by Darren Matassa, General Sales Manager
Starboard Communications LTD.
How you attract car buyers, repeat customers and create revenue streams during this current economic climate requires a good look at all the marketing touch-points and tools you have with a fresh approach to how to re-combine them in order to help keep profit centers functioning.
More importantly, it is critical to be acutely aware of the necessary optics with respect to your displayed sensitivity to the shared uncertainty and the social responsibility required on behalf of your staff, clients, potential clients and business partners.
We too are very concerned for all our clients and understand the difficulty each client is experiencing when trying to re-evaluate a solid marketing plan moving forward with favourable optics.
As we deal with many categories of business on a day-to-day basis as a marketing resource as well as being able to supply very large audiences to which our clients can focus their marketing messages; we are aware of many successful approaches using what may be your existing marketing tools, and perhaps suggest a better way of using them and we can provide the opportunity to expand or better-focus your tools into larger sources of traffic and revenue.
With all these observations in mind, we would like to share some thoughts and suggestions that could help expand your marketing audience size and have a positive financial impact on all your dealership’s profit centers.
Car dealers typically rely on a myriad of tools to attract new customers, communicate to current loyal customers and communicate special financial or leasing offers and prices.
In 2020 every dealer’s website is more often the first actual contact point with a potential sale. Each website contains “on the lot inventory” or details of new models available through each dealership. Therefore, creating a re-occurring network of potential digital visits is vitally important to a successful inbound lead generation process.
Creating increased digital traffic to your own dealership’s website can be achieved by embedding your digital marketing advertising and offers into an already established organically large digital audience.
Regionally the largest digital audience that has been organically grown over the past 5 years is InQuinte.ca.
Online newspapers and digital periodicals have excelled in being able to naturally grow audiences and subscribers because of the relevant or important content that is important to the readership at a regional level. InQuinte is no exception to this type of loyal readership base and growth.
- On average InQuinte.ca receives 1.2 million to 1.5 million page views monthly from the natural trading area of Quinte and in some cases far beyond that.
Content Post Program – Tell your story with photos
- Includes run-of-site ad campaign linking to your advertorial post for 5 days, extending life and visibility.
- Content post is e-blasted to subscriber base and social media platforms.
- Ideal for Help Wanted, Special Events, to tell your story, or to position you and your business as industry experts.
- Promote a specific product or service in an audience-relevant fashion.
- Using both radio and digital media at the same time has been proven in many studies to result in a positive uptick in traffic, ROI and revenues earned for any specific campaign.
- Radio creative and digital creative should always send the same message for any given campaign, short or long.
- Digital advertising provides you to view the resulting attention and or traffic in real-time via your website’s Google analytics and those supplied by our own InQuinte analytics for every campaign.
And finally in the words of Roy Williams ~ The Wizard of Ads…
NOW is the time for Customer Bonding (not branding) Ads.
Media consumption will be high, and Ads will be very low because most people will be cancelling or postponing their investments, which is a mistake in a time of crisis. Happy memories, reflective thoughts, being human and asking for nothing in return. That is how you advertise in a time of crisis if you want to be the company that people think of first and feel the best about. “