Customers - New Customers VS Repeat Customers

Most every dealer spends a ton of energy, money and time on obtaining new customers. I am an eager and continuous student of marketing and business and if you’re an eager beaver, you’ve probably also read a few books and articles about different marketing strategies designed to help you get more new customers into your dealership.

It seems that every week or month there’s some new advertising technique promising you the best way to get to attract more clients.

It is proven that continual new customer acquisition proves to be very costly. So, as new or used car dealer, how do you compete? How can you get more paying customers through your showroom, parts and service counter?

No doubt about it—getting new customers is tough, and in the current economy, even more so!

Is there a better way to expand your dealership sales and service?

Oh yes there is! 

As a manager or DP, you know just how difficult it can be to get new customers.  Would it not be smart to hold onto these customers for as long as you can?

 

Repeat Customers

It is much cheaper and quite simple to grow your current customer base into more paying customers  rather than trying to attract new customers. It’s also proves to put more cash into your pocket!

If your dealership is looking to fix your draining customer base, simply add more to their experience.  Selling more services and / or vehicles to customers who already have dealt with your dealership (and know who you are) is far easier than attempting to stretch across your city in search of new customers..

Think about it this:

Who would you rather call:  

a) Customer who you know will probably buy

b) Someone you’ve never met, to whom you’ll have to explain your dealership and services and convince them it’s got value and that you are a trustworthy and reputable business?

Over 90% of dealers will pick going after new customers.

But the smarter dealers who choose existing customers who already find value in your dealership and on top of that - they trust you. That’s why they’re your customers.  It’s easier, and there’s a greater chance of selling them parts, services, oil changes and a new vehicle.

Building trust in your customers is a constant up-hill battle. Nearly every new customer has a strong distrust taste in their mouth at the start of any sales cycle.

Start by thinking of yourself as a customer. When approaching a car dealership, do you immediately trust the high pressure sales rep? I am guessing not unless you know them / were referred to them or ready many, many testimonials. Even after this you might still need to verify everything you have been told.

Now, your prospective leads are in no way different and why should they be - People don't trust car dealers...?

No matter whether you are a new or used car dealer; your best bet to increase your profits is to gig deep with your existing customers. Plus, the longer they deal with your dealership the greater chance they will talk about you with the friends / family and spend more money at your dealership.

Take the time to increase your customer base and referrals with our effective services at www.automarketingprofits.com

Is Your Dealership Website Working For You Or Not?

Note: Before you begin, if you're NOT 100% serious about getting your dealership website to the top of Google, Yahoo, and MSN, don't read another word.

If you're anything like I was when I first began online, your dealership probably has a website in the last year or two.  It may or may not be converting visitors into actual leads but you are happy with it.

The company who built it submitted it to a few search engines and you were hoping that people would mysteriously show up at your site and buy whatever it is you were selling.

After a couple of weeks go by and only a few stray people show up at your website, you decide to try and "optimize" your website around your main keyword in hopes that you just might rank well in 1 of the millions of search engines. Another couple of weeks go by and still no luck.

At this point you probably give up and decide to either build another website around a different target

market or just lose all hope and quit. Well, news flash, as you've probably figured out by now, this is not the way to go about doing things.

Let me give you a specific example of what your very first steps MUST be when creating any website... no matter what the subject matter.

 

In our example, let's create a "car loan" related website. Before we start creating and collecting content for the website, we need to do a little keyword research. This is VERY important and should not be skipped. To do our keyword research we need to visit a few websites.

The first of which should be http://www.goodkeywords.com/.

They have a very good keyword tool, and best of all it's free! Once we've downloaded this software, we can enter the most generic keyword for our website into the software. In this example, our keyword would be "car loans".

If you looked at the example you will see how many times per month people were looking for "car loans".  Do NOT start out by optimizing for a generic keyword that is searched too many times.  Go for keywords that are searched a bit lower and target for your general area.

Now - you can go to your own dealership website and do some research to see if that company that built your site actually knows what they are doing.

Car Dealer Lead Follow-up Sequence Example

The following follow-up example is a must use if you are truly looking to increase sales.  This is tried and used by the top sales companies in most every industry and you would be wise to follow a system setup like this example.

1. Visitor requests information and or a report from your website (you cap­ture the visitor’s name, fax, email, telephone, and mailing address).

2. Immediate: Email confirmation sent to prospect thank­ing them for requesting the information or report.

3. Same Day: Send a “Watch Your Inbox” email. When it arrives, it tells the prospect to check his or her email for the free report arriving tomorrow.

4. Later Same Day / Next Morning: Email the free information or free report to the prospect  

5. Day 2: Free report arrives by email, along with a special offer that expires 30 days from the initial request. (maybe free oil change or special on parts)

 

6. Day 5: Follow-up email arrives. It asks if they read the report, and whether they have any questions.

 

7. Day 7: Testimonials email is sent (helps to overcome a common customer objection).

8. Day 12: Second email sent. This includes the free report again and reminds them that they have a limited time to respond. Also includes a special bonus of­fering for responding sooner.

9. Day 21: Second testimonial email sent. Helps over­come another common objection and reminds them they have only a few days left to take advantage of the offer.

10. Day 26: “Time is Running Out” email sent.

11. Day 29: “Final Notice” fax sent.

 
12. Day 33: Email out a “Why Didn’t You Respond” email survey.
 
134. Beyond: Send additional follow-up (weekly or monthly, depending on how good your information is) for 23 more months AT LEAST!

Now, this is simply a template you can use. You may need to modify the spacing of the steps to suit your needs. But once you’ve got your follow-ups written, you’re ready to go.

Now, you may think this is far too much follow-up but you should not.  On the other hand if the information you send is not of interested to your lead... You may be right.  Make sure the information you send them is informative. 

When you place this type of follow-up system into your dealership you will be increasing your phone calls, emails and walk-ins.

Be sure to use Microsoft Outlook or some other reminder to keep on track with this system.  There are many Free Reminder services to use out there.

If your looking to for more ways to get ahead of your competion... AMP Solutions may just be the extra step you are looking for.

Visit www.automarketingprofits.com for more information.

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.