marketing for. car dealerships A quick guide to planning your campaign

Transcription

1 marketing for car dealerships A quick guide to planning your campaign

2 Contents Why marketing? Why marketing? Setting a plan Growing your list Structure, design and content ideas Deliverability tips Example layout explained Testing and improving Evaluating success The legals The 10 marketing commandments With lifestyles getting increasingly hectic, buyers are spending more and more time hunting for cars online. Customers are always searching for the best deal and you want your dealership to be the first port-of-call when the time comes to make that purchase. marketing is perfect for car dealerships because it is low cost, can be neatly integrated into your other sales tactics and can provide tangible results; such as a list of addresses of people who have clicked on a specific model or offer. According to the Direct Marketing Association, for every 1 you spend you will receive 42 in return. Many dealers focus on the initial sale and not the lifetime value of a customer. Permission-based marketing can work wonders in helping you build customer relationships, retain buyers for the long-haul and cross sell your stock and services. For more information about using marketing for your car dealership, please contact the little green plane team at info@littlegreenplane.com or call

3 Setting a plan Growing your list You ve decided to embark on a programme of marketing but where do you start? We would advise looking at your dealership s targets to assess what you are trying to achieve over the next 12 months. How can marketing help along the way? Try using some of the questions below to create an marketing strategy: How regularly are you planning to send your campaigns? Who will be responsible for your e-shots? Can you segment your audience? What tone will you use? What content and incentives will you offer in your s How will you grow your database? Over the next few pages, this guide will provide some ideas on all of the points above to help you get your marketing for your car dealership underway. You may already have a list of addresses of subscribers or may be starting from scratch. Either way, you ll probably be striving to grow your database in order to increase sales opportunities. Data is king in marketing. To get the best out of your campaigns, ensure you are using addresses of people who have opted-in to receive your information in the first place and keep your list up-to-date. You can grow your list in several ways: Put an sign-up form on the home page of your website (and a tick box under any data capture form) Also create a specific sign-up form page and put a link to this on your signature Include a Forward to a Friend link on your campaigns Include a section for customers to sign-up when completing paperwork or forms in your office When networking and using social media, ask can I add you to our mailing list? Circulate a sign-up form at any trade or customer event 02 03

4 Structure, design and content Deliverability tips What are you going to put into your marketing campaigns? Why not try: A weekly or monthly e-newsletter of your latest stock Video tours of your vehicles Guides: buying tips, car values Vouchers or offers for recipients birthdays and car purchase anniversaries Warranty or MOT extension reminders Book a service, call back request or appointment confirmations Offer the right cars and options by using surveys in the first place The main tips in terms of content are to keep it simple, keep it short, use the most important news snippet first and make sure you have a strong call to action. The idea of marketing is to drive traffic to your website where you can convert enquiries into sales. So you ve grown your data list and carefully crafted the content of your marketing campaign. Now all you ve got to do is make sure it hits the inbox of your recipient and not the spam folder. You can do this by: Creating good content and using clean data Using the pre-send spam tests provided by your marketing provider Making sure you include an unsubscribe mechanism Reviewing your delivery stats on a regular basis Avoid: Repeatedly using phrases like click here! or once in a lifetime opportunity! Exclamation marks!!!!!! USING ALL CAPS, WHICH IS LIKE YELLING IN Colouring fonts bright red, or green Sloppy HTML coding Using one big image, with little or no text Using a noreply@ address 04 05

5 layout explained From: a real person 2 To: only one recipient 3 Subject: direct and below 49 characters 6 4 Prominent contact information 5 Branded 6 Strong promotional area with primary call to action 7 7 Neatly organised body text 8 Additional call to action Secondary promotion area Cross selling zone Social media integration 9 12 Unsubscribe mechanism

6 Testing and improving Evaluating success If you ve been sending marketing campaigns for your car dealership for a while and are not getting the best open or click through rates, they may have become stagnant. Why not try testing and varying the following to see if it makes a difference on your sales and enquiries: How you are targeting your demographics (by age, sex, location) The time you are sending your campaigns (hour, day, month, seasons, holidays) Personalisation: do your campaigns work better with or without? The subject line; from questions, facts, to commands Tweak the length, layout and call to action location of your design The offer from money off, cashback to a percentage off a car or service Try changing the name and address of the sender (sex, seniority, info@ versus real person) You can evaluate success looking at the reports of each campaign and by benchmarking your original objectives as you go. There are many Key Performance Indicators you can set and monitor. Here are just a few examples: By campaign Number of opens Number of click-throughs Number of bounces Number of complaints/unsubscribes Number of opens vs clicks Link popularity Geographical opens Forward to a Friend numbers By objectives Total number of hits to your dealership website over the campaign period Number of vouchers or offers downloaded (and subsequently used) Number of car enquiry forms completed (and subsequently sold) Number of new subscribers obtained month-on-month 08 09

7 The legals The 10 marketing commandments marketing is governed by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of the Data Protection Act This states Any commercial motives must not be hidden You must provide a valid unsubscribe mechanism You must list your company details on your s You must not use competitions to gather lists unless participants have also said they are happy to receive updates If you are collecting data you must explain how you will handle it AND provide user access, ideally in a Privacy Policy (see blog) You must also be aware that by using the Forward to a Friend feature, you may be liable if this is forwarded to someone who complains. Due to the Data Protection Act, no provider will be able to give you specific data on Forward to a Friend apart from the number of people it has been circulated to. That s it! You should now be well on your way to creating effective marketing campaigns for your car dealership. Please find below our 10 marketing commandments to ensure you are practising marketing best practice at all times, and receiving the best possible results: 1. Thou shalt refine your subject line 2. Thou shalt use a prominent call to action 3. Thou shalt give value to your subscribers 4. Thou shalt use an opt-in approach 5. Thou shalt grow organic data 6. Thou shalt segment your data 7. Thou shalt set objectives 8. Thou shalt test 9. Thou shalt not spam 10. Thou shalt be legal 10 11

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