A meaningful brand promise is essential to a successful dealership. It helps define your dealership for customers by telling them who you are, what value you bring to the table, and what unique factors differentiate you from your competition. The goal of your brand promise is to show your commitment to your customers, honestly and effectively.

Step 1: What Makes You Unique?

Start with how your dealership does business differently. You want your brand to stand out amongst all the other competitors. Here are some qualities to consider:

• Quality & Value
  • Does your dealership provide price validation, transparency in vehicle history, honest expert reviews, discounts, loyalty programs?
• Reassurance
  • Do you offer peace of mind with money back offers? Warranties?
• Vehicle Selection
  • What vehicles does your dealership provide? How do you help customers pick the best fit for their needs?
• Product Price
  • How do you price your vehicles? Are you a one-price store? Is your pricing consistent across your platforms?
• Sales approach
  • Is your sales approach quick or thorough? How do you pay your sales team and how does this affect the customer?

Think about each of these qualities and decide which lines up most with your core promise to customers. This is the part of your brand promise that your dealership will be known by.

Step 2: What’s Your History and Role in the Community?

Ask yourself: What impact has your dealership had on the community historically? How has your dealership grown and what tactics are you using to grow it further? Are you the largest in sales? Best in service?

Additionally, what aspects about you will your community find relatable and understandable? What is your local personality?

Step 3: Create a Powerful Brand Promise Statement

Combining your results from steps 1-2, draft a brand promise that most effectively describes the unique values and advantages of your dealership. It should be honest, concise, and understandable. It often helps to discuss your brand promise with other members of the company.

Here is an example brand promise statements from a successful dealership: “Offering a quality commitment on every pre-owned vehicle, including a 3 Day/3,000 mile money back guarantee.”

Step 4: Take Your Brand Promise for A Spin

Test drive your brand promise with current customers using surveys or focus groups. Do they think the statements accurately reflect who you are as a dealership? Additionally, have your sales team practice introducing and explaining the brand promise to customers.

Step 5: Go Public

Working with your communication and leadership teams, create a marketing strategy to introduce the brand promise to the masses. This might include:

• Signage featuring your brand promise hanging in the showroom
• Posting your brand promise prominently on your website and social media channels
• Printed materials given to prospective customers

Developing a simple, meaningful brand promise will show your customers why their experience with your dealership is going to be different, and better, than any other dealership they’ve dealt with. But most importantly, make sure you are delivering on that promise to customers every day.

It’s time to ask yourself an important question; what kind of impressions are your BDC teams giving to customers? As the saying goes, you never get a second chance at a first impression, and since your BDC team is often the first point of contact the customer has with your dealership, it’s important to think about.  

While their role involves setting appointments for each inquiry that comes in, their mission is greater than that. To have a successful BDC team, each person must be equipped with all the information needed to build quality, value, and most of all, excitement about your dealership and the car.

Let’s face it: your BDC team won’t be experts on all the cars and their respective features, especially off-brand vehicles. They may also be working at an offsite location and be managing 10, 20, even 30, dealership locations at once.

On the flip side, today’s savvy customers conduct an average of 14 hours researching vehicles before they buy. If you pair a well-informed consumer with a BDC rep who isn’t knowledgeable on the vehicle, it can be disastrous.

To level the playing field, dealerships need to give BDC teams the tools and technology to turn them into “instant experts” on every car in their inventory, both in-brand and off-brand.

To win more appointments, make sure your BDC teams can answer the following 5 questions, proactively and with ease:

1. Is this car right for me?
2. Am I buying a lemon?
3. Why is this car better than others I’ve seen?
4. Is this a fair price?
5. Why should I buy from this dealership?

Remember: customers don’t want to be sold to, they want the facts. They want product experts, not salespeople.

BDC teams can feel confident if they are able to educate the customer on what they might not already know about the car, such as:

• The vehicle’s OEM packages and the value of those packages
• J.D. Power Crash Test Ratings
• Carfax Vehicle History Report
• Kelly Blue Book Pricing and market average
• Warranty information

If the customer wants to think about it or talk it over with family and friends, utilize technology to send them an e-mail or text with the vehicle information. Not only does this create transparency, you’re also capturing their contact information.

It is the BDC team’s job to start building excitement to get customers in the door. A technology-enabled, repeatable process allows them to answer the customer’s questions intelligently and build that excitement. It creates BDC teams who are instant experts on every car on your lot, and customers who see the value of their next vehicle.

The average consumer spends roughly 14 hours doing product research before making a car purchase. They compare the many models, packages and options available at multiple dealerships, equating to a significant amount of time spent on dealerships’ vehicle displays pages (VDPs). In fact, consumers may actually spend less time in your dealership than they do on your website. 

Generic VDPs and vehicle descriptions are no longer going to work. Today’s consumers are used to every aspect of their online experience being tailored to them. To stay competitive, it is crucial to make your cars stand out with compelling, informative vehicle display pages.

Here’s what today’s savvy consumer is looking for when they shop vehicle display pages:

Be Transparent and Justify the Price

Consumers want more than just a broad overview. They want details about what makes your car unique. Justify the price by showing what makes your car stand out from similar models. Make sure to highlight interesting features or tech packages the vehicle may have. Try to anticipate what questions consumers will have, and use your VDPs to answer them. Transparency and accuracy is the key to building trust in today’s auto market. Make sure the information is thorough and correct.

Show ‘Em What You Got

Be visual! Strong images are another important component of your VDPs. Great vehicle photos make a huge difference, but they won’t do much good if the page is poorly designed. Think like your customer and make sure the page is intuitive. It should be easy to take all the information in, simple to navigate, and visually attractive. Remember, the organization of the page is almost as important as the information on it.

Keep it Mobile-Friendly

Fifty one percent of consumers said they used a smartphone or tablet in their vehicle shopping process, so it’s pretty clear the processes isn’t just done on desktops anymore. In fact, if your VDPs look great on desktop but miserable on mobile, you’re missing out on a significant share of the market. Make sure your VDPs are optimized for all screen sizes.

By the time the customer reaches your VDPs they probably have their search narrowed down to a handful of vehicles at an even smaller amount of dealerships. The quality of your VDPs and how well they showcase the vehicle are major factors influencing their final decision. With compelling and informative VDPs, you will be able to convert website traffic into in-store customers and buyers.