Why aren't today's managers as involved in marketing?

[ed.brooks]

I remember the first dealership I worked in. It was back in the Stone Age; well at least it was well before the Internet. A couple of days a week, the managers would be hunched over a desk, working, arguing, fighting, and working some more. If you weren’t working a deal, you did NOT disturb them.

After a few hours, the Dealer Principal would stop by the desk, step into the hole they made for him and nod his head in agreement. All the managers patted each other on the back. Or, on some days, the DP would shake his head from side to side and point at the object on the desk with slashing motions. The managers would go back to work, now at a fevered pace.

What in the world were they working on? The GM, the GSM, the New Car Manager, the Used Car Manager, all with final approval from the Dealer Principal? What could cause this much emotion, this much diligence, what could bring this team together so completely. What was so damn important?

Simple. It was deadline day for our print Ad.

These folks knew our weekend, our week, and our month would be made or broken by the decisions they made. They understood that a car dealership was really a marketing machine with customers coming into the market (and leaving the market) on a continual basis. This management team was completely and totally involved in the dealership’s marketing.

I’m not suggesting we go back to spending tens of thousands of dollars a month (or a week, in some markets) on print. I am suggesting that management, in many dealerships, needs to up their level of engagement in their dealership’s marketing program.

Print is dead. Digital is the reigning king. The problem is that many managers don’t have even a passing knowledge of the digital marketing world. Used Car Managers aren’t involved in writing the Ad copy on their digital listings. New Car Managers aren’t updating their specials. Dealer Principals aren’t overseeing the entire process. Now to be fair, this isn’t true of every dealership, but is it true at too many.

The dealerships that have a high level of involvement seem to be the ones winning. Being involved in your dealership’s marketing may be ‘Old School’, but it is also very ‘Digitally Savvy’.

Why aren't today's managers as involved in marketing? Should they be?

 

[ddavis]

In those days, dealers loved print for two reasons, it worked and you really couldn't screw it up. All you needed was a picture of the car, a brief description and a price or payment. Pretty simple stuff.

I remember dropping twenty grand for a full page ad in the Dallas Morning News. It had virtually no shelf life but on Saturday you saw customers walking around the lot with a newspaper under their arm.

When I got involved with the internet, some ten years ago, I patterned my display ads and specials exactly like my newspaper ads.

As successful as the old print ads were, they never generated the amount of traffic that we get from the internet. Dealerships complain about the escalating prices, but I have never had anything close to the nearly $87,000 a month that we spent in print.

I used to sit down with my General Manager and New Car Director as soon as incentives came out to plan our Marketing. The next couple of days was spent implementing it.

Internet Directors are compensated on deals that result from emails and phone calls. The ROI is calculated the same way. If you consider that 65% of customers never contact a dealership, but walk in, our contribution is much more.

I have never worked with a New Car Manager, Used Car Manager, GSM or GM that has any experience in an internet department.

To answer your question, "Why aren't today's managers as involved in marketing?" Most of them don't want the responsibility and accountability and some are just lazy. If they are involved, they can't blame the Internet Director when business is soft.

 

[emilymoore]

They are scared. They don't know enough about it, so rather than admitting ignorance and trying to learn about this Internet thing, they avoid it.

 

[ddavis]

They are scared. They don't know enough about it, so rather than admitting ignorance and trying to learn about this Internet thing, they avoid it.

Very true but I rarely talk to a GM that isn't an "expert".

I have to admit that my dealings with the manufacturers is limited to a couple of franchises. With all of their resources, they appear more clueless than the dealers. They create more problems and offer few solutions. They also contribute to the rising costs.

A few years ago, I pissed off the manufacturer by refusing to buy their third party leads. Several months later, they came to me with a report that showed that even though I didn't get the leads, I was still selling those customers. I was selling more of those customers than my competition that was paying for them. From that they reasoned that I should get back into the program. Maybe being an old country boy, I failed to grasp this concept.

 

[emilymoore]

Very true but I rarely talk to a GM that isn't an "expert".

Anyone can put on a good front (no one wants to look like a fool), but at the end of the day, they know they don't get it. They just don't want everyone else knowing that they don't get it - so they stay away and place it on someone else's plate.

I have to admit that my dealings with the manufacturers is limited to a couple of franchises. With all of their resources, they appear more clueless than the dealers. They create more problems and offer few solutions. They also contribute to the rising costs.

Alot of their programs are initiated to help compensate for the large portion of the Dealers that are still flopping when it comes to Internet.

 

[Chris Cachor]

I’m not suggesting we go back to spending tens of thousands of dollars a month (or a week, in some markets) on print. I am suggesting that management, in many dealerships, needs to up their level of engagement in their dealership’s marketing program.

Print is dead. Digital is the reigning king. The problem is that many managers don’t have even a passing knowledge of the digital marketing world. Used Car Managers aren’t involved in writing the Ad copy on their digital listings. New Car Managers aren’t updating their specials. Dealer Principals aren’t overseeing the entire process. Now to be fair, this isn’t true of every dealership, but is it true at too many.

Such a good post. I've never worked in a dealership (although I'd like to intern for 3-6 months). One thing I've noticed from working with dealers is that for some reason, old school (print, tv, radio) is done by the ad agency and new school (digital) is done by one of website vendors. It seems there's kind of a wall between the two, and the marketing is not integrated well. There's a Chevy dealer near me that advertises prominently during Chicago Blackhawks games, yet there's really nothing to be mentioned about it on their website. You could see pretty clearly that it's two separate companies handling it, and the line of communication can be as expected in this scenario. Bringing this sort of thing under one roof I think would really improve branding as well as the marketing campaigns themselves.

It can be overwhelming with web vendors telling you to do some new acronym every 6 months, but if you really break it down to it's most basic level, digital is just another medium to communicate. You want to use some of those same principals you did on the weekly ad as you do on the site and do your best to be consistent across each medium.

 

[ddavis]

Such a good post. I've never worked in a dealership (although I'd like to intern for 3-6 months). One thing I've noticed from working with dealers is that for some reason, old school (print, tv, radio) is done by the ad agency and new school (digital) is done by one of website vendors. It seems there's kind of a wall between the two, and the marketing is not integrated well. There's a Chevy dealer near me that advertises prominently during Chicago Blackhawks games, yet there's really nothing to be mentioned about it on their website. You could see pretty clearly that it's two separate companies handling it, and the line of communication can be as expected in this scenario. Bringing this sort of thing under one roof I think would really improve branding as well as the marketing campaigns themselves.

It can be overwhelming with web vendors telling you to do some new acronym every 6 months, but if you really break it down to it's most basic level, digital is just another medium to communicate. You want to use some of those same principals you did on the weekly ad as you do on the site and do your best to be consistent across each medium.

Chris, there is often a disconnect between what the agency comes up with for electronic media and what the internet department is doing. I have to admit that I was always involved in both.

Website vendors provide you with a template. It is up to the dealer to provide what goes in there. The same is true with your third party display advertising. This is where the marketing comes in to play.

Emily, If I understand you, the dealerships that do "get it" are paying a premium for the ones that don't. I haven't dealt with any of the franchises that you represent. Are any of those any real help?

 

[ed.brooks]

Chris, there is often a disconnect between what the agency comes up with for electronic media and what the internet department is doing. I have to admit that I was always involved in both.

Website vendors provide you with a template. It is up to the dealer to provide what goes in there. The same is true with your third party display advertising. This is where the marketing comes in to play.

Emily, If I understand you, the dealerships that do "get it" are paying a premium for the ones that don't. I haven't dealt with any of the franchises that you represent. Are any of those any real help?

Doug, I see this WAY too often. Check out the dealer below: The list the URL on the print ad - they even have a big ass QR code. Where they fail, in my mind, is ZERO continuity in look and feel. They have different logos for heaven' sakes...

 

[emilymoore]

Emily, If I understand you, the dealerships that do "get it" are paying a premium for the ones that don't. I haven't dealt with any of the franchises that you represent. Are any of those any real help?

Yes and no. They are having to spend money on programs that they may not have opted in for otherwise. However, they are driving traffic, so not necessarily a waste of money.

 

[Kelly Wilson]

Here under the rock, it's the DP and the local ad agancy that runs with TV/Radio, the paper is all on the Sales Manager, the mailers are typically the Service director or OEM stuff, web specials the Sales Manager was supposed to dictate but I usually just wind up picking cars as time gets away from us all. When it comes to a few special ads, I work with the DP for the graphics-these are the only ads where the message is in display, print and digital. BUT I have worked very hard to get everything down to 1 logo - but- sometimes I do find a random old one out there