Are you confident you’re doing your due diligence and at least the bare minimum to prioritize marketing and growth? What would that even look like for somebody that is also managing an entire dealership at the same time? More often than not, this responsibility falls to the busiest person in the whole business, YOU.

The bare minimum should not have a negative connotation; it’s adequate and acceptable! Managing a dealership is exceptionally challenging work in and of itself. This article is your consolidated guide of what has proven to be the easiest (but non-negotiable) keys to marketing success to ensure that you are doing at least the “bare minimum.” 

Terms like recall lift, remarketing, and conversions sound intimidating and confusing initially, but stimulating in-store traffic with hot dog cookouts might not dramatically move the needle for your sales department anymore. A Sitecore blog from 2021 reads, “. . .digital has become ingrained at every level of the customer experience. It is more than a key component for organizations that want to move beyond the status quo – it is essential to any brand wanting to make those experiences even more immersive and impactful.” 

Control your Facebook page and verify your domain:

Let’s talk about your brand. Social media is king when it comes to making your store stand out from the dealer across the street. Do you know anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook account? Social media advertising allows you to go to your audience in a way they prefer. Use it to encourage user-generated content, request feedback and testimonials, organize events, and communicate with your customers. Organic posts are great, but investing even a modest budget will unlock the power of paid advertising to boost sales. Addressing client reviews online can aid the improvement of services and your customer’s experience. Sharing relevant content, like that funny driving video on Instagram, can attract prospective customers and increase customer retention.

Would you prefer having one of your administrators or advertising vendors mess with all that “Facebook stuff” so you can take the task off your plate? But what happens if that hourly employee leaves the company? What if you decide to change advertising vendors or use more than one vendor that needs access? If you have ever needed to request a password or locate a file from a disgruntled ex-employee, you can imagine how unpleasant asking them to relinquish your business’s Facebook access to you manually could be.

Get a Facebook Pixel and put it to work:

The Facebook pixel is a unique piece of code for a website. It collects data, like button clicks, that you can use to create custom audiences made entirely of pre-qualified leads to advertise to. A pre-qualified lead is a potential customer who engaged with your company and exhibited behavior that signals a higher likelihood of purchasing. These powerful audiences statistically convert to sales more often than others. With the Facebook Pixel, you can remarket a specific ad to only those who have already seen your finance app. You can also investigate and analyze the impact of your ads by tracking what actions people take when they get served.

Installing this sooner than later is essential, even if you will only need the data it collects after a period of time. That’s YOUR valuable data, don’t wait to start gathering it. 

Practice Good CRM Data Hygiene:

Speaking of pre-qualified leads, it doesn’t get much more powerful than your own customers. If you are careful and thorough when you collect data from the people who have already decided to buy from you, you build a cache of the most valuable audience for your company. Imagine a customer appreciation sales event to close the month strong or stimulate your service department with a loyalty discount promotion. You could incentivize a trade-in bonus for friends and family referrals only or send a branding message to your fans and stay top of mind.

Register your Website on Google Search Console:

Wikipedia describes Google Search Console as “…a web service by Google which allows webmasters to check indexing status, search queries, crawling errors and optimize visibility of their websites.” Search Console will help you examine and sometimes even resolve server errors, diagnose site loading problems and security issues, and optimize website performance, and it’s free to use. 

Monitor your Google Analytics:

You can gain critical insights with Google Analytics and answer essential questions like, Are your users on mobile devices? Are your social media posts attracting users to your website? How many people searched for your website on Google? How many new users did you gain with your marketing efforts? Google Analytics is another free tool to discover essential data about your website and user traffic and answer these questions and more.

Manage Your Tags with Google Tag Manager:

This tool helps you feed your website traffic data to your Google Analytics page. Remember earlier when I was telling you about the Facebook Pixel? After you make it, you should put it inside Tag Manager. Adding a bunch of code to your web page for each ad platform you’re using can slow your site speed. In a 2022 Wetopi article, Joan Vega wrote: “Even a one or two-second delay in loading time can harm customer engagement and generated revenues. For example, eCommerce retailer Amazon estimates that a one-second delay loading a webpage can cost over $1.6 billion in lost revenues annually.” Google Tag Manager eliminates this slowdown.

The Takeaway:

You got this! I know from first-hand experience how overwhelming dealership work can be; however, you’re in the business, you already have the smarts, and you’re very resourceful and capable of doing the bare minimum. You can now have confidence that your dealership has the essential digital foothold to get discovered while protecting your hard-earned data. 

As you follow this guide in day-to-day practice, you may encounter unknown marketing terms and issues with settings, or you may need to become more familiar with the subject. Not to worry, seek a professional agency to help you! I know of a great one if you need a recommendation.

About Dealer OMG

Dealer OMG is an automotive digital marketing firm focused on helping dealers measurably grow sales, service, and trades. Founded by former Facebook employees and automotive executives, Dealer OMG pioneered the VINAmp platform to refine target audiences, making ads more relevant to shoppers. Through white-glove dealer-specific creative and VINAmp platform, Dealer OMG’s dealership clients are able to be the dealership continually in the shopper’s feeds.

For more information, you can contact our Chief Operating Officer, Keith Turner at Keith@DealerOMG.com