Some dealerships are redirecting the marketing spends while others are just holing up trying to survive.  One of the dealers I work with shared their strategy with me and it was what dealers in this tough market are doing today.

We’re a 50 car per month Chevrolet point in North Carolina between two bigger markets.  In early 2007, we began losing confidence in/and pulling our traditional media campaigns (tv, tadio, newpaper etc).  The last straw would have been our ad agency recommending we make a TV commercial branding our website (which they built), and trying to drive wesbite hits to it.  This makes me laugh now!  We’ve used the same CRM since 2001, and multiple enhancements made it possible to better track Internet leads, advertising sources, and sales performance.  Stats showed we were selling internet customers and our growth opportunities were outside our market (towns population 12,000).

We’ve now developed our advertising strategy to only include internet advertising.  If 90% of customer shop online, why advertise anywhere else?  I’d admit we spent some internet dollars foolishly, but would expect this as our learning curve increases.  Shifts in traditional mindset were necessary to achieve our results.  One big one would be profit margin for used vehicle.  Consider them commodities, and your small losses on used are better than big profits.  The used car market is efficient with aid of internet - meaning buyers have just as much information as sellers.  To survive we must operate more efficiently than our competitors.   Or store has not laid off or cut employees pay.  In fact, we had a profitable 2008 and Q1 2009.  My outlook is confident this year as I know I can track my ad dollars and better allocate Internet spending to profitable vendors.

Technorati Tags: automotive online marketing, digital dealer, increased web visability