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What should we spend our time (and dollars) on in 2016?

Good morning all- My Chevy Store is looking to increase our New Car Sales by 40 Units per month so clearly we need to come up with some new Marketing Strategies in order to accomplish this. Anyone having great success doing something out of the ordinary? Looking for some ideas to help increase our Market Share and units.

Thanks in advance-

Heavenly optimized email marketing to your client base, #1 The ROI is insane.
Reputation Marketing
Social Marketing
Highly relevant, always optimizing for the consumer web site- Notice I didn't say SEO, while important, not nearly as important as the first points.
SEM, re-marketing and display. Not just on Google. Facebook numbers are very nice and the ads are cheaper. Bing has less traffic but much higher buyer intent. Again, a lot cheaper then Google.
Absolutely make sure you budget enough for re-marketing.

believe me, this is out of the ordinary for a lot of your competitors. :)
 
Ideally, you have a dedicated marketing that can manage all of this and co-ordinate with your traditional media. This person should also get bonus-ed on hitting milestones.

Short of that let's look at salaried product adviser's. In concept, it sounds great and it can be structured correctly, but is there there incentive to squeeze every last drop from each marketing dollars or will they do just enough to keep the job?

Commissioned advisers are thought to keep you spending more so the commission is higher and sadly this is true in a lot of cases. In a ideal world, there would be some kind of hybrid,

My suggestion is measure, measure, measure. Watch the metric and compare last month, three month, year... if the improvements are there and you're selling more cars because of it, then commission is good. if not, fire them and move on.

Your sales people are driven by commission. the more they sell, the more they make. Hopefully you hired well and it works out. The marketing position(s) can and should work the same way. provided you hire well and like your sales people. you keep your thumb on the pulse. There are a few great tools on the market that can help make this easier.
 
My Chevy Store is looking to increase our New Car Sales by 40 Units per month -

Here they come, rapid fire, no filter :)

http://www.billesteschevy.com/used-...]=Chevrolet&show_all_filters=false&_post_id=5

Get more used cars.
318 new to 83 used. Ck your GA. For most all dealers (especially chevy), the 1st clicked button is used cars. Used cars are a doorway to new car sales (especially in todays market)


Get your vendor's leasing module.
Shoppers shop by payment. Leasing payments are crushing it lately. See it in the wild at http://www.mercedesbenzchicago.com/new-vehicles/c-class/ Great door buster tool.


Mobile Shoppers on other dealers lots?
Mobile UI tweak:
upload_2016-1-8_7-29-43.png
  1. "Get ePrice" is open to interpretation. Think of action phrases that speaks to someone in market RIGHT NOW. Run a split test.
  2. Can you see chat transcripts by mobile only? If so, what are the shoppers asking? I'd bet that ask "is it avail" and "will you discount it more?" I'd consider mobile chats to be your single most important opportunity. I'd have mobile chats with special talk tracks and put them on high alert. Do some transcript homework and ask your vendor for ideas.

Speaking of mobile, consider using a unique phone number so you can track it AND listen to them. Like chat, these calls may prove to be your most valuable sales calls.
upload_2016-1-8_8-15-37.png


The photo resolution looks fuzzy.
upload_2016-1-8_7-46-32.png
Your interior shots look far better. Probably a poor camera or incorrect setting.
p.s. that phone number is annoying, do ppl call it? (BTW, you have 5 different phone numbers on your website)



This top banner is great. It's classy, and it covers up your open ceiling.
upload_2016-1-8_8-7-20.png
That lower banner is so strong it hides the car you want to sell. Think of reducing it to smaller icon in the lower right.
 

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Ah, yes. anything you do to get customers won't matter unless you house in in order and ready to accept them.

Kyle, John's words should be not be taken lightly. I'll speak from my experiences.

In one particular year, all my ideas came to roost. My site traffic was up 50%, my leads and calls were up 100%, but, my sales were just slightly above goal. That's when I realized I incorrectly assumed that the reps would write themselves a raise. NOT.

More leads and traffic DO NOT create more sales. Take John's words to heart, it's the best advice you'll ever get from this thread.
 
Get more used cars.
318 new to 83 used. Ck your GA. For most all dealers (especially chevy), the 1st clicked button is used cars. Used cars are a doorway to new car sales (especially in todays market)


Used units help sell new. Here's a traffic analysis of my ol' site.

upload_2016-1-11_5-44-10.png
This was back in 2010. Great leasing deals were rare, in these payment searches, new units rarely showed up. Thankfully, those days are gone :)

Get leasing payments into your site ASAP.

HTH
Joe
p.s. be sure to have your F&I manager & sales manager vett the tool to make sure the payments are accurate.