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Have you ever heard the old anecdote about a father trying to read the Sunday newspaper, but is constantly being distracted and pestered by his young son?  The dad tears a map into small pieces and offers the son an ice cream if he can piece the map back together. He figures he’s bought himself a good 2 hours or so.  The kid’s back in 10 minutes. “How’d you do that?” the puzzled dad asks. “There’s a big photo of a man on the other side,” his son replies.  “I used it, and it was easy. When I got the man right, the whole world was right, too.”  That’s pretty wise, and in a way, your dealership is like that. When you get yourself right, it can make your entire dealership a more enjoyable and profitable operation. 

Of course, that’s easier said than done. To be an effective D.P. or G.M. you must be an expert in Sales, F&I, P&A, and Service as well as Human Resources and Accounting. It’s almost as if you’re running 4 separate businesses under one roof, and it takes years of experience, quality work habits, and a high level of ability to become a proficient and successful operator. But wait, that’s not all… the nation’s highest performing operators have mastered another super important skill, and that is the ability to make it rain customers. Yes, I’m talking about marketing. 

If you don’t have an effective marketing plan in place, then your customer list is likely getting colder and colder and smaller and smaller without you even realizing its happening. 

Here’s why you lose customers:

•    1% Die
•    3% Move Away
•    5% Influenced by Friends or Family
•    9% Lured by Competitors
•    14% Bad Experience
•    68% Indifference

All too often dealers forget they aren’t entitled to customers just because they’re either located within their OEM assigned territory, or because they are past and present customers. It is your responsibility to stay in touch with your customers, not the other way around.  You can’t control who dies or moves away, but you can heavily influence the other 96% of your potential lost customers before it’s too late. If you’re not regularly marketing to the riders in your buying base, they will eventually get a feeling of apathy, as if you don’t care about them and ultimately drift off. 

Personally, I put great effort into advertising for this company, as well as for our dealer clients. It’s not easy, it’s not always fun and new, and it often turns into a grind. In fact, I have a quick 30 minute meeting two days a week with my leadership team where we cover our non-negotiables. Most of this meeting is dominated by deadline driven deliverables related to our outbound marketing efforts. I put this system in place years ago, because I had identified that when the swirl hit (and it always does) marketing was the area that would be conveniently set aside. 

There was even a time when I was young and naïve that I briefly thought advertising was a wildly creative exercise done by the lazy who weren’t willing to do real work. I found out the hard way (and the expensive way) that creating a one-off fancy branding campaign was about as effective at generating business as trying to change a tire with a set of nunchucks.

Eventually, I learned from my mistakes and became a true student of the advertising and marketing world. I discovered that there seemed to be 2 very different religions in advertising. Direct Response marketers and Branding marketers. The direct response camp is all about creating a compelling offer with a call to action and a deadline, and having the ability to measure results and ROI. The branding folks will tell you the purpose of your advertising is to get your name out there and create top of mind awareness.

That’s when I stumbled onto a book called ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ by legendary marketer, the late David Ogilvy, who was widely hailed as, “The Father of Advertising.”  Quite the character, Ogilvy created one of the biggest ad agencies of all time. Here’s what he had to say about the two different camps:

“There is a yawning chasm between you Generalists and we Directs. We Directs belong to a different world. Your gods are not our gods. You pride yourselves on being creative - whatever that awful word means. You cultivate the mystique of “creativity.” Some of you are pretentious poseurs. We humble people who work in direct do not regard advertising as an art form. Our clients don’t give a damn whether we win awards at Cannes. They pay us to sell their products. Nothing else. We sell -- or else.”

That resonated well with me, and the more I studied and tested direct marketing compared to branded marketing, the bigger believer I became. When executing direct marketing the proper way, branding is always a happy byproduct anyway. 

As mentioned, getting the man right is not easy, but pnce you do, the rest of the world falls into place. So, choose your religion carefully.