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What The Watch Will Have You Watching as You’re not Watching What You Need To Watch

Not paying attention to mobile, tech and search is about to get more annoying…and costly!

What time is it? Really, what time is it? It’s not hammer time or time to get ill, although you may after reading this. It is time to consider where you SEE what time it is. For a lot of people in automotive (read: dealer principals, general managers, general sales managers), it’s usually a nice watch. And guess what? Within months, a lot of those people will be migrating to “smart” watches. Lots and lots of people will.

What does this mean for you? Well, truth is we don’t exactly know yet however know this…you’re about to get more annoyed from a cost and tech perspective. And to think, you were finally getting comfortable with spending money on SEO for your antiquated website 5 years after you should have been spending the money to DOMINATE your market and you just felt like looking into geo-fencing, although you still don’t get it.

Tech, and smart watches specifically, is going to continue the drumbeat of change and focus. Not to say everyone is going to buy a $10,000+ gold-plated Apple watch,. No. More people will be buying the Android watch that’s $499 at Costco right now!

Very few of you are going to think “great! A service app on someone’s wrist with integrated push notifications…I’m in!” Most of you are going to ask “what person would even want their smart phone that close to them?” or “Why do I need to pay attention now, until it’s more common?” or, the worst, “what spend any money on that?”

This is the real question you need to ask yourself, “will my platform, apps and communication be ready for this switch and what is a reasonable cost to be ready?” and for most of you, the answer is no. Look at your email templates and ask yourself are they mobile-ready today. (hint: most dealers have large/wide headers with links, some kind of framing, large/heavy graphics, video and other assets as part of your (non-relevant) emails you send to customers. Newsflash, you’re killing yourself and, if you have an OEM-pushed consultant coming in to your dealership, you’re even more in trouble. You’re not ready.

Tech, search and communication are changing at the speed of the consumer, and you have yet another wrinkle in your plan to do the same thing you were doing before you read this, so keep doing what you’re doing. Yes, car sales are up so dealers can make a lot of mistakes and still make money. The about-to-happen explosion of smart watches represent another example of how overwhelmingly wrong automotive retail marketing is. Now go put your Fitbit on your wrist that tracks you via GPS and uploads to your Strava account and do that run you were planning,. Nothing to see here, everything is fine …

 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

March 20, 2015 by Gary May 0
What Did Thanksgiving Do For You?

If you're in sales, chances are you needed the Thanksgiving day break.  Badly. If things are good or not-so-good, the day off allows you at least to decompress.  If you're in automotive, many would say that the break is more than deserved.  You should return with two things: the day off and something new.

Too often we take the greatest chance to improve and dismiss it with a focus on the short-term gain.  Will you return simply energized or with new, more aggressive goals and a dedication to really build your brand?  It's not only the things we're thankful for, it's also the things you plan on being thankful for.

If you sell, are you doing everything you can?  Using your CRM as a static database or a real tool?  Is the day after Thanksgiving the day that you start leveraging your website with live chat, video, widgets, blogs, calls-to-action to convert your traffic (campaigns, truly unique offers, integrated items, etc) and more.  Or maybe it's not time to do that.  Right?

Is it time to start customizing your newsletters and other email marketing instead of thinking that simply sending things out means you get results?  Maybe Friday is the day that you start holding vendors accountable.  Or when you start leveraging social media and online reputation management?  Yes, that means you'll have to start asking, connecting and setting expectations.

In order to expect different results, you must do different things and do them consistently.  If there's ever been a time to distinguish yourself, your brand, your dealership, your clients, your community and your industry, it's now.  The gloves are off.  The transparency is ever clear.  The opportunities are there.  The opportunities are yours.

Chances are most of your competition is going to be doing something when they come in Friday: the same thing.  What are you going to do?

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

November 26, 2009 by Gary May 0
Powered Webinar: “Influence the Influencer: Creating Brand Advocates with Social Marketing”

Featuring Jill Griffin and Allen Silkin

Date: Thursday, November 12th

Time: 2pm Central / 1pm Mountain / 12pm Pacific / 3 pm Eastern
Duration: 1 Hour

Get the details and register to attend

Consumers are more demanding than ever and earning their loyalty gets more
difficult every day.  Turning them into brand advocates is the holy grail of
marketing and the best source of advertising.  But many companies rely solely
on traditional marketing tactics to facilitate customer loyalty.  This
approach will fall short of the mark unless social marketing is
integrated into the mix. 

Join Jill Griffin, The Loyalty Maker, and Allen Silkin of Atkins
Nutritionals as they help you learn how to "Influence the Influencer:
Creating Brand Advocates with Social Marketing". To attend, please
complete the form to the right.

Social marketing helps companies reach audiences in new and more meaningful
ways and opens up incredible possibilities for building lasting relationships
with consumers.  Not only does social marketing provide a way to communicate
with consumers on a personal level, it also provides consumers a voice they
have not had in decades: they blog and tweet their brand opinions, they rate
and review products, they participate in online discussions and
they recommend brands based on their experiences.  If your company is looking
for ways to tap into social marketing to create brand advocates, then you
need to attend this Webcast.

Jill and Allen will discuss:

  • Four ways to tell if a customer in your advocate
  • How to climb Advocacy Hierarchy
  • Why complainers must be managed and how to do it
  • 9 ways to minimize detractors and maximize advocates
  • How to get online communities spreading your good name

About our Panelists:

Jill Griffin Headshot

Jill Griffin, The Loyalty Maker

Jill Griffin
empowers firms to attract, keep, grow and win-back high value customers.
Clients served include Microsoft, Dell, Toyota, Marriott, Hewlett-Packard,
Wells Fargo, Western Union, and Sprint. Jill's book
Customer
Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It
 was named to Harvard
Business School's Working Knowledge list and has been published in six
languages. Her coauthored book,
Customer Winback
,
earned Soundview Executive Book Summaries' Best Books Award. Jill newest book
is
Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer
Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World
 (Jossey-Bass/Wiley,
2009).

Jill serves on the board of directors for restaurant chain Luby's
Incorporated, a New York Stock Exchange company with 95 locations and roughly
six thousand employees. In addition, Jill serves on the board of the Austin
Convention and Visitors Bureau as well as the Tri-Cities Chapter of the
National Association of Corporate Board Directors. Jill has served on the
marketing faculty at the University of Texas (UT) McCombs School of Business.
Her books have been adopted as textbooks for MBA and undergraduate customer
management courses taught at UT, Northwestern, and other universities. She is
a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina Moore
School of Business from which she graduated, magna cum laude, with Bachelor
of Science and MBA degrees. In 2003, Jill received the Moore School's
Distinguished Alumna award. An in-demand speaker, Jill keynotes conferences
worldwide.

Allen Silkin Headshot

Allen Silkin, Atkins Nutritionals

Allen is a seasoned internet veteran who specializes in monetizing traffic
and content to generate revenue via advertising sales, ecommerce and
subscription sales. He experience includes managing internet operations at
CBS SportsLine.com, eDiets.com and HealthGrades, Inc. His knowledge includes
help companies improve their marketing efforts of social media, ad serving,
media planning, sales funnel optimization (A/B and Multi Variable testing),
search engine optimization and marketing.

Get the details and register to attend

November 11, 2009 by Gary May 0
Customer Relationship Management: It’s The Message, Not Software That Sells

Three vendors, multiple pitches, agonizing internal conversations, budget decisions, integration, contract, training and the big fat check (every month). Now: simply turn it on and have it send messages for you and you win! Right? Wrong!

How in the world are we continually convinced that a solution 'in the box' is the right one for our multi-million dollar businesses?  Are most dealers now buying software and technology the same way that we've bought DMS for the past 20 years?  We have Dell build our own laptops down the finest detail, change the covers on our cell phones so they're more 'us', put 20's on our otherwise stock cars, and wear clothes that says 'me'. But we send out messages to everyone that's the same and expect them to respond, let alone come in, buy and refer? What a joke!

Here's a clue: if it takes more work and you don't see the results immediately, you're probably heading in the right direction. Why would you send a message (email, text, direct mail, etc) to someone that has a F-150 XLT from your store an offer for a $29 oil change that has small print disclaiming the offer is for 4-cylinder cars? How about sending someone that just leased a new Lexus IS250 from your dealership three months ago an offer that's $40 less per month or that has $1,000 less drive off for the same payment?

If you want to use CRM, treat it like a CRM tool by segmenting your customers in your database, updating regularly, creating different campaigns (start with something difficult, let's say like whether they're male or female) and start with unique messages and offers. It might even work!

Do you use your CRM, an eNewsletter and a company that markets specifically for declined service follow ups (if not more vendors)? Since you've created your own mess, at least hold each vendor responsible to running consistent (non-concurrent) uniquely-branded content that offers readers something that they won't likely want to ignore. What's meant by ignore? If you statistics show supposedly great open and click rates and you don't see a relative increase in traffic, people are likely ignoring your messages.

Have you started using social media as a CRM avenue? Think about it this way: do you believe that you have more customers opening your newsletter (with the same content as everyone else in your PMA) or using Facebook regularly? Don't answer out loud, but why don't you put your current, and archived, newsletters with a link on your Facebook Fan Page and every time you update, all of your followers get it in their feed and emai?

Instead of spending $10,000 a month on direct mail with a 2-6% open rate, send them via Twitter, Facebook and Plaxo for practically $0 and schedule the offers to be sent on specific dates, specific hours and with exact details. Considering that likely under 5% of direct mail is actually integrated into all marketing, your social media CRM efforts will pay huge dividends with less effort. Remember not to forget the most important part, the message.

If you believe that Customer Relationship Management is still about advertising, be prepared to have your (rear end) handed to you by more dynamic, engaged dealerships that have embraced the digital CRM revolution in addition to their CRM software. If the emails you send out to leads don't even have a link to your favorite reputation management site, links to your social media profiles and at least a 'why to buy' item like an intro video or photos of the car they will likely buy, you need to stop and really think over your CRM plan.

Treat Customer Relationship Management as its name implies rather than the 'other' CRM: customer-regardless mumble-jumble. Oh, and one more point: never stop asking questions. It's what you do when you stop talking and start listening.

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

November 1, 2009 by Gary May 1