Just a few years ago, many marketing methods were considered “free” or “optional”.

Now they have their own budget. For time and money.

1. Define your marketing mission.

Your mission should not be something like “Sell my stuff.” No, no, NO! This is so 2005.

Here’s a great mission statement:

To engage, educate and entertain our customers and prospects by giving them extraordinary and unexpected value.

Before you pull the trigger on any marketing campaign, compare it with a clear purpose like this one.

Really ask and answer this question each time.

If it doesn’t fit, send it back to the drawing board.

And yes, this work will truly pay off in sales and happy customers.

2. Pick your people.

Social media, email, direct mail, TV, radio – especially if you control multiple dealerships – requires many good people.

If you think you can depend on just one “marketing” person per dealership these days, you’ll soon be broke.

Two can’t do it all either.

You need a team to handle it.

That’s why today in many dealerships you find Digital Marketing Managers, Graphic Designers, Community Managers and Social Ambassadors.

Or they simply hire a great agency to handle all these roles.

3. Be helpful, don’t just “do marketing”.

As Zig Ziglar often said, “If you help enough people get what they want, you’ll get what you want.”

Keep your focus on this.

The moment you set your marketing on cruise control and just do marketing, you’ll slowly start to lose your audience.

Yep. Guaranteed.

When the email leads come in, respond immediately. When someone calls your direct mail hotline, don’t let it go to voicemail – unless it’s 1AM.

Have you ever tagged an important person on social media and gotten an answer? Made you feel pretty special, right?

So respond! Every time. No exceptions.

If you’re not consistent, you’re nonexistent.

If you’re not mailing, emailing, posting and tweeting on a regular basis, you’re not going to reach your audience at all.

Notice that in all of this, there’s no mention of selling cars. Why?

That shouldn’t be your marketing goal. Really.

If you focus on selling, it won’t work. Lots of dealer experience proves this.

You must rather pay attention to connect with customers and impress your prospects. Build a value-based community.

That’s what works now.

Are you using all of these techniques to your advantage?

Contact National Auto Data for a free, no-strings-attached consultation.

We’ll examine every inch of your marketing goals, look at your competition and tell you something new.

Call us today at 866-363-9578 to get things started.

“The ability to put the right product in front of the right customer at the right time – personalization is the epitome of that now,” says Daniel Neukomm, CEO of La Jolla Group – the parent company of action sports apparel brands Metal Mulisha and O’Neill.

How do the discoveries of the clothing industry apply to automotive marketing?

At first, La Jolla Group sent emails in a batch-and-blast style and only segmented its customers based on gender. This wasn’t very successful in targeting the younger age group they were after.

However, through experience the company learned the importance of dividing their prospects up into more groups (segmentation).

They also took advantage of what’s called aggregated consumer data.

As people shop and browse, they voluntarily leave behind info useful for sellers.

The best data companies put these puzzle pieces together and offer a gold mine of information to help merchants better target consumers.

Store owners can learn so much about their ideal customer’s interests and lifestyle. And all of this is so powerful in predicting who will buy and when.

Neukomm adds:

“For a long time people thought that email was going to get phased out by social messaging, text, and other dominant channels. But the reality is our consumer is a media snacker. They consume content through so many different mediums – a lot of which they don’t really want commerce-type communications through….  I don’t know that a consumer wants to be sold something on Instagram; Facebook notoriously failed at trying to provide a shopping environment. It’s just wrong place, wrong time. Email is a place where consumers expect to talk about commerce.”

Yes, increasing open rates, click-throughs and conversions are all good goals. Yet more important than this is customer experience.

How will your communication make them feel about your brand?

Sure, recommending the right car to someone is important.

But making people happy and putting your brand in the back of their head?

Priceless.

Are you using all of these techniques to your advantage?

Contact National Auto Data for a free, no-strings-attached consultation.

We’ll examine every inch of your marketing goals, look at your competition and tell you something new.

Call us today at 866-363-9578 to get things started.

Not necessarily available for everyone to see, but on the internet.

Not only is there structured data, but unstructured data: Facebook status updates, Tweets, that book you purchased online.

More and more of this data actually is available for everyone to see. It forms a great grid, now being called the Internet of Things.

How can you use this? Here’s an example.

Twitter analytics now describes in detail your followers interests, gender, household income, consumer buying styles, net worth, marital status, education and wireless carrier.

All for free.

Not only does the GPS in your cell phone transmit your location coordinates. Your car also sends data to the manufacturer via OnStar or other services.

The internet itself is often referred to as the cloud. Why?

Every day there are more servers and computers placed on this giant network.

Since your data isn’t exactly all in one place, this huge network is aptly described as a large, constantly changing and growing cloud.

At first, we stored our data on floppy disks. Then there were CDs. Then DVDs. Then Blu Ray discs.

These worked well for the old desktop computers.

Yet today, we use laptops, tablets, smart phones, smart watches and other wearable tech.

We take our devices everywhere. And we want every one of these devices to access our data.

Years ago, all our software came on disks.

Later on, we began downloading our programs from the internet onto our desktops. (Where we still kept our data.)

Today, the cloud houses our data and our software. Software makers update their creations without there even having to be an Update button to press.

Nor do we have to reboot.

And, we can use our data and apps anywhere we take our devices.

All of this is known as Software As A Service (SaaS).

How is all of this an advantage to you?

First of all, you can use all this data from anywhere, with fewer interruptions.

You can use the data to find people who are more likely to buy your products and services.

More importantly, you can know exactly when they want to buy.

It gives you customer service and customer relationship management ability you’ve never had before.

You can tell when someone places something in a virtual shopping cart, but doesn’t actually hit the Buy button.

Why not email them a special offer?

Or, your car signals the dealership that it’s low on oil.

All of a sudden, they automagically get an oil change reminder and a coupon.

As you look around, you probably see your life being impacted by these changes more and more.

Are you using this data to your advantage?

How in the world would you know if the email or postcard you sent someone got them into your showroom?

As you know, ability to measure your automotive marketing success is critical. You can’t pump a lot of money into something that might work – or might not.

To bust apart this myth, here are five ways you can specifically measure your direct mail success.

1. Call Tracking

You simply assign a unique, trackable phone number to your marketing campaign. Do you send out multiple campaigns? No problem.

Phone numbers are inexpensive. Simply assign a different number to each campaign. Then you know exactly who responded to which campaign.

2. Promo Codes

Another great way to prove the success of your campaigns? Promotional codes. For each campaign, assign a unique code to the postcard or flier you send out.

How do you get people to tell you what their code is? Simply offer a discount for telling you the code.

Without fail, your responders will be happy to give this info to you!

3. Campaign Specific URLs

For each campaign you send out, make a landing page on your (or your promotional) website.

This is great for any sales campaign, and especially events at your dealership.

Make the URL of the landing page easy to type in. For example:

The “12345” in the URL above is a special code that’s unique for each person you target in the campaign. Your call to action on the flier will include the URL.

Your prospect simply has to type in the url with the promo code (once again offering a discount for the correct promo code). Again something people are happy to do in order to RSVP, get more information, claim a prize or get a discount.

Keep in mind that “promo10” would ONLY be used on that printed piece for everyone in that campaign. You would not mention or link to this page from anywhere else on your site.

This allows you to see the overall campaign success (promo10) and the response of each individual (12345).

4. Geographic Info

If your campaign was limited to a specific area or region, watch your showroom traffic in that region after sending the campaign.

5. Google Brand Searches

Even with specific instructions on your mail piece or email, people will still Google and go to your website. Even though they didn’t go to the landing page set up for them, you may still see a spike in your traffic.

With Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools set up, you’ll see this. Years of ad wisdom prove this out: people need to see your brand a few times before they respond. So, this is also a measure of success for your campaigns.

Yes, you can measure your direct mail and email results.

With the simple methods described above, you’ll see what you’re doing right and where you can improve your marketing.