Marketing Ideas for Small Car Dealerships: 5.5 Ideas that will pay off today

How do you succeed in the hyper-competitive New York auto industry?  Try these Marketing Ideas for small car dealerships that can’t afford to advertise on every TV Channel, throw huge parties, or waste thousands on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising?

Marketing Ideas for small dealerships that work

In his classic marketing Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson reveals “Secrets for making Big Profits from your Small Business.”  Your New York City dealership might be small, but your investment in your company needs to pay off.  Preferably without having to outspend your competition on traditional advertising.

Here are 5 advertising tips that can help your car dealership…

…without breaking the bank.  “Marketing is everything you do to promote your business.”  As a small dealership, your size is your advantage:  you can try new ideas, “turn on a dime” to try something new without layers of bureaucratic approvals. These ideas are all focused on

• competitive differentiation
• non-traditional advertising techniques
• unconventional use of media

Try any of these marketing tips…

…and you’ll see how fast these simple marketing tactics can pay off:

1. Networking: get your salespeople out of the showroom and where their customers are: the local chamber of commerce, networking groups like BNI, Town Events and County Fairs.  Instead of a booth arrange to display a great looking new red car.  Why red?  Red gets noticed. (Red gets more tickets).
2. Birthday Cards: when you make a sale, or meet a potential customer, ask what their birthday is.  Then, send them a card every year (there are services that will do this for you if you prefer) to remain “top of mind.”
3. Social Media: sure, everybody does it.  But why not snap a picture of your happy customer when they pick up their car, Photoshop in your hashtag, and send it to your customer to post on social media.  Offer a free “ad specialty” if they post it.
4. Advertise where your market is: Then try parking at the local Little League or Soccer game and give away coupons for a free hot dog from the food truck. Or try similar on-site advertising at the Boy Scout Meeting, YMCA, Science Fairs, Independence Day Fireworks, or other popular town events.
5.  Ask for reviews: If you provide top quality service, this is an instant winner.  When you shop for anything on Google, you look for 4- and 5-star reviews.  Do you have them?  Make sure to follow up with customers about a week after you deliver the car.  They’ll be impressed with your thoroughness, and you can ask for a review.  There’s even a simple way to get only 4- and 5-star reviews posted, and lower reviews referred back to you for more service.  Click here to find out how.

• Bonus Idea: New Yorkers are impatient. Don’t ever waste a moment when you’ve got your customer’s attention.  Even when you place your telephone callers on hold, give them information that they want and that you want them to have about the best reasons to come into your dealership.  Do it with Informer Messages on hold. 

Try Marketing Ideas for small car dealerships like yours

Think outside the box.  Why?  Insanity is defined as doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.  So don’t.  Try something new.  Something offbeat.  Each of these marketing strategies is inexpensive, and you can try it once and move on.

What are you going to do to beat the “big guys” in the next town?  To learn more about any of these ideas for Auto Dealerships, give us a call in Manhattan at 212-355-6980, or nationwide at (800) 862-8896.

 

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Improve Customer Service, or your competition will

It’s time to improve customer service, or your competition will.  And that won’t end well for you.

The economy may finally be slowing down.  When that happens your customers will remember to look for more value in everything they do.  Money isn’t as easy to come by.  And they’re all so used to finding everything for free online.  So companies like yours can only actually charge for your products and services if the customer is overwhelmed by service that they can’t get anywhere else.  So where should you start?

Improve Customer Service one step at a time

“Perfect is the enemy of good.”  That’s as true today as when a French philosopher said it in the 1700’s.  So start improving your customer service one step at a time, investing your efforts where they’ll have the most impact.  Some simple examples are:

1. How you greeting your customers when they step into your place of business.  If you have a retail store
2. Engage with your customers: we’re all more “social” these days, so find new ways to engage with your customer every time you come into contact: when they walk in the front door, when they call you, when they email or text you, when they post on your social media platforms.
3. Understand your customer: Boomers want face-to-face contact.  They’re also the generation that invented telephone quality that was “the next best thing to being there.”  Their grand-kids all have phones…but talk on them less and less.  Have you ever noticed that millennials’ voice mails are always full?  That’s probably because they never check voicemail.  They’d rather text.  It’s less direct, less pushy, and less threatening.
4. Follow up with your customers: once is not enough.  Keep in contact with your customer throughout the sales process, and continue while deliver your product or service.  Good restaurant servers always check with customers a few minutes after serving their meal, so why not do the same thing: contact your customer (there are so many ways: in person, by phone, email, text…) a few days after your deliver.  They’ll be impressed with the attention you give them.
5. What language do your customers speak?  In our increasingly multi-language economy, it makes sense to “speak their language.”
6. When engaging with your customers, actually listen.  Echo their sentiments.  Try to understand what they really mean.  “Empathy” is so powerful it’s gotten Presidents elected.  Think about what it can do for your business
7. You’ll make mistakes.  We all do.  So admit them, tell your customer what you’ll do to fix them, and do it.  They’ll appreciate it.
8. Help your employees understand the value of great service.  Listen to their interactions with customers and coach them to improve.  The customer is the reason we’re here.
9. Solve problems: avoid being negative.  Keep everything positive and focused on helping the customer.  If you can’t help them right away, be positive and let them know when you will.
10. And a related idea: respond to every complaint.  View complaints as great ideas about how to help every customer better.  After working in your business for years, it’s easy to be “set in your ways” and not recognize needed improvements.  What complaints have you heard recently?  Use them as challenges to overcome.

Improve your customer service every day

This is just a few ideas.  Try reading “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard.  When your customers love you, they become your most valuable sales force.  Or search more ideas online.

Take one step

Take one step and put it into action.  Then try another.  They’ll all add up faster that you can imagine.

Here’s another way to improve

Do customers call you for information, ideas, or to find out if you can help them?  AT&T Research shows that 69% of business calls are placed on hold.  So when you put your caller on hold, do they like it?  Why not turn it into a unique customer service experience with Informer Messages on hold?  They’re custom written marketing message that give your callers information that they want, and that you want them to have.  Call us for more information at (800) 862-8896, or click here to find out more.

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Marketing for movers: 3 steps that are more important than getting leads

Marketing for movers is more than just getting leads.  Think about your own experience: how leads did you work on last month?  How many of those turned into jobs?  With a “batting average” like that, would you make it into Cooperstown?  (I didn’t think so)

So what’s the problem?  And the solution?

Marketing for movers only starts with a lead

Leads come in every temperature, from red hot to ice cold.  So how what can you do to warm more of them up, and close more deals?  Believe it or not, it’s more than just coming up with the lowest price.

First, start with quality leads.  Lead brokers will sell you a lead to anything that’s alive.  Those are “a dime a dozen” and rarely worth the price.  Two types of leads that have higher value are “pay per lead” inquiries from websites like Angie’s List, and personal referrals you receive from networking.  I’ve seen movers get plenty of “warm referrals” from networking groups like BNI.  Invest time and energy at BNI and you’ll get quality leads.

Moving companies need a quality website

Potential customers start by searching for local moving companies.  Be sure that your website shows up on page one.  Great reviews will help get you there, and help attract a customer’s attention.  If you don’t have more reviews and a better Google rating than your completion, customers will call your competition.  Need more or better reviews?  Click here to find out how to get them.

Every mover invests in getting marketing leads

It’s what you do next that makes all the difference

1. Be Prepared.  When you’re generating leads, be prepared to answer phone calls with quality service.  Train your phone reps, or get help training them.  It doesn’t take much, but if you’re going to move all my valuable possessions I want to hire someone professional.  Prepare your pitch.  Prepare your best answers to “Frequently Asked Questions.”  Keep improving them to get the best response.
2. Have a Free Offer, such as a “Moving Guide” to send to your prospects.  When you do they’ll have a reminder about your company, and you’ll have their email.  Then follow up with a weekly email campaign using Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, or other easy to use service
3. Sound more professional.  Do you get a lot of phone calls?  Or when phone calls come in, do you have to transfer callers to a sales rep?  AT&T says that 69% of business telephone calls…your calls…are asked to “please hold.”  When you place callers on hold, what do they hear?  Dead silence?  VoIP music?  Why not make “hold” time a marketing opportunity with marketing messages that help you sound more professional, and reinforce the value you offer.  Informer Messages on hold have successfully worked for some of the biggest names in the moving industry.

Long term marketing movers

Try for future business.  Once you capture a customer’s email address, why not send them a helpful email every 6 months?  Fill it with tips that homeowners will appreciate.  Odds are that in 7 years they’ll be moving again.  7 years may see like a long time away, but in 7 years you’ll like it when they call you!

Sponsored by:

 

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Suggestive Selling : 5 ideas you can use to increase every sale

Suggestive Selling is a customer service technique that ends up helping you sell more to a customer who’s already buying something from you.  But unlike most sales techniques, it’s really just engaging with your customer, and can lead to more sales now, and in the future.  Do you have a strategy that can promise that?

This kind of selling starts after the customer starts buying

Why does it work?  In physics, Isaac Newton said that “A body in motion tends to stay in motion.”
In marketing it’s called the “Buying Mood” or “Propensity to buy.”

There are lots of simple techniques

1. Loss Leaders are the classic example: lower the price on an item to lure customers into the store. Then stock the shelves around that discounted item with other products that naturally go together with it, like:
   1. Discount the milk, sell more cookies or Hershey’s Cocoa
   2. Discount the peanut butter, and sell more bread or jelly
2. Engage with your customer. Look at what they’re buying.  And make creative  suggestions about what might go well with it.  A few examples might be:
   1. They buying shoes, sell them socks
   2. They’re buying dress shirts, sell them ties
   3. McDonald’s has sold billions of French fries with the phrase “Want fries with that?”
3. Amazon is great at making suggestions. They use data from millions of sales to suggest items that other shoppers have bought at the same time. A few examples might be:
   1. They’re buying today’s bestselling paperback, so sell them the author’s earlier novels
   2. They’re buying an iPhone so sell them a case, and ear buds, and breakage insurance
4. You can also recommend additional items to buy shortly after sale with a friendly and well thought out email suggesting additional purchases they might like, such as:
   1. They bought a new suit. Email them about discounts on accessories
   2. They bought a new computer. Email them about a new printer or backup protection
   3. They bought running shoes. Email them about athletic attire that will help them feel more comfortable while running, such as summer or winter weight apparel.

Don’t forget suggestive selling on the phone

Here’s the 5^th idea:
Did you know that mobile ‘searches’ generated 103 Billion phone calls to businesses like yours in 2018?

When your phone rings, it’s a customer (or potential customer) who needs something or has a problem.  They want to know if you can help them.

Good customer service means that you help them as efficiently as possible.
But we both know that #holdhappens.  You might be handling a “wave” of
calls.  It might be the lunch hour and you’re not fully staffed.  You might need to check
on inventory, or get an answer from another member of your team.
So callers get asked to “please hold on.”

That’s where Informer Messages can help.  They make “hold” time more
interesting and less annoying.  They can give callers helpful suggestions.
They can tell callers about natural “add on” sales…products that lots of
your callers will need, but often forget to buy.  Or new ways that you can help
them with the new product lines you now carry.

Every time you’re in contact with a customer it’s an opportunity: to help them better, to
sell more, and to make a more loyal customer.

These are five simple (and proven) suggestive selling techniques that anyone can use to increase every sale.
Which will you use?

To find out more about Informer Marketing Messages on hold and sell more on every
phone call, ask about how they can work for you by calling (800) 862-8896, or by clicking here for more information.

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Lifetime Value of a Customer, and why you can’t afford to ignore it

Do you think about the Lifetime Value (LTV) of your customers? When you do, you go beyond trying to make a sale, and concentrate on making a connection that will result in a hundreds or a thousand times as many sales.  It’s why companies like Apple, Amazon, Crocs, and Zappos do so well every year, while others “go for the big sale” but end up going out of business.  Which plan are you using?

What is Lifetime Value of a Customer?

Very simply is the sum total of what your customer spends today and forever.  If you buy a “Tall Latte” at Starbucks today and never come back, your value to the coffeemaker is $2.95.  But if you can’t do without your caffeine buzz every morning, and buy one every day, your value in an average year is $1,076.75.  Over the next decade you’re worth $10,767.50.  If you’re the average Millennial, you’re worth over $50,000.

Get it?  It’s not about selling a cup of coffee.  It’s about creating a customer for life.  Starbucks “gets” the value of a customer.

Until recently, only the sales force focused on closing today’s sale, and only the marketing department paid attention to LTV.

What you need to know about value

You don’t need to get bogged down in complex calculations: different customers spend different amounts every year, but you can probably spot both

• the average sale to a typical customer, and
• the average sale to your best customers (say, those that fall into the top 20%)

What’s the value knowing a customer’s value?

You invest in finding new customers: you spend on advertising, sales, PR, websites, email campaigns, product features, and more.  Understanding your average customer’s value will help you understand if you’re spending too much or too little.

High Value means it’s time to invest more

When the value of gaining and keeping a customer is high, it pays to invest more in customer acquisition and retention.  Above all, don’t lose them.  That means more than advertising and sales, it’s little things like saying “thank you,” providing great service from the start, and using every opportunity to engage and communicate with customers.  How?  Do you send an email newsletter?  Or “snail mail” flyers?  Do you have a “fan” page on social media?  Do you put wasted “hold” time to use with interesting “messages on hold”?

Customer retention increases the value of your company.

It’s supposed to cost 8 times as much to acquire a customer as to keep a customer.  Over a lifetime a customer’s value skyrockets.  Ask Starbucks.  Or your accountant.  The difference between businesses that thrive and those that die is customer retention.  That’s the first step to maximizing their value.

So, are you doing everything you can to keep every customer “for life”?

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