A lot of dealers seem confused about why they should be doing Social Media, SEO, PPC, reputation management or other digital marketing initiatives. Most of them feel that it is to “sell more stuff” but don’t see much of a direct correlation between doing digital marketing initiative A/B/C and additional people walking through their door. The easy answer is… oh wait… there is no easy answer in 2019!
Social Media and most other digital marketing disciplines in the non-automotive/commercial/recreational dealership world actually meant to have a direct correlation with your sales – typically. Yes they can BUT they are part of a larger approach to reaching new and current customers. That broader approach is called the Customer Journey.
Things are different today than 5, 10, 20 years ago. Accept it. It’s reality.
I’ve had dealers tell me they weren’t going to do X, Y or Z because they don’t understand it and don’t want to do add to their list of things to do. I’ve even had dealers complain to me that customers should go back to the way they sold stuff 25 years ago. The unvocalized commentary in my head says something like this, “Hey dumb-ass… get with today” or, “So you aren’t interested in customer service?” or, “a large percentage of your customers weren’t of age to be a customer of yours 20+ years ago so…” or, “Take a deep breath Mark… it’s going to be a long conversation with someone who probably likes to yell at the clouds.”
OR something like that.
Not so long ago there was essentially 4 ways to advertise. 1) Television, 2) Radio, 3) newspapers/trade pubs, 4) have a great location. Today #4 can still play a very strong role on your sales depending on what you sell and who you sell to. TV is super expensive and more and more people PVR or don’t pay attention to local stations. They are probably watching a channel that is US based or national in focus anyway. Radio has it’s place. Yep… that’s me, a digital marketer, is saying that radio has a place. For some it works, for most it is a waste of time/money. As a form of branding or special event advertising, it can work great. it CAN but it certainly isn’t a certainty. Local newspapers… so what the heck is a newspaper anyway??? 🙂 Trade publications can be get you some customers maybe but typically the readership is quite small and you have no way of knowing how many true readers there are.
Today the customer journey is has WAY more touch points in it that ever before. When at Trader, I remember an internal study done around 2010 saying the average car buyer had 12-14 touch points before making a purchase. When the study was redone in 2015, the average buyer had 26. In 2019, Google said the average car buyer had over 70! Your customers are changing so you had better give them what they want, how they want it.
The idea is to position your business within EACH of the steps of your customer’s journey. That journey begins when a consumer thinks about buying product X and ends AFTER they end up buying it. That is exactly why leaving your marketing decisions to 1 or 2 vendors can be very harmful to your business. All they want to do is tell you a story that fits into their suite of products and doesn’t take the proper holistic approach to you OR your customer. That is why there is no set answer to 100% marketing effectiveness.
That isn’t to say though that the right mix of products, services and initiatives can’t work – they definitely will, it just may take a bit more than simply throwing your inventory up on Kijiji and having a pretty website.
WAAAAAY more – but there is a mix that can and will work for your dealership. Let’s chat about trying to find that right mix today!