Over the last several months, it’s been refreshing to see more and more automotive leaders shifting their focus from quantity to quality when it comes to their website traffic and overall marketing. Rather than holding value in the number of site visits, the value has shifted to the…

Sometime in the 1890’s, marketing pioneer John Wanamaker coined the famous phrase, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Personally, I have always hated this phrase. My old boss and mentor would say it to me all of the time. However, advertisers have lived within the confines of this mindset ever since.…

Whether you are the biggest shipper of PCs worldwide, a local bakery, or a small Mid-Western car dealership – you need to provide your customers with the best service support – and resolve all emerging issues in almost an instant.

Why? Your clients are demanding it.

SMS and other …

Deciding priorities when it comes to KPIs and ROI

It’s a conundrum auto dealers face in every aspect of the car business: go for ROI or most affordable?

Go with a factory-mandated…

An interesting study conducted by MaritzCX and published on CustomerThink relays how dealers should care about – and invest in – the creation of a better customer experience in their stores.

While customer experience can be vague, and in the past has mostly been measured through surveys and…

By now, pretty much everyone has heard about the power of social media and the effect it can have on businesses that are leveraging it to enhance their bottom line. What may or may not be known—even by the businesses that are using social media to their advantage—are the actual numbers that are churning behind the scenes of specific social campaigns. So how can…

Today’s car buying marketplace demands nothing less than a connected, personalized customer experience. Consumers want dealerships to know who they are and what their interests are, and to anticipate the types of cars and services they need. They want to reach their salesperson whenever it’s convenient for them, whether by…

Every now and then I find the automotive digital marketing controversies and handwringing on sites like LinkedIn, DealerElite.net and others to be both humorous and disturbing.

Humorous, because it’s really not all that complicated (yet some people insist on adding drama to everything); and disturbing, because no matter what the issue, the bad advice always seems to outweigh the good. (Usually because those creating the…

Most dealers understand the importance of customer retention. They’re e-mail-blasting sales messages, sending direct mail, and their salespeople are combing over thousands of client records in their DMS, making phone calls to previous customers and orphan owners. The problem is that many dealers don’t realize that, all too often, those messages fall on deaf ears. Dealerships spend tons of money sending messages to customers that are mostly irrelevant because some vendor promised huge results…

The question most pondered by businesses when advertising is perhaps the most important:

“What is my ROI?”

It doesn’t matter whether we’re discussing television ads, radio, 3^rd party leads,

that gorilla on top of your building, or the contest you’re running on social media; all roads lead back to the ability to answer that…

With so many options available when choosing how to allocate marketing budgets, dealers are increasingly finding themselves conflicted over what to use. Every dealer wants to know whether their marketing is producing results – whether that is in sales or service. And all vendors will attempt to show ROI for their services. Furthermore, how is a dealer to know whether the…

In a world filled with loyalty programs, it’s always interesting when I talk to a dealership that harbors doubts. The cost involved in having a loyalty program is minimal compared to the revenue generated. However, at times it seems as if dealers are intimidated by the effort it would take to administer one.

Loyalty program benefits and results are…

Sometimes our focus on growing profits can lead us to make decisions that have us working harder and not smarter. For example, cutting corners in regards to recruiting and training sales personnel. The fear of loss of investment if the employee leaves, can spiral into an evolving sales team in which more and more members lack the necessary skills to increase profits.

The…

"ROI" and "KPI" are the longest sustained buzzwords in the world of marketing. They've been around forever and while they might fade for a short period of time from the talking points in sales presentations and blog posts, they always bounce back up with a vengeance. We're on the high-buzz portion of the cycle right now and more people are asking again, "How can I…

Lost! Bought Elsewhere

Famous last words from the customer to help you be better next time. What value are you actually getting from a customer who bought a vehicle at another dealership? I say very little because at this point they are venting or pointing out where you failed in your sales process, but the truth is despite your best efforts to improve…

Some say that a dealer doesn’t need overnight chat operators because some research shows that only 10 percent of dealership web traffic occurs between midnight and 8 am. They estimated that with a 3 percent chat rate that would extrapolate to only 15 chats per month with 5,000 visitors. Here’s why even if those figures are accurate,…

No More Sharing Leads With Your Competitors…

Research indicates that buyers will only visit about three dealerships IN PERSON before taking delivery of their new car, but they may shop dozens online. How do you make sure your store is one of the few they visit? Connect with them using a live chat support software solution 24 hours a day, seven days a week.…

There was a promise silently made by social media a few years back. It was so prevalent at the 2009 round of conferences from NADA to Digital Dealer that many might have thought that social media would eventually encompass the entire internet marketing required by a dealership to be successful. The…

In constant pursuit of keeping up with the Marketing Jones Family, I came across a book by David Cummings and Adam Blitzer called Think Outside the…