We’ll let you in on a little secret. For years, decades really, you’ve been able to throw some words and photos onto recycled trees, shoot a check out for $5,000 a week and create a line so long out your front door you were laughing. And now you have a virtual ad up every day for one quarter that price (or less for most dealers) and bang your head against a wall.
You might even think that your last print ad actually did better than any other source in recent memory.
The only rules that changed when you relied on print was if your rep would “take care of you”, a competitor would drop out of the paper for a week, you had a better lost leader than the closest same-brand store or if you included dealer cash or bought down rate and nobody else did that weekend.
Nowadays how you show up, where you show up, when you show up doesn’t make sense to you and don’t have anyone even get you started on pricing as gross erodes, software tells you how to optimize your lot and competitors you’ve never heard of are showing up in your pump-in, pump-out report.
You would gladly spend $30,000 a month to see your latest promotion, however if another rep or consultant walks in with a haphazardly assembled SEO report telling you that their services are needed immediately for $2,000 a month you’ll give them the Axel Foley treatment in Beverly Hills Cop.
And now you’re told that your current website provider platform isn’t up to snuff (what is a subdomain or a second “site”??), your paid ads don’t convert, leads are down and your cost per sale is up. You’re pissed. And mostly because you don’t understand what to do and how to do it or how to get your vendor(s) to do it, not because your most important advertising source can’t work.
It’s your smallest investment (you’ll spend more in coffee services, porters and trips to 7-11 for Red Bull for your staff to start logging their ups and follows ups in CRM).
Studies don’t matter. Analytics don’t matter. Lead ROI doesn’t matter. Not until all of the basics are covered. Not until you have an understanding of your $700-$3,000 per month spend. It’s never been a pay-for-it-and-leave-it even though every vendor tells you it is.
Websites are one of your three greatest investments and the least expensive (the other two are your staff and your CRM). Don’t ignore it and them blame anyone else. You shouldn’t spend money for anything you don’t understand. Don’t be the one who knows more about what clubs Jordan was using last weekend, yet nothing about the platform your website runs on or that you need to deliver four sizes of your latest ads instead of one. Don’t get pissed off at one of your smallest line items, get smart and get results.
Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results
