Automotive Loyalty Program For Car Dealers

It is suggested that your dealership borrow a page from successful corporations and design your own loyalty rewards programs, to help customers feel appreciated and valued – and to keep word-of-mouth referrals flowing.

“Disney, Starbucks, Walgreens, and many other companies have using loyalty reward programs for a while now, but dealers can also benefit greatly from this.

Marketing is a dynamic field, and dealers are not immune to the changes in technology and media that drive the larger marketing machine. As a result, it is imperative that car dealer practices remain current on the latest promotional techniques, including marketing via the Internet.

“The future of car dealer marketing and promotions is going to be very interesting and ever changing.  As an example, in the last three years, the amount of consumers going online versus using traditional medias has been amazing. While this is good, it also brings a lot of competition.”

But there are some simple tips that your dealership should observe in order to tap into those potential profits, and to create some preemptive moves against the plethora of negative review sites that are springing up across the Web.

“One quick tip for all your readers is to have them go out and buy their own name as a domain name and add the word ‘reviews.com’ – for example, www.mydealershipreviews.com – and also the name of their city location – www.manhattandeealerreviews.com.. The reason is that the search engine Google is scoring ‘review sites’ as having a higher ranking than most other sites, which means that when a potential patient searches for your practice, the review sites will come up first in the search results.

Review sites will be popping up and are designed to generate complaints about businesses. You don’t want this. One quick strategy is to buy your site and have a professional turn it into a blog site, which won’t cost you much – maybe $50 to $150 bucks – and ask your staff and patients to go on there are post a review. Obviously we are going to only invite those who like us.”

This type of preemptive approach offers several advantages.

You’ll own your piece of real estate online, before a competitor comes along and takes your name,” he said. “And secondly, if you start getting a lot of good comments from customers, your search engine rankings will go up! Plus, the customers who call your dealership will be coming from a third-party endorsement page, even though you own it.”

One more quick strategy is to go out to a website called: www.linkvana.com and sign up for a few hundred bucks. They’ll get high-quality links coming into your site which will help your search engine ranking. You can do this for your existing dealer site, and for the review site.

“This is basic Internet marketing, but it will get you started and get you results,” You may want to use a great online marketing consultant for better results - but this will get you started.

To kick-start your results give us a call at 1-866-927-0437 or email sales@automarketingprofits.com

Internet Marketing - Is Your Dealership Doing Enought?

Is your Dealeship doing enough online to expand your business sales and services revenue?

 

To better understand the latest trends in online car shopper behavior, consider the following statistics:

  

• According to PEW Research, almost three out of four U.S. adults use the Internet. It is an amazing resource for many people to do product research and purchase it as a

         hassle-free approach to shopping.

• More and more individuals are using the Internet to research vehicles. Almost 90 percent of consumers use the Internet to research vehicles - Capgemini Cars Online Study 2009/2010.

• According to the J.D. Power and Associates, 68 percent of used-vehicle buyers and 77 percent of new-vehicle buyers use the Internet in their shopping process.

• According to National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), nearly 90 percent of car buyers today are using the Internet to help make their purchasing decisions.

  

• Investments have been steadily increasing over the past few years in Internet marketing. According to a survey from Autobytel, 93% of dealers have increased their online marketing budgets in the last five years - more than half (56%) have increased their online marketing budgets by 50% or more.

 

These numbers clearly show that it's more important than ever for auto dealers to have an online presence. Despite this, some auto dealers still dedicate only a fraction of their advertising budgets to online

marketing.www.automarketingprofits.com

Car Dealer Advertising - What Makes Great Copy?

Does your dealership advertise using copy?  Great copy is more than just a sales pitch.  It may tell a sotry such as the way your dealership become number 1, ore it may describe your own experience with vehicle purchasing or getting the best price.

Those dealers who have experience in copywriting will always try to find a unique angle that relates to their audience.

Great Copy Sells To Your Prospects Heart

By finding something that your prospects can relate to, you will be able to appeal to their inner workings... Or emotions.  Research shows that people buy with their emotions and then look for a rational reason for the purchase afterwards.  Good copywriting spells out the benefits (not features) of your dealership and service to prevent your customer from having to think for themselves.

Here are a few tips to get you going:

• Use slang if appropriate
• Use fragmented sentences if they can create impact
• Use short punchy words rather than long complex ones
• Spell out your meaning simply rather than using clever word plays or subtle hints.

However, don't get too relaxed or your writing will lose credibility:

• Check your work for typos
• Don't use too many CAPITAL LETTERS
• !!! Exclamation marks lose their impact when used to often !!!!

Who At Your Dealership Should Write Your Sales Copy?

Here are a few reasons why YOU - the DP or Manager are the best person for the job:

1. You know your dealership, vehicles and services better than anyone
2. You know the characteristics of your target customer better than anyone
3. You are honestly passionate about your dealership and your history

Here Is Some Homework To Get You Started

Start collecting sales pages from newspapers, magazines and flyers that catch your eye.  Place these all into a folder or binder.  Pull these out when you are ready to start writing some of your own sales copy.

To learn more about selling more vehicles and increasing profits each month; simply contact us at: sales@automarketingprofits.com for a full Free Consultation.

How To Increase Business At Your Dealership... Fast

Most Dealership owners and GMs I speak with on a  regular bases are most interested in advice to spark up sales, and all of these same people see the “solution” to that question as *new customers*.  They all want to know how to acquire more new customers.

Acquiring new customers is very expense and requires large investment and risk of ROI.  After all, traditional advertising is pricy and always contains a risk.

Dealerships could instead, easily increased their monthly sales without adding a single new customer.  The increases are readily available within their own customer data base.

The smart and savvy Dealership, who will survive whatever impact the current recessions has on his business, places great importance on “the customer” and seeks out to maximize their “Total Customer Value”.

3 Basic Categories of Customer Standards

1)     Minimum Customer Standards:  This Dealership will do just enough to comply with any laws, staying out of trouble, and deter lawsuits or returns for any vehicle return.

2)     Average Customer Standards:  This Dealership will give the customer “fair exchange” – reasonable value for their hard-earned dollars, no less and no more.  Most Dealerships are right here, and as a result they will get average results during good times and will turn a profit and continue forward in business.

3)     Maximum Customer Standards:  This Dealership (and there are only a handful in Canada) asks the question “not how we can get more sales, but how we can give more and better service”.  This is the right question to ask.  The Dealership owner who is constantly striving to better reward his customer for their patronage is taking the maximum customer value and will be rewarded.

Take Home Information

1)     You and your staff need to get together and compile the longest most detailed list on how you would like to be treated if you were the customer.  Think how you would be most appreciate being treated and continue to add to this list.

2)     Any bad relationships between your Dealership leaders and your sales team / finance or service staff will find its way to your customer. 

Make no mistake about this information.

To learn more about selling more vehicles and increasing profits each month; simply contact us at: sales@automarketingprofits.com for a full Free Consultation.

Car Dealer Marketing - Birthday Marketing At Your Dealership

Using your customers’ birthdays is an excellent way to boost sales and service at your local Dealership.

Here are some ideas to make your customers’ birthdays a branding, loyalty and revenue-generating event.

What’s in a Birthday?
Quick answer: a lot. Knowing a customer’s birthday is especially important if can created gift material. Many companies go all out when marketing for gift-giving holidays. A birthday is a personal gift-giving, gift-receiving holiday, and e-mail is the perfect channel for targeted messages to take advantage of the opportunity.

Don’t Have it? Ask.
Make providing a birth date voluntary. Tell customers what is in it for them (such as a free oil change or a tire rotation / check when they come to your Dealership during their birth month). Your best customers should have no problem giving you that information.

Before the Big Day
Send the e-mail a few weeks before the customer’s birthday. Remind them to view your gift idea and forward gift ideas to people who are shopping for them. Think about it: If you get 100 customers to view birthday gift and they send gift ideas to ten of their friends, you will receive exposure to 1,000 new potential customers. Now that’s powerful.

Happy Birthday to You
This is part two of your one-two birthday punch. On or around the big day, send a second e-mail acknowledging the occasion.

 E-mail messages that perform the obligatory, “Happy Birthday from everyone here at ABC Dealership" are nice sentiments, but you can go beyond them to address your bottom-line goals. Offer gift-appropriate items (an oil change / tire rotation) or other. You will generate customer loyalty and appreciation. Additionally, many people may bring someone in with them to receive this gift.

Don’t Skimp on Copy or Design
Use a professional e-mail marketing tool, and do not send from your personal e-mail account. Your e-mails need not be elaborate, but they do need to be engaging, like any other marketing message.

Birthdays can easily leverage the power of marketing and increase your return on investment from one of your most valuable assets—your existing customers. Give it a try and let me know how you do.

Is your Dealership interested in becoming King-Of-The-Hill for your area? If so, contact us now as our 6-month special is available to new clients to showcase our results.

Contact us at: 866-927-0947 ext. 4

Automotive Take-Away Selling Techniques - Strategy # 10

When your Dealership limits the supply of your inventory or services in some way (i.e. takeaway selling), basic economics dictates that the demand will rise.

In other words, people will generally respond better to an offer if they believe the offer is about to become unavailable or restricted in some way.

And of course, the opposite is also true. If a prospect knows your vehicles will be around whenever they need it, there’s no need for them to act now. And when your ad is put aside by the prospect, the chance of closing the sale diminishes greatly.

It’s your job, therefore, to get your prospect to buy, and buy now. Using scarcity to sell is a great way to accomplish that. 

There are basically three types of takeaways:

1)     Limiting the quantity

2)     Limiting the time

3)     Limiting the offer

In the first method, limiting the quantity, you are presenting a fixed number of widgets available for sale. After they’re gone, that’s it.

Some good ways to limit the quantity include:

• only so many vehicles available
• selling off old inventory to make room for new
• limited number of non-certified vehicles, or a fire sale
• only a limited number being sold so as not to saturate the market
• etc.

In the second method, limiting the time, a deadline is added to your offer. It should be a realistic deadline, not one that changes all the time (especially on a website, where the deadline date always seems to be that very day at midnight…when you return the next day, the deadline date has mysteriously changed again to the new day).

Deadlines that change decrease your credibility.

This approach works well when your offer or the price will change, or the vehicles or sale will become unavailable, after the deadline.

The third method, limiting the offer, is accomplished by limiting other parts of the offer, such as the guarantee, bonuses or premiums, the price, and so on.

When using takeaway selling, you must be sure to follow-through with your restrictions. If you say you only have 20 "Kia Rio's" to sell, then don’t sell 21. If you say your offer will expire at the end of the month, make sure it does. Otherwise your credibility will take a hit. Prospects will remember the next time another offer from you makes its way into their hands.

Another important thing you should do is explain the reason why the offer is being restricted. Don’t just say the price will be going up in three weeks, but decline to tell them why.

Here are some examples of good takeaway selling:

“Unfortunately, we can only handle so many clients. Once our plate is full, we will be unable to accept any new business. So if you’re serious about grabbing the deal of a life-time and building your credit faster than ever before, you should contact us ASAP.”

“Remember…you must act by [date] at 5:00pm in order to get our 2 service bonuses. These bonuses have been provided by [third-party company], and we have no control over their availability after that time.”

“We’ve obtained only 90 of these premiums from our vendor. Once they are gone, we won’t be able to get any more until next year. And even then we can’t guarantee the price will remain the same. In fact, because of the increasing demand, it’s very likely the price could double or triple by then!”

Remember when I said earlier that people buy based on emotions, then back up their decision to buy with logic? Well, by using takeaway selling, that restriction becomes part of that logic to buy and buy now.

Is your Dealership interested in becoming King-Of-The-Hill for your area?  If so, contact us now as our 6-month special is available to new clients to showcase our results.

Contact us at:  866-927-0947 ext. 4

Sales Letters For Car DealersThat Get Results - Strategy # 9

Is your Dealership looking for a solution to your sales letters?  Well look no further for there is a well-known structure in successful sales letters, described by the acronym AIDA.

AIDA stands for:

• Attention
  
  
• Interest
  
  
• Desire
  
  
• Action
  
  

First, you must Capture your prospect’s attention. This is done with your headline and lead. If your ad fails to capture your prospect’s attention, it fails completely. Your prospect doesn’t read your stellar copy, and doesn’t order your product or service.

The next step is Interest - you want to build a strong interest in your prospect. You must keep them reading, for if they read, they ight just purchase from you.

Next, you channel a Desire. Having a targeted market for this is key, because you’re not trying to create a desire where one did not already exist. You want to capitalize on an existing desire, which your prospect may or may not know they already have. And you want your prospect to experience that desire for your inventory or a financial or vehicle services you offer.

Finally, you present a Call To Action. You want them to pick up the telephone, walk into your showrrom, whatever. You need to ask for the sale (or response, if that’s the goal). You don’t want to beat around the bush at this point. If your letter and AIDA structure is sound and persuasive, here’s where you present the terms of your offer and urge the prospect to act now.

A lot has been written about the AIDA copywriting formula. for many busienss and this will work for your store.

But I would like to add one more letter to the acronym:

S for Satisfy.

In the end, after the sale is made, you want to satisfy your prospect, who is now a customer. You want to deliver exactly what you promised (or even more), by the date you promised, in the manner you promised. In short, you want to give them every reason in the world to trust you the next time they need a vehicle.

Either way, you want your customers to be satisfied. It will make your Dealership  a lot more profits in the long run.

Looking for more ideas to increase your Dealership's success?

Go to http://www.automarketingprofits.com/automotive-marketing-books.html
to see some of the books we offer or simply give us a phone call to chat as we would be happy to help you and your Dealership jump to the next level!