Drive Them to Your Website

Adam Armbruster

Is your store foot traffic down, even as your brand maintains or even is increasing in share across your market area? It could be consumer “website previewing” at work.

Dealers who complain of lower foot traffic could be falling victim to their own lack of acceptance of today's busy car buyer and the dramatic impact of dealership website previewing — or going to a website before going to the place of business.

We estimate that only one in five dealers have fully embraced this phenomenon and have designed the appropriate buyer-friendly websites.

We've already seen the impact of this in other retail industries. In other big-ticket purchase categories, these are a couple of the percentages of consumers that visit a company's website before actually shopping its store:

Furniture Stores: 82%
Homebuilder: 85%-91%

Clearly, consumers are loving the convenience of being able to “look in your front window” before stepping foot in the dealership where they might confront an aggressive salesperson. Smart car dealers already know this and are spending more time motivating consumers to visit their store's website — first.

We see great growth opportunities for auto dealers who understand the new habits of how today's consumers preview, plan, and finally, buy vehicles.

How can you get started right now? Here are the website questions for you to consider and then act on:

• Does your website design reflect the personality and taste of your customers?
• Is it necessary for customers to conduct financial transactions on your website or is it being used simply to preview? (If it's the latter, simplify your website.)
• Is your website easy to navigate?
• Is it necessary for you to purchase traffic from a major search engine or could you promote your website and generate more traffic for less cost?
• What's the best way for you to handle e-mails and customer comments from your website? Should you have one business development center manager handle this process to ensure consistency?
• How do you advertise your website? Does it need its own advertising budget or can it be added to a current TV advertising plan?

Also, think about the profit and growth impact of using local mainstream media, such as TV and billboards, to promote your dealership website.

There is a less of a chance of consumers seeing a competitor's website address on a search engine at the same time as yours, thereby reducing cross-shopping.

We've designed hundreds of “triangulated” broadcast television plus TV station website campaigns, and the results are in. Dealers report web traffic increases of 20% -100% with 10-30% net profit increases following.

Why is this? Cost efficiencies! For contrast, think about this. Consider how many full-page color car dealer print ads ran last Sunday in the newspaper in complete opposition to the fact that most consumers are doing their auto buying online and previewing dealer websites mid-week. Also, the cost per thousand to run these print ads is exponentially higher than a television and online campaign.

Web previewing is big. But if we've learned one thing over the last 30 years it's that many dealers do not accept change easily. Dealership principals need winning website ideas right now. A good starting point is to contact your local broadcast television station and their station website. They already have the muscle that it takes to explode a dealership's sales and profitability.

Adam Armbruster is partner with retail and broadcasting consultancy Eckstein, Summers, Armbruster & Co. in Red Bank, NJ. He is at adam@esacompany.com

Not a Question of Luck

Adam Armbruster

“If I could just tell when my dealership advertising was working, I'd be thrilled!” I hear this comment from many dealers.

To this point, I offer the same response: “If you can't tell when your ad plan is working, how will your customer!?”

There's no getting lucky in dealership advertising. Most dealers spend 1% of sales on advertising and are always searching for new methods to maximize their advertising plan. So here are some proven methods to ensure that you are thrilled with your dealership ad plan.

Do an Advertising SWOT (Strength, Weakness Opportunity and Threat) analysis.
Begin by listing your top three competitors in order of impact on your business and what they are “saying” through their advertising to your customers right now. Then write a six-word description of each competitive positioning statement.

Example: Jones Ford #1: bigger store. Great displays. Poor pricing.

Now design a “visual”-map description of these positioning statements to help visualize the competitor's message so you see it just as a customer would. Then, design an effective counter-position. This is the “play” you will perform against the competitor. It could be a pricing play, a selection play, a convenience play, or any other advantage that you have over this competitor. Choosing the right play just takes a little common sense.

Record clear campaign goals.
Some dealers want their advertising to accomplish all sorts of goals as if they can keep adding responsibilities to the ads instead of their sales staff! However, don't be tempted.

Choose one specific success metric to provide a real measuring stick for the campaign. These metrics can include, but should not be limited to, store traffic, sales, market share, profitability and brand development index (BDI).

Build the marketing campaign “house” from the bottom up. By this, I mean that the campaign message needs to include the key elements for an effective retail message including a:

• Clear dealer identification.
• Clear merchandise impression.
• Bold positioning statement.
• Sense of urgency.
• “Tie-breaker.”
• Web site.

Dealers that miss just one of these are the same ones who worry about whether their advertising is working.

Ensure the proper frequency.
Media professionals often recommend a three-time minimum frequency for a campaign. I'll argue here that this is far below the required “burn rate”of a message against a targeted audience.

All nameplates have a unique buying window and the figures are somewhat predictable. Knowing this helps to focus a campaign like a laser on the key buying days of this customer.

Create effective, not creative, advertising.
Funny ads are great for the nationals that have the money to burn and have so many corporate initiatives that no one is really paying attention to the ad campaign results anyway. But dealers are spending real profit dollars directly from their business profit statements.

Dealers can't afford to spend 90% of their TV message amusing viewers.

I suggest a ratio of three parts selling to one part entertainment in the script. The halls are lined with terribly funny TV ads that had no real effect on sales.

So let's stick to the basics. Present an advertising message that is designed to be measured, and one that customers can use to make a decision to buy.

Adam Armbruster is a partner in the retail consulting firm Eckstein, Summers, Armbruster & Co. He can be reached at adam@esacompany.com