Online dealer service department marketing and dealing with inconsistencies

[Jeff Kershner]

Get your next Oil Change at ABC Toyota.

Dealership Website price: $24.95
Google Places coupon Price: $21.95
Direct mail campaign: $23.99
Locak Value Pack coupon: $22.88

Okay - which one is it dammit?? If it's confusing to me, it has to be for the consumer.

I find a lot of dealers pay little attention to their online service marketing (huge mistake btw). But for the ones that do, trying to keep a consistant message many times proves to be a real pain. Cordinating with the service manager is sometimes worse than getting pricing and specials from the sales side.

Here is a question I usually ask the service manager to not only help me determine their process but also help them understand what they are truly trying to achieve..

Which of these 2 scenarios best fits your dealerships service department?

1. Our main focus is customer pay Toyota owners. We use our Express Service to help up-sell Toyota owners. It's okay if we are on the higher end price for Oil changes in the local area. I would rather charge more than Jiffy Lube while targeting the Toyota owners with a strong message about the fact that we are a Toyota dealer and no one can service their Toyota with the care that ABC Toyota can. So yes - you are paying a little more for your oil change at ABC Toyota BUT you are getting trained OEM Toyota service.

2. We want our Express Service to help drive traffic and customer pay service for ALL MAKES and Models so we can up-sell service for everything, NOT just Toyota. In order to do this, we are willing to be one of the LOWEST priced shops for oil changes. This will allow us to up sell service for Hondas, Volkswagens, Fords, Chevys and anything else we can get our hands on. We are fully capable and we have the personnel willing to work on other makes and models.

I know in theory, we dealers say we want to service ALL MAKES but the reality is, we don't. The only time we want to service ALL MAKES is when we don't have enough of our own makes to work on.

Most of the time a dealer trying to service ALL make and models do nothing more than run into customer service issues.

Which of the 2 aboive scenerios best descripbes your dealers service department?
How does this effect your online service maketing?

What are you doing differently to market your service department online that has really help to drive additional service revenue?

 

[JamieS]

*Subscribed

We just recently opened up our Service Department to the public and I'm interested to hear what others are doing that works. We have an oil change special out there in email, facebook, and google places. I also have a Living Social deal lined up for next week and will be updating our Foursquare to reflect service specials as well.

 

[jimbell]

We do a loss leader with oil changes. We do $12.95 up to 5 quarts. We are have it advertised everywhere including our website, google places, and also a micro site just for service (Fort Wayne's Best Oil Change – Only $12.95). We generate a ton of traffic from the micro site from google and come up above the 'fast oil change' places just with those words in the url. Yes, we have customers that just take advantage of the oil change, but the service writers have to be good and be able to up sell which we do about 70% of the time. We hope that we will give them a great experience and then they will buy a car from us in the future. Has been a win for us.

 

[MBissett]

Well said Jeff. I think the "goals" or "intended outcomes" are often overlooked when an advertising initiative is launched. Kudos to Jamie and Jim for implementing some well thought out and executed campaigns.

I think our Toyota dealership falls into the "main focus is customer pay Toyota owners" bucket. We've put together the following website dedicated to our Service and Parts departments: http://thompsontoyotaservice.com

Our other service/parts advertising like email campaigns (and hopefully some PPC soon) aims to drive traffic back to this website. Hopefully we'll get more customers scheduling their appointments online, purchasing additional services like the video on the website highlights, buy more parts/accessories, etc.

 

[ideal]

Your customers are there for convenience so you need to play off of that and target your message around the time factor when going after the additional sale. Have some actual times associated to different services.

 

[GrantG]

The one thing most Dealerships are fighting is the perceived notion that Service Department pricing is vastly more expensive than the third party repair shops. True be told, oil changes at Jiffy Lube are $30+ and they try to up sell everything under the sun.

Getting a common, concise message out to these prospective service clients that Dealerships WITH factory trained technicians, OEM parts WITH a warranty and fair pricing will do more than sending out mailers trying to conquest other in market dealerships.

The focus needs to be in attracting vehicles that are out of warranty, have not been back, or ones who's owners didn't previously see the value in using Dealership Service Departments. With the average age of today's vehicle at 11 years there is plenty of opportunity to grow business. Just like the Sales Team, volume produces gross.

Dealerships need to devote financial resources to spread the good word and fill the bays! Sales will sell them the first car, Service will sell them the next 6.

 

[Tallcool1]

My personal opinion is that Jiffy Lube does up sell, but they up sell fast moving maintenance items. You drive up, drive in, may not even have to get out of your car, you are in and you are out. No brain damage. What they are selling pure and simple is convenience, and the moral of the story is that people will and do pay for convenience.

The perceived notion of the dealership is not just a higher price, it is also total brain damage. Make an appointment, get transferred twice, get put on hold once, get hung up on once, call back, do it all again. Then when they get there, they better hang on to their wallet! Brakes, tires, flush this and flush that, air filters every time we turn around, wipers, rotate this, road hazard, rain X, Hazardous Waste charges, History Charges, and the list goes on and on and on. Then to make matters worse, we get to where this thread started. 5 different charges for the same service, splattered all over the place.

My opinion is one price advertised everywhere EXCEPT direct mail to existing customers. Direct mail can be a different price because the justification is that the coupons are being sent to existing customers or recent vehicle purchasers. I believe these direct mail coupons or offers must also clearly state why the customer is receiving the offer. A lot of credibility is lost when you promote different prices in different places.

Would you advertise different prices on a vehicle? If your answer is yes, you should really reconsider.

To me it seems quite a shame to sit in a $20,000,000 facility and lose all credibility over a $25 oil change promotion.