shine.

Leverage Timely Marketing
When families pack for a trip to the beach or a week at grandma’s house, they think about essential items they will need for their trip. Some families even remember to have their vehicle serviced and maintenance items inspected before hitting the road. You can drive these families to your dealership by delivering a timely message with service discounts specific to their needs. Think about it; if you know most families will be taking a vacation in the next 60 days, then right now is the time when you should be communicating a road trip service package that will ensure their safe arrival.

Help Customers Be Prepared
Some families are super prepared for road trips, remembering to check their spare tire, engine fluid levels, tire pressure, and have their recommended maintenance performed. Often times these families don’t have any emergency backup in case of a vehicle breakdown. Think about offering customers an emergency vehicle kit with every service over $100 or selling them in your Service Department. These emergency kits can include things like roadside flares, a first-aid kit, jumper cables, etc. with your dealership’s branding.

Remember Roadside Assistance
Getting ready to take a family road trip can be overwhelming. There are so many things to remember to pack, endless errands to run, and don’t forget the directions to get to the destination. Sometimes information for roadside assistance is not always stowed in the vehicle and can be forgotten in the clutter of to-dos before a big road trip. Send a helpful reminder to customers to remember their roadside assistance information when traveling this summer. If applicable, offer the roadside assistance information from your dealership’s manufacturer so it’s handy and accessible for customers. For customers who may not have roadside assistance for their vehicle, offer up a recommendation for where they can purchase it.

The summer travel season is in full swing and families everywhere are loading up the kids and hitting the road. Don’t miss this opportunity to drive additional business to your Service Department and top of mind awareness for your dealership.