The New Year is refreshing in so many ways. You get to review your wins and losses from the previous year, start fresh with resolutions and in marketing you get to press the reset button for plans in the coming year.
While technology continues to improve the way we think and judge the effects of marketing, there is still one simple premise that I follow: K.I.S.S. – “Keep It Simple Stupid.”
When I look at new dealers’ marketing plans it’s interesting to see the different areas that they are trying to target. There are always the core competencies of media, digital, mail, email and major lead sources. But when you start to peel back the onion you can uncover more money spent on Band-Aids or “it seemed like a good idea at the time” items.
What you have to remember is everything can be tracked. When you start to drill down to the degree we can with today’s technology you will see overlapping sources responsible for some of your sales. Meaning, a customer will most likely be exposed to multiple channels of your marketing. This makes it hard to determine what exactly triggered them to buy.
Always look at your marketing as a complex system but do not forget that it can be boiled down to a very simple premise. The three types of traffic, being (1) natural traffic (2) owner body traffic and (3) created traffic. From these three areas you should be able to classify and judge the effects of all your marketing.
There is no time like the present, especially in January to keep it very simple and review everything that is going to be used to drive traffic for you in 2015.
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John Paul Strong
John Paul Strong combines his two decades of automotive marketing experience with a team of more than 150 professionals as owner and CEO of Strong Automotive.
