About a month ago, we followed-up to a presentation Aaron Schinke, Digital Marketing Director, made at AutoCon 2013 in our DealerFire blog about how crucial content is, in “How to Kill It with Content: Writing Off Your Competition.” I’d like to expound on how and why the concepts covered are SO effective, and provide some insight as to exactly what dealers should focus on in their content marketing platform.
Let me set it up first.
On the sales side of the house, I talk to hundreds of prospective clients a week and let me just say, a six year old can tell you just as well as I can what the goal of a car dealer is: To sell as many cars as humanly possible.
That’s not rocket science, right? However, some dealers I talk to are apparently satisfied with never increasing their sales volume. The excuse I hear most often is, “I get more leads than I can handle right now.” That tells me that apparently they never have a second of downtime and can’t find time to contact every lead.
I have a theory.
Either “A” they are lying or “B” they have two sales associates for a 300 car lot. If it’s the former…don’t lie. If it’s the latter, which I believe is unlikely…hire more employees! A new hire will pay for themselves and more if you use them to contact every lead. In reality, everyone could use more leads, especially quality ones.
Now let me jump off my soapbox and jump back to content marketing. But keep my rant in mind because it is part of the first, of three, keys to content marketing.
Leads
Content marketing, when done right, will bring in “more leads than you can handle.” When you’re bringing hundreds of quality 1st party leads directly from your website alone, your sales associates won’t have any excuse to have down time and they’ll be happy because they’re making more money than they would have dreamed. Wins all around.
Let’s look at another benefit to content marketing. To some respect, this may be as important as lead generation and to some degree, they’re both tied together.
Reputation Building
What I mean by that is exactly what I’m doing here for DealerFire. Blogging can be very beneficial for a dealership and doesn’t always have to be directly related to cars. You say, “what sense does that make?”
Glad you asked.
Let’s talk about Christmas. I know, believe me, it’s way too early to start talking about chopping down the neighbors evergreen and hanging the stockings with care. Being in Wisconsin, I’ll be the first to tell you I’m not ready to start imagining the five feet of snow and below-zero weather that is commonplace in late December and it’s WAY too early for visions of one-size-too-small ugly sweaters.
Again, I’ll get to the point.
Ideally, your dealership should become a credible community source of information and a way to do that is by blogging about things your community cares about. For example, the top ten holiday gift options for 2013 or the hottest Christmas activities in your community. This shines a positive light on your dealership and shows them that they are more than just a number or sales opportunity – that you DO care more about just selling cars. These kinds of things will make you a trusted resource when that Christmas shopper becomes a car buyer next year. That simple blog, that cost almost nothing to create could turn into a lead that transforms into a $25,000 car sale!
See what I just did there?
YOU also don’t want to be just a number. So, what does that mean?
Being Relevant and Original.
Fresh and ORIGINAL content boosts your domain authority which, in turn, makes you a more trusted source in the eyes of the all-powerful, Google. When you make Google happy, you’re happy. In reality, it all circles back to more leads and in the long run, selling more cars. And at the end of the day, that’s what owning, or working for, a car dealership is all about.
If you get more leads, build your reputation in the community and dominate searches you know you have effective content marketing.
So stop telling callers like me, “I have more leads than I can handle,” and FIND the BEST SOLUTION to get you to your ultimate goal: To sell as many cars as humanly possible.
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