I currently am the main contact for any third party vendor that offers anything to do with online marketing, advertising, lead generation, etc. I meat with them, sign contracts with them, and so on. My new dealer is confident in my plans and has given me a budget to work with on a monthly basis. So far I have used this budget to sign up multiple lead generators, a new ILM tool, a digital ad package, and some online marketing / branding ( display ads, retargeting, etc.)
When I first started they were only getting 50 to 60 leads a month. So that was the first thing was to acquire more leads and while that was being done I was training two people to properly handle the incoming leads. They had a basic ILM but now that the lead count is up that tool is no good and i just signed with another ILM last week. I've done many changes to the website including adding live chat, landing pages that are tied to specific ads, and an overall better layout design to get more coneversions from the site. I put together a follow up process and implemented the process into the current ILM tool so that the daily task are always in front of the salespeople. My next steps are to set up the new ILM which will allow me to be much more efficent with email marketing and following up with leads. I've also implemented a call tracking system so that I know the phone calls are being made according to the follow up process. I've also designed the templates to be used with the new ILM.
Once the new ILM is setup this will allow me to turn my focus back to our website and online marketing strategy. I will be using our local advertising agency to do some search engine intuitive marketing for our pre-owned cars, and I will be using our website provider to run an ad campaign with google adwords to help brand our dealership. Which by the way I'm working on what I want that branding message to be lol. Oh, I've also implemented walkaround videos for all of our inventory with totals 280 new and used, and I will be making personalized vidoes for my Internet salespeople to be sent with the initial response template. I've been pondering the idea of personalized salesperson landing pages that can be sent in all emails. Mabye create a hyperlink near the picture of the salesperson that says "My bio" or whatever wording I choose.
This dealer has three seperate smaller pre-owned lots and one of those lots had a carsforsale.com website that they were paying 99 a month for but nobody was doing anything with it at all. My Gm wanted to trash it but I told him to let me play with it first and I'm glad I did. The inventory had not been updated for over a year and there was only 8 of 130 used cars on there. I took the page and renamed it, setup the inventory feed to include all our inventory new and used, and what do you know. Leads have been coming in like crazy from carsforsale.com.
My biggest dilema is I love doing this stuff. I love it more than actually selling cars lol. For example, I'm at work now researching new ideas and so forth, but I'm technically taking money away from me because at the moment I'm not selling cars. However, I'm in it for the long run and I know it will all pay off but the way my pay plan is setup now it doesn't help with next months paycheck.
On the flip side, I'm pretty sure my GM is willing to work with me. He has seen the increase in productivity from the department, and the other managers are all in as well. So it seems anyways. I sit in the weekly managers meetings and everyone says that we should be putting our money in the Internet. Which is great for me! At this time I just have to make a decision on wether to purpose taking another salesman and fitting him into the internet department and take myself out the lead rotation and just strictly oversee the department, or keep it the same way it is now but maybe with a differnet pay structure. Either way I feel the pay plan will have to change. And don't get me wrong. They have been paying me a fair amount now but in a way it's capped because the department doesn't have enough leads, or the right tools in place at the moment. I know I can ramble on and on. You must see my passion regarding this business. Trust me, when I say oversee the dept. I don't mean just kickback and boss people around. I would still be actively engaging potential prospects but in a different way. As in, a follow up email from the manager, "hello we haven't heard from you in a while. I am the Internet Manager and wanted to make sure our Internet Department has fullfilled your needs" .... you get where I'm going with this I'm sure. I would do follow up calls to appointments that didn't show, unsold leads, etc. All while maintaining our online presence and doing the research necessary to keep ahead of the game.
