Articles

 The digital landscape is evolving and changing so fast now, it’s pretty hard to keep your bearings anymore. With all of the social media outlets, review sites, search marketing opportunities and everything else… it’s easy to get lost.

So where does your dealership’s trusty old website fall into this chaos?

Well, square in the middle. As your anchor.

Oftentimes, we get distracted by the next bright shiny flash in the pan opportunity to do something cool on the internet, and while sometimes that’s okay, we can’t forget our anchor.

All the cool review sites, social media methods, and search marketing opportunities are all avenues that should end up pointing people to your anchor – your website. Your digital dealership, if you will.

And what’s the purpose of your website? Make sales? 

Nope.

The purpose of your website is to identify visitors and generate leads. That’s it. Engaging in e-commerce as a powersports dealer is the best way I know of to generate a small fortune – but only if you start out with a big one. 

Back in the day, when I was running dealerships, I wanted to be on the bleeding edge of technology. I wanted our dealerships involved in e-commerce, and I wanted us to make a killing at it. I was determined. 

Before working in motorcycle dealerships, I headed up the eastern U.S. operations for the largest company in the world that sells products for homebuilt and experimental aircraft – and we did it through – you guessed it – e-commerce.

Turns out, the only thing that got killed was profits and my patience. The math was broken. And it hasn’t changed.

To be successful in e-commerce, your business model has to be purpose built for it. The standard brick and mortar business model simply isn’t, they are opposites.

Oh, and if you think it’s bad when you let a Parts Manager go, and then later stumble on the little “hidey hole” they all seem to have for mis-ordered, or never picked up parts that were ordered without deposits, just wait until you see the pile of parts you have lying around from e-commerce issues. It’ll give you a stroke.

So, if e-commerce is out, how do you leverage your website?

Good question. As I said earlier, the purpose of your site is to identify visitors and generate leads.

Let’s take a look at the second part of that description first. 

Leads are typically generated when forms of one type or another are filled out. 

Visitors see something and like it enough to act. It’s great when that happens, but even under ideal conditions, it only happens with 1-3% of visitors. Following up with these folks can make a big impact on sales, as many of you reading this already know.

That leaves a whopping 97% or more visitors who remain anonymous, leaving you to wonder if you could have done something more to get them to become a lead and buy.

That’s where the first part of the purpose of your website comes into play. 

Identifying visitors.

Using Google Analytics (and your site provider’s proprietary analytics) you can already see how many visitors your site had, and what they looked at while they were there. The problem is that you never get to put names or faces to those visitors, so that reporting is simply reflective of likely lost opportunities.

Frankly, that sucks.

That’s why we have developed a way to put faces and names to folks who visit your site – and let you know what they are looking at (interested in) while they are there so you can follow up and close the deal.

I’ll go ahead and answer your first two questions:

1. Yes, we can really do that.

2. Yes, we are the first and only ones who can.

This is huge. In our beta testing of the program, we had dealers who were able to follow up with website visitors in January in places where they were experiencing negative temperatures, CLOSING DEALS on units. Pretty amazing.

Sticking with our analogy of your website being your digital dealership, being able to identify visitors and reach out to them is the equivalent of being given the opportunity to greet folks who come into your brick and mortar dealership. 

Greeting them gives you the chance to present and close. Knowing who they are on your website gives you the chance to greet and close those folks as well.

Your website is hugely important. It’s the anchor of your web presence, and the place where you generate leads that once worked, lead to profits. That said, there’s a new tool in the arsenal available to you that can greatly impact your ability to identify previously anonymous visitors – turning them into additional genuine leads… and profits.

Give us a call at 877-242-4472 so we can show you how it works. And if you’re in the market, ask us to show you the newest highest converting websites on the market as well.

Talk Soon,

Brad

Well it’s official, we’re now in the website business. It’s something our clients have been asking us to do for many years, but wasn’t previously a fit into our business model. But, recently the stars aligned and it just became a no brainer. 

Let me share the back story. My background is originally as a dealer. My family owned a four-store operation in Atlanta, Georgia. Those stores weren’t really for sale, but we were made an offer too good to refuse. My dad was a retired pilot and Lt. Colonel and my mom was a school teacher. They invested their life savings in the business, and this was a great opportunity for them to cash out and begin enjoying the fruits of their labor. So, we sold the stores, and bound by a non-compete I wasn’t able to open a dealership in the Atlanta market. Because the Powersports Industry is my passion I decided to take our dealership operations manuals, enhance and modify them into a robust database of best practices, and then create online training courses for Dealer Principals and their staff.  We called it dealershipuniversity.com and launched at the Indy Trade Show in 2004. We’ve had over 15,000 users go through our online courses and, at some point, worked with nearly every OEM.

But in 2008, the lay of the land was changing drastically, and dealers were going out of business left and right. In addition to the recession the internet was changing everything to do with advertising and marketing.  So, we did what we always do around here and put our heads down and began researching, studying, and testing everything we could get our hands on that had to do with marketing best practices. That’s when I discovered something very interesting about advertising. There seemed to be two camps out there. The first and most commonly heard of camp was the “branding” people who say that the purpose of your advertising is to build your brand and get your name out there. This group of folks is backed by the big money world of ad agencies who are mostly hired by the mega sized Fortune 500 and other really large companies (like the OEM’s). The ad agency world is usually compensated by a percentage of ad spend, meaning the more a business spends, the more they make.  Quantification of this type of advertising is next to impossible and its success or failure is usually based on the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the executive board room. 

The second camp was a harder group to find, but they were sharp, passionate, and much better suited for the small to medium sized business. This group was the direct response marketers and they were marketing purists. They have a much different religion than the ad agency folks, and believe that the purpose of your advertising is to generate leads and everything you do could (and should) be measured. They believed that marketing should be 1-to-1 (meaning from a real person to a real person) and it should create affinity and build relationships. They believe the purpose of your advertising is to generate a positive ROI, not to build your brand or create top of mind awareness.  They are never paid as a % of ad spend, as they view this as a conflict of interest. This group of folks believed that when you do direct response marketing properly (right message, right market, right media, right time), you get branding and create top of mind awareness as a happy byproduct. Really it’s the best of both worlds. 

As we began sharing this knowledge at our live marketing boot camps, many dealers asked if we could just do direct response marketing for them. So, we did. And, it worked. And it worked a helluva lot better than spending a fortune on billboards, radio, and TV (see Exhibit A). Since then we’ve added lots of new features to our Sharp Shooter and Local Web Dominator products and executed thousands of campaigns for dealers (big and small) in every corner of the country, always guiding our decisions with the principles of direct response marketing. Will this generate quantifiable leads? Will this build affinity with customers? Will this provide a positive ROI? If I was the dealer myself, and this was my money would I spend it on this?

Fast forward to the present. We didn’t want to enter into the web site market if our product didn’t align with our longstanding beliefs on marketing best practices and we also didn’t want to enter with a product if we couldn’t answer the question of why choose us over the other options.  I’m proud to say that our new Firestorm websites accomplish both. For a personalized demo to see how we can partner with your dealership to generate more leads and earn a better return on investment for your dollars spent, contact us today at 877.242.4472.

 OBJECTIVE 

The Quaid brothers combined their shared passion for their local community and the Motor Company to start Quaid Harley-Davidson more than 20 years ago. Their first store was located in San Bernardino, but a few years later relocated to their current location in Loma Linda. In addition to providing outstanding customer service to their local Harley riders and enthusiasts, they have the spirit and pride of local business owners. They constantly give back to their community by hosting events and charity rides to support the local Ronald McDonald House, Children’s Hospital, Veteran’s Medical Center and giving to troups stationed overseas. It’s hard not to like these guys and the family-centered community they’ve created. As a 2nd generation Quaid owner, Brandon Quaid, wants to ensure this culture lives on for many generations to come and he does so by protecting the Quaid culture through quality relationship-driven marketing.  He knows that he sells a premium product with the Harley brand, but one of his objectives is to increase his local market share by increasing the frequency of visits from his current and past customers, and generate more business through referrals from his local customer base. 

SOLUTION

One of the marketing channels that generates the highest ROI is email marketing.  Brandon was no stranger to sending quality emails to his customer list, but prior to using the powersports-themed email templates in Firestorm, he was not getting the kind of return on his email marketing investment to drive more business. So in May, he switched over from his previous email provider to the Firestorm email system available in the Local Web Dominator program and sent four great emails to his entire customer list.

RESULTS

While email marketing is well known for its relationship building components, the real magic in email marketing is driving traffic to a dealership’s website…and having that traffic result in LEADS.  That’s exactly what happened for Brandon when he started using the Firestorm email system. 

In May, his website traffic increased by more than 13%, and of that increased traffic almost 11% of that was from email marketing alone. 

In addition to the excellent increase in overall website visitors, the traffic from the Firestorm emails generated 52 Lead Forms or Finance Apps submitted. That’s more than the Pay-Per-Click, Display Network and Social Media campaigns combined!  

Check out the chart that illustrates the website traffic spikes after each email was sent.  Plus, the email results are strong just as stand-alone data points: Average Open Rate of 19.5% and the average Click Through Rate (CTR) of 17.75%!

That type of return on investment allows Brandon to increase his local market share by re-activating past customers and drawing repeat customers to his website and ultimately into the dealership. By sending quality emails that promote events and charity rides and are themed to speak to the Harley-Davidson enthusiast, Brandon is systematically increasing website traffic, online leads and building lasting affinity with his local Harley owners and enthusiasts.  

Does your email marketing program generate that kind of quantifiable ROI? If not, give us a call today to see how Firestorm email can make a huge impact in your website traffic and online leads: 877-242-4472.

Dealership: 

Shawnee Cycle Plaza is Kansas City’s premier motorcycle, ATV and scooter dealership selling Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and CFMoto. With 137 Google reviews and a 4.4 star rating, they live up to their tag line that, “You can’t buy from a nicer bunch of guys!”

Solution: 

Shawnee Cycle Plaza invited 3,000 of their past customers and 3,000 conquest prospects who ride what they sell, live in their backyard but haven’t bought from them. Using a nice mix of active, inactive and prospective customers, they knew they could reactivate customers who hadn’t spent money with them in the previous year, drive some new blood through the door and increase frequency of visits of their existing customers to increase the number of customers spending money with them and the amount they spend in 2017.

To ensure everyone received the message, we targeted them with up to 12 direct marketing strategies. By giving customers more opportunities to respond to the marketing, we increase the amount of traffic on event day and the number of leads being generated. Bigger picture, we’ve learned that the more you touch your customer base, the more responsive they become and over the course of the year, more of them walk through the dealership’s doors more often and the business grows.

The message we utilize is focused on inviting customers to a party. By focusing on what the customer wants (things like food, drinks, door prizes and demo rides), the dealership gets more of what they want (more P&A, service and gear sales and a few more units out the door). Long-term, customers never get tired of being invited to a party so they end up walking through the doors more often and when they’re there, they can’t help themselves but to spend more money. 

With so much marketing going out the doors, it’s important to have it hit customers at just the right time to really maximize the response from each media. Our marketing begins hitting customers roughly 10 days before the event and gives them a different opportunity to respond to the survey site (to generate leads for every department) almost every day leading up to event day.

Results:

We have an ‘Improvise, Adapt, & Overcome’ award here at Powersports Marketing and I think we’re going to have to give it to Paul McMinn and his staff at Shawnee Cycle Plaza this week! These guys didn’t get a great start to their Father’s Day Event June 17th. Pulling up to the dealership Saturday morning, he realized something was wrong after a heavy storm rolled through the night before. After unlocking the door, the alarm was making a funny noise and he soon discovered he was out of power (one of 98,000+ homes/businesses affected). Instead of canceling the event, these guys put their game faces on and in Paul’s words, “Took those lemons and made lemonade.”

Unfortunately, power wouldn’t return until half the day was over so they ended up pulling out the old manual credit card machine and hand-writing bill of sales for parts & accessories. They even hand wrote two unit sales with a total of five going out the door on Saturday and another two going out Monday after the event when this article went to print. Parts ended up doing $6-8,000 on just in-stock inventory, while navigating customers through the parts department with flashlights. They even fired up generators to get some work done back in service!

Paul said it was an amazing event and numbers were great in every department even without power. “It was crazy!”

Executing on all four pillars of the Sharp Shooter Program - Right Audience, Right Media, Right Message & Right Timing, really paid off. The program generated 201 completed surveys including 157 sales opportunities in Clothing, P&A and Service, PLUS 44 responses for a new or used unit! 

What’s next? 

July means the 4th of July, Summer Sizzler’s and Dog Days of Summer! With half the year come and gone it’s more important now than ever to drive as much traffic through the doors and generate as many leads as possible this summer! Check out the inserts for some killer campaign options for July and for more information on how the Sharp Shooter Program can help you achieve your marketing goals in 2017, call me on my direct line 877-242-4472 ext: 112. Happy selling.

Trying to understand SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be tricky, and frankly, a little intimidating as well. 

There is an incredible amount of misinformation that floats around from self-proclaimed experts that serves to confuse even the most tech-savvy folks, leaving the average dealer principal to sometimes view SEO in the same light as black magic.

Can SEO be complicated? Short answer, yes – but don’t make it harder than it has to be. 

We just came back from the Atlanta Digital Marketing Summit, where our leadership team was able to hear and see the latest “bleeding edge” digital marketing strategies available (or soon to be available). Part of what was discussed was what is important for SEO success nowadays. 

It used to be that in order to have a successful SEO program, you had to have a presence on every site and directory listing known to man. If it was a directory site – boom, you had to be on it. 

Those days are now over. With Google’s algorithm updates, they have really cracked down on what they call “thin sites.” These are sites that exist but provide very little value to searchers either in content, information, or both. There are millions of obscure little sites that tout themselves as directory listing sites but no one really visits them, and if they do they find nothing really there.

Google understands this. Really well.

Google wants to provide the best search results possible, because by doing so they insure that searchers keep using them to find answers. This means that weak sites are finding themselves being weeded out. This has been happening for several years now, and the bar for quality is getting higher and higher. 

The important thing to understand is that Google cares most about your presence on what they call tier one and tier two type sites. If you have a consistent uniform presence across those sites, you are typically in very good shape SEO-wise in this industry.

So what are tier one and two sites? Well, tier one sites are big search type sites – think Google, Yahoo, Bing. Having consistent name, address, and phone info across those three sites goes a long way to getting seen on Google. Tier two sites are sites like YP.com, Yelp!, and automotive navigation listings. When you combine uniform tier one and two presence you can be assured that you have a very solid shot at showing up pretty high organically.

From there, trying to show up on every other smaller site yields very diminished returns (if any) for the effort involved. Some SEO providers will give you a laundry list of small sites that they can assure you you will be visible on and it looks really good to see so many icons for sites. 

Unfortunately, often many of those sites bring no value to you as a motorcycle dealer. For example, if I’m looking for a motorcycle dealership, I don’t give two squats whether you show up on urbanspoon.com. So what? That tells me nothing. 

And if I’m looking for someplace that has great pasta, your dealership is just about the last place I’d go. Correction: THE last place I’d go. I’ve seen some of your break room refrigerators.

All kidding aside, it’s only important that you show up on sites that it makes sense for you to. Google, Yahoo, Bing, YELP!, automotive navigation databases, etc. Google understands this, and their algorithm is weighted accordingly. The tier one and two sites carry a lot of weight with Google, and the little thin sites are showing up less and less every day.

If you don’t believe it, take a look at the sites that some of these SEO/rep management companies say they’ll make you show up on, then do a search for your dealership. You’ll see that most of those sites don’t even show up in the search results. That’s what zero value looks like.

The short story is this: you don’t have to be everywhere to be successful. Search has changed. You only have to appear where it makes sense and where searchers would logically expect to see your business. A motorcycle dealership on urbanspoon.com isn’t a fit.

Nowadays, SEO is much less black magic and a lot more common sense – don’t let anyone fool you.

Talk Soon,

Brad

In my last article, I wrote about the main purpose of your website.  Remember what it is?

The primary purpose of your website is to identify its visitors and generate leads.  All other functions are secondary. 

I also wrote about the 3 primary ways you can identify more visitors and get more leads:

1. Increase Traffic to Your Website – More visitors equal more leads.

2. Increase Conversion Rates – Converting a higher percentage of traffic means more leads.

3. Utilize Firestorm Website Tracking – Identifying anonymous website visitors for effective follow-up.

In this article, I’ll go into more detail on using Firestorm Website Tracking to increase sales.

First, let’s cover the high-level math. The average powersports dealer gets around 4,000 website visitors each month. Of course, it varies from dealer to dealer, month to month, with an increase during the riding season, but 4,000 website visitors per month is pretty spot on as an average.

The conversion rate for a dealer’s website is typically at 2% (or less). This means 2% of a dealer’s website traffic will fill out a form and identify who they are. So, a website with 4,000 visitors will generate around 80 leads each month. While there are outliers who have a higher conversion rate, 2% is on the high-side. 

Website providers and SEO companies have historically focused on generating more traffic and/or increasing conversion rate. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, they should be trying to improve in these areas. The problem is it’s their exclusive focus. Here’s why…

It would be a real success to grow a dealer’s monthly website visits by 25%. It’s almost unheard of. That would mean an average website with 4,000 visits would grow to 5,000. 

It would also be a real success for a dealer to grow their conversion rate to 3%. A website with 5,000 website visitors at a 3% conversion rate would provide a dealer with 150 leads!  That’s 70 additional leads, which would be great, but still leaves us with an underlying challenge. So, even if you killed it with 150 leads, there would still be 4,850 unidentified website visitors each month who are totally anonymous. 

This raises a great question... how can we identify who more of those anonymous visitors are?  Especially the ones looking at your inventory! 

This is what Firestorm Website Tracking does. We identify anonymous website traffic and report each day on who was looking at new and used inventory on your website… and a little bit of success goes a long way. For instance, identifying 20% of your anonymous traffic would mean you’ve uncovered 970 customers (4,850 x 20%).  

We’ve done a soft rollout of this exciting new product to some of our Local Web Dominator clients and the results are impressive. Below is a sampling of 20 dealers from today’s reporting. The first column is the dealership’s name, which I’ve smudged to hide them. The second column is the number of people who used to be anonymous, but our clients now know who they are. The third column is the number of identified customers who looked at inventory on the dealers’ website yesterday!

Imagine getting an email each morning with a list of customers who were actively looking at new and used inventory on your website yesterday. I can’t think of a better daily list for your sales team to call… and we’ve got the perfect word tracks for them to use.

For more details on Firestorm Website Tracking, give me a call 1-877-242-4472. 

- Tory

 Have you ever heard of elementary score keeping? In the motorcycle business, that’s when you keep score for your sales department by the number of units you sell rather than the gross profit you make. It happens all the time in this business, in part because the OEM’s have programs, incentives, and rankings based on your retailed units, but the bigger culprit is a solid blend of ego and ignorance. 

Back when I was a dealer the Cycle Trader was a weekly black and white print magazine that was sold for next to nothing at nearly every convenience store here in Atlanta. It appeared that every buyer that came into our stores had a copy and was a ferocious price shopper. They had a solid ‘feet on the streets’ sales team that visited our stores every week and would plop down a copy of last week’s edition on my desk. They didn’t even have to do any selling.Once me (and every other dealer in town) flipped through the magazine and saw that every one of our competitors had a display ad, it was just a matter of what size ad and what content would go in it. Because out-of-state dealers didn’t have to charge sales tax to Georgia buyers, the magazine was littered with dealers just across the state line offering mega discounts that, when stacked with no sales tax, made it nearly impossible to compete.

That’s when I did something really stupid. I adopted the mentality of, “If they can sell them for that cheap than so can we!”  I became so consumed with moving units and competing with the discounters that I fell into the trap of elementary score keeping. I would later learn this marketing incest happens in nearly every industry. Ignorant business owners copy-catting their competitors discounted advertising and unknowingly eroding the price integrity of industries, brands, and businesses (hence the creation of MAP).

That lasted for about a year until it became obvious that we were headed for disaster. We increased our volume which required more staff, more inventory, more facility square footage, etc. but our profits declined, BIG TIME. More overhead, less gross profit is not a good business model. Duh… who’d a thunk it. 

I just read that Sears, K-mart, HH Gregg, JC Penny, Macy’s, Gander Mountain and Payless Shoes are all closing stores this year. Many are quick to blame Amazon and other online retailers like Zappos, but personally I feel that’s the easy excuse. Coincidentally, I’ve seen mega discounted Father’s Day advertisements for nearly every one of these businesses (See Exhibit A). 

In the retail business it’s all about holding margin, how much is Sears really gonna make when they discount tools by 50%? The second some big ego executive decides he’s going to conquer the world by discounting it’s the beginning of the end. Here’s why: Getting customers with discounting and promotional pricing inevitably attracts those who only buy because of price, are high maintenance pain in the asses, and are easily lured away by anyone offering bigger discounts and lower prices. 

Since I’ve made this mistake, and wear the scars to this day because of it, it’s a topic that gets me pretty fired up. I once had a sales person tell me that he felt guilty selling an ATV to our customers for full price when they could drive up the road 2 hours and save a thousand bucks. I should have fired him on the spot. Don’t undervalue, and thus underprice, your services just because your competitor is doing it. He will eventually fade away, they always do. The real disservice to your customers is when you’re not there to do service after the sale because you’ve gone out of business, or worse you can’t afford to employ competent employees so you deliver a unit that was improperly assembled and someone is injured.

Year in and year out surveys show that price is not the number one factor in a customer’s decision to buy.  And, knowingly building your customer list with price sensitive customers and/or unable-to-pay-fair-market-value customers, for the products and services you provide, is destructive. 

In the many 20 group meetings I’ve attended, the top performing dealers have always been those who hold gross profit, not focus on discounting. This leads me full circle back to your advertising. This is the pre-frame for what type of customers you attract, and it’s why our religion here at PSM is to execute quantifiable, lead-generating, marketing without focusing on discounts. We’ve consistently avoided discounted pricing messaging since our inception, by intent, and always will. It’s the easy way out, and we don’t participate.

For more information on how we can help you avoid discounting and attract quality leads for every department in your dealership, contact us at 877-242-4472.

 OBJECTIVE 

Powersports of America, sister-store to Polaris of Benton, is a new Polaris and Can-Am dealership in the southwest corner of Kentucky, where the state connects with Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas.  As a new dealership, General Manager, Tim Riley, understands how important it is to make a powerful first impression with his local market.  He also knows that to allow the Powersports of America team the opportunity to do what they do best, provide outstanding customer service, he’s got to ensure that the local ATV, UTV & motorcycle community knows they are now open for business in Paducah.

SOLUTION

Powersports of America took to the internet to make sure that when someone in the local market was searching for a powersports dealer in general, or a Polaris or Can-Am model specifically, their dealership was the first and obvious choice to customers.  Tim, who has seen success with Google AdWords for the Polaris of Benton location, signed up for an aggressive Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign as part of the Local Web Dominator program.  His goal was not just to brand their new dealership by ‘getting their name out there’, but rather to generate quantifiable leads with a positive ROI to make a big impact in the local and surrounding markets.

RESULTS

In April, Powersports of America’s Google AdWords SEM campaign generated 2,628 clicks to their website from customers searching what they sell, who were in their local market.  Plus, 33,963 people saw their ad with an impressive Click Through Rate (CTR) of 7.74% (Benchmark data reports that any CTR over 2-3% is considered exceptional).  

And while that local online visibility is fantastic, the real ROI for this campaign is shown in the 147 conversions (AKA: quantifiable leads) the campaign generated that month:

85 Phone Calls

33 Leads Forms Submitted (Quote Requests, Contact Us, etc.)

18 Finance Applications Submitted

11 Visits to Map & Hours Page (which may point to future store visits)

Additionally, the SEM campaign drives about 41% of the overall website traffic for www.powersportsofamerica.com.  The investment in local SEM is paying off for Powersports of America.  The compelling custom-made ads and local targeting help Powersports of America stand out as the best choice for a local Polaris or Can-Am customer.  

Plus, having a team of dealer-advocate, digital marketing specialists helping to drive traffic for Powersports of America, Tim and his team are able to focus on providing that outstanding customer service to their new Polaris and Can-Am customers, which will keep them coming back for years to come.

 If I walked into your office today with a box full of the names, email addresses, and phone numbers of every proven rider within a thirty mile radius of your dealership, would you let me walk out without a fight? What if that list also told you exactly what each of those riders is in the market for right now, whether it’s service, accessories, gear, or a new ride? I’m pretty sure I’d be taken hostage. 

I recently followed up with a dealer who, after a brief conversation, told me he is a numbers guy and to send him some proof that what we do works and then we could talk some more. No problem, Mr. Dealer. We’ve executed literally thousands of direct response marketing campaigns and I can send data for days. So, I sent him over a few campaign wrap up reports, and here is a breakdown of what those looked like: 

1. 483 responses, including 162 riders interested in a new/used unit purchase

2. 195 responses, including 53 riders interested in a new/used unit purchase

3. 410 responses, including 95 riders interested in a new/used unit purchase

That last dealer I listed saw a 156% increase in traffic with their first campaign. They sold more motorcycles in January than in any other January since 2010, and more in February since 2011.

I included that information in the email, as well, feeling that bubbling of excitement that I always get when I think about teaming up with a new dealer and growing the business in a way that, very literally, changes lives. The impact that successful, proactive, and targeted marketing has on a dealership is very profound. It’s what we call a win/win. 

When you sell a motorcycle to someone, you’re not just making a sale and putting one more tally mark on the month. You’re enriching a life. You didn’t just make a sale and (hopefully) a tidy gross profit. You provided wind therapy, freedom from whatever stress may be in that person’s life, weekends spent with friends and family who share the same passion, escape. The flip side of that is you gained a new customer, increased your revenue, and with the right marketing, you now have the opportunity to earn all of that customer’s future business. 

So, why wouldn’t you want to do that for every enthusiast living in your backyard? Why wouldn’t you want to do that for yourself?  If you could get the names and contact info for nearly every person in your backyard who wants to buy a bike from you this month, would you do it? 

If you answered no, then I need you to do something for me. Reach into your pocket, take out your keys, go lock up, and find your happiness elsewhere. If hundreds of sales opportunities across all departments doesn’t get you excited, then you’re in the wrong business. If you can look at those figures above and not want to have the same for your dealership, then perhaps you’ve lost your passion. 

However, if you got excited about the results I shared with you, and the idea of having increased traffic and leads has you dreaming about a different life, then the simplest thing you can do is call me. Let’s discuss a plan for predictable growth with quantifiable results that will change your life. 

Marisa Tils

877-242-4472  ext 131