Jimmy Vee
If you are like several dealers today, your auto marketing strategy is on life support, one breath faraway from the grave. You as the owner or manager are most likely terrified, wondering “What can I do to resurrect my marketing efforts?!” “What’s modified?” And most importantly-”Where have all the business, ups and traffic gone?”
Well those are nice questions which I’ll cover now as part of the mandatory marketing CPR techniques you would like to bring health, life and vitality back to your auto business.
The “traditional model” of car dealer marketing is broken and no longer yields the results it once did. Call it the economy, call it the age of the web…call it whatever you wish…but simply know times have changed.
The second downside is that automotive marketing incest is rampant. Rather than testing the effectiveness of different selling strategies for themselves, dealers merely copy what everyone else is doing… and they too get stuck during this dead, outdated model as a result.
Therefore how can you reverse the code blue and turn things around this year? Consider the following:
1. Concentrate on the WHY, not the WHERE of Advertising
Most dealers obsessively wonder, “Where should I place my ad?” or “What’s the hottest media right currently?” And after they suppose they’ve found it, they recklessly pay cash while not knowing HOW or WHY that medium should work in the primary place. Till in fact they don’t see the results they wanted and declare triumphantly, “______ does not work.” Fill in the blank with whatever media you’ve got tried and were disappointed with. Then that media gets crossed off the list of attainable selections and you are one step closer to finding the magic media. Or so you think.
Well I’m here to inform you it’s not the media that’s the problem— it’s the broken, traditional model of car dealership marketing.
You have got to stop where to put your ads and instead focus on WHY you’re shopping for them in the primary place. The earlier you progress beyond the WHERE and into the WHY, the quicker you’ll pump out better and cheaper campaigns than the magic media you’ve tried in the past.
2. Move Beyond Make, Model and Price
If you’ll not be able to assume of something else to put in your ads other than make, model and price you are in SERIOUS need of intervention and very close to flat lining in business.
Why? Because everyone sells vehicles and features. If you give consumers no other reason for selecting you outside of make, model and price, you may finally end up right in the center of the commodity market where logic dictates the sale and you’re left short changed at the end of the day.
So if you wish to get rid of yourself from the commodities market and differentiate yourself from the competition, you’ll would like to….
3. Begin Selling Outcomes
Instead of harping on the options of your products and services, specialize in the precise reasons a prospect should choose you over everyone else and what they have to realize by doing business with your store. Declare to the world, “I’m the obvious choice! Doing business with anyone else would be foolish.”
After all this strategy is much more effective after you concentrate on and build your marketing around something the customer wants. Thus how do you do that?
Ask yourself the subsequent queries, “What are the big obstacles your customers face right now? How can you fix them? What do individuals have to gain by working with you? What do they lose by going with the guy down the road? What are your competitors missing? What do you do probably higher than anyone else?” Package that up, tie it to a powerful offer and you’re one step nearer to resurrecting your car business from the dead.
Another “lifesaving” distinction I’d like to make as you perform emergency CPR on your dealership this year is that marketing under the new model doesn’t need shopping for ad house simply to “get your name out there” or “build brand.” That is traditional and tends to be a waste of cash for smaller businesses.
Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller are the nation’s leading experts on attracting customers and the co-authors of Gravitational Marketing:
The Science of Attracting Customers. Get important automotive advertising tips for FREE by requesting their FREE video training called The New Rules Of Automotive Marketing created especially for Car Dealers and Managers by visiting www.RichDealers.com
