Articles

OBJECTIVE

The team at Boat Farm wanted to upgrade their website to one that felt more like their dealership’s culture and generated more boat leads for their sales team year-round.  They had a cookie-cutter website that was hosted by a large, well-known marine website provider, but Marketing Director, Amber Dunne, wanted to have something that was easier to maintain and that created more sales opportunities for the dealership.

As a marine-only dealership in Iowa, it’s critical to The Boat Farm that every dollar they spend generates them quantifiable ROI.  Like most dealers, they don’t have the time or money to waste on shiny bells and whistles that turn out to be smoke and mirrors. Like the brands they sell, they expect to get the best product and service for their investment.

SOLUTION

By changing website providers from a very popular marine website platform to a new website platform was a leap of faith for Amber and Owner, Kirk Kohls. But, once they saw the improved inventory management system, the mobile app available for real-time updates, and the full accessibility to making updates to their own website with Firestorm Websites, they were ready to try something new. 

Amber worked closely with the PSM team to create a completely custom website (complete with a new logo design also).  The Firestorm Website platform allowed Amber to have full creative liberty with the look & feel of their new site while maintaining some of the proven best practices that are associated only with the Firestorm Website platform.  

RESULTS

The results are what most Firestorm Websites clients are discovering…incredible!  The new Boat Farm website (www.boatfarm.com) launched at the end of July 2018.  In one month, they generated more leads than they had generated with their previous website over a seven month period.  That’s not a typo.  You read that correctly. In one month, the new Boat Farm website generated 44 leads, which is more than their previous website had generated from December – June combined.  

In addition to the incredible increase in leads, the site creates a great user experience, has the look & feel that is unique to the Boat Farm dealership, and makes adding/updating the inventory fast and easy.  Having their inventory updated in real-time with actual images of the boats in stock and a clear, singular call-to-action drives responses by creating an emotional response in website visitors, and ultimately leads to an increase in leads for the dealership year-round.

Give us a call or text us at 770-692-1750 or SUBMIT A FORM ONLINE to schedule a FREE DEMO to see how Firestorm Websites could start generating more leads for your dealership.  

Also, don't just take our word for it - check out our reviews on Google and see what dealers are saying about our products and service.

 Dealership: 

The MOMS group of dealerships has been a family owned and operated business for over 41 years. In fact, at one time or another all ten of Winnie Wheeler’s (the original MOM) kids have worked in the motorcycle industry and now the fourth generation is part of MOMS Manchester’s legacy! With four dealerships in the Boston area, they continue to pride themselves on a founding principle: to create the opportunity for long-term relationships with customers by providing the best customer service available.

Solution: 

One of the biggest challenges dealers are faced with is marketing. Most dealers lack a plan so they end up making reactive advertising decisions and randomly buy radio, tv and newspaper because they know they should be advertising. They react. If they have poor weather and traffic slows, they buy a big radio campaign hoping to drive traffic. If they have a couple busy weeks, they hold off on marketing hoping well-timed weather keeps the door swinging. If the economy takes a step backwards, they stop spending to conserve cash. These ‘Market Driven’ dealers wind up leaving themselves completely vulnerable to the whims of elections, the weather, market and economy.

‘Marketing Driven’ dealers have more control over their business because they have a pro-active, integrated, direct-marketing plan designed to touch their buying base 52-104 times per year that is quantifiable. So, barring a natural disaster, ‘Marketing Driven’ dealers experience predictable growth. 

MOMS made the conscious decision to put more control in their hands this year. We started by identifying their ‘Buying Base’ made up of two groups of customers: 1) Past Customers who’ve spent money with their store in the past four years in Sales, Service & Parts. The Sharp Shooter Program helps dealers grow by increasing the number of ‘Active Customers’, those who spend money with your dealership every 12 months. Most dealers have only a fraction of their database actively spending money with them, representing a huge opportunity for growth. 

Next, we found their 2) Conquest Customers, folks who live in their backyard and ride what they sell but haven’t bought from them. These two groups of customers are called a ‘Dealership’s Buying Base’ because this is where the majority of their sales are going to come from.

Once we identified their ‘Buying Base’, we put together a multi-touch, direct-marketing plan designed to touch them 52-104 times per year. This essentially puts a fence around their herd and guarantees they’re staying in front of every real opportunity they have to sell a unit, parts or service in their backyard.

Once we’ve identified the ‘Right Audience’ and the ‘Right Media’, we turn our attention to the ‘Right Message.’ The Sharp Shooter message focuses on the party which increases frequency of visits to our clients’ dealerships. Simply put, the more frequently customers walk through your doors, the more often they will purchase from your individual departments resulting in increased ‘Average Annual Customer Value.’ 

When you increase 1) The Number of Active Customers and 2) Their Annual Average Customer Value, your business grows predictably.

Results:

MOMS just finished their second event using the Sharp Shooter Program. Despite having an enormous amount of competition with local events, Heather Lockwood said they had a great turnout and their sales people are already working the leads. 

Speaking of leads, they had 328 surveys completed, which created a total of 216 sales opportunities in P&A, service, and riding gear, PLUS 85 responses for a new or used bike.

What’s Next:

What’s next? We are officially working on the 4th quarter and that means ‘Hallo-Thanks-Mas’. Between Halloween and Christmas Day, the average American consumer will spend 70% of their entire, annual discretionary budget. How much of that budget are you going to capture? Don’t make the mistake of pulling your advertising dollars back this year and leaving it to hope. Let us help you have a record 4th quarter. When you become a ‘Marketing Driven’ dealer, you can move the needle all year long. For more information on how the Sharp Shooter Program can help put more control over the growth of your dealership in your hands, give me a ring on my direct line at 877-242-4472 ext: 112 or visit us at 

www.PowersportsMarketing.com. Happy selling.

Before jumping into a breakdown of each media’s pros and cons, I’ll lay down a foundation. First, let’s look at the actual definition of Media: The means of communication that reaches or influences people.

Notice there is an emphasis on reaching people, and also influencing them. There is a big difference between these two.

In terms of reaching people, the first step is determining who you want to reach. What defines your audience? For the powersports industry, too many dealerships, OEMs and marketing companies focus excessively on psychographics and demographics. They determine who their average rider is; let’s say it’s a white male between the ages of 25 and 55 with an annual household income greater than $55,000. This data then leads to two erroneous approaches to marketing. 

1. Marketing that focuses on males between the ages of 25 and 55 with an annual household income that’s greater than $55,000.

2. Marketing that’s excessively focused on segments of psychographics and demographics that are NOT the average rider. So, marketing that concentrates on Women, Hispanics, African Americans, Millennials, etc. 

Why is each one erroneous? 

1. Just because you’re a male between the ages of 25 and 55 with an annual household income greater than $55,000 doesn’t mean you’ll buy a powersports vehicle. In fact, most people that fit within this group, the vast majority of them, will NEVER ride what you sell. 

2. It’s a waste of money to implement marketing based on race, age, or sex. Again, most people that fit within any psychographic and/or demographic segment, the vast majority of any grouping, will NEVER ride what you sell.

So, who is your audience?  Powersports enthusiasts. When you market to powersports enthusiasts, the vast majority of them ride what you sell and have a high likelihood of responding to your marketing and ultimately buying something from you. 

Then what about new riders, Tory?! We need new blood!  

Fact: People don’t start riding because of marketing… first time riders do so because of the influence of friends and family. Therefore, the best approach to getting new riders is marketing monthly events and asking (or even incentivizing) customers & prospects to bring their non-rider friends and family. This is single handedly the best way to grow new riders. Be sure you’re inviting all non-rider visitors to take part in your new rider training if you have one. 

I cover the new-rider subject in detail in last issue’s Ask Tory article. You can find it in the ‘Articles’ section at www.PowersportsMarketing.com.  

Now that we know who we need to reach, let’s shift our attention to different media’s ability to reach and influence them.

• Radio & TV: You’re paying to reach 100% of the population. Only 4%-6% of the population rides, so you’re wasting more than 90% of your budget. It can be expensive to produce. There are now HUNDREDS of stations which decreases the likelihood of a viewer/listener being on your station when your ad is playing.  The addition of DVRs, satellite radio and Bluetooth also decrease the likelihood of someone seeing/hearing your ad.  As far as influencing folks, TV and radio don’t do a good job of swaying folks to respond and/or make a major purchase. It’s an obvious “no” on Radio & TV for me, but if you must do it, do it sparingly and only when you get an incredible buy. 

• Billboards: Doesn’t target riders. You’re paying to reach 100% of cars that drive by it. Directional billboards work for restaurants targeting travelers. 100% of people eat, and vacationers use billboards to find an exit to make a stop. Directional billboards might make sense for a dealership that’s hard to navigate to, but this will be extremely rare. They do a terrible job of influencing people to stop at a dealership.   

• Newspaper – This is an older media that’s slowly dying. You can’t reach/target riders. The only success I’ve heard from a couple of dealers is with classifieds, but even these results are dilapidated. Newspaper is not very influential on the marketing side, and I don’t recommend it. 

• Direct Mail: You can target riders extremely well… both your customer list, and conquest prospects as well. Conquest prospects are those that ride what you sell, live in your back yard, but they’ve never purchased from you. Direct mail is the best way to target them, and it’s a no brainer to do so. Direct Mail is influential. In fact, it’s one of the only media (if not the only one) that you’re guaranteed face time. A person has to look at it and decide what to do with it. If your message is good, you can get great results.

• Email: Obviously, you can target riders, and can be very influential. 

• SEM/PPC & Online Ads: With this media, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, which is only if they’re interested in what you offer (like 100% commission). Highly targetable, quantifiable and engaging. 

• Local Print: This media typically isn’t targetable or influencing. However, if you run a classified in a Thrifty Nickel type of publication and it gets you calls, do it (but don’t count on getting any calls). I don’t recommend this media.

• Texting: This media focuses on the right audience (customers) and can influence them. Consider this… while folks don’t mind texting during the research & purchase process for any department, most people don’t want to be marketed to via text. 

• SEO: This is not a media, but I wanted to throw it in the mix. In industries where website content is lacking, i.e. HVAC, restaurant, and many other businesses with 4 pages on their website, SEO/content services may be necessary. In the powersports industry, your website is loaded with content, and consistently updated with your inventory and showroom feed.  If you’re paying for SEO services, stop it! 

Whichever media you use, be sure your message has a call-to-action, telling prospects what you want them to do. This enables you to quantify if it’s working. If it’s working (reaching and influencing people), keep doing it. If it’s not, stop wasting your money and move on. 

- Tory

 This year has been a great time of learning for me. You see, this year was the year I decided to get into better physical shape. I’ve reached the place in life where my doctor likes to poke and prod me in more and more invasive ways, and my medicine cabinet has the appearance of a “better living through chemistry” philosophy.

So I decided to do something about it. For real this time. 

I did the research. I looked at all the crazy “Eat the food, lose the weight!” products, stand on this board and do the twist “workout” gadgets, pills, and “cleanses” that everyone likes to talk about. Frankly, it all reeks of B.S. 

IF (and that’s a very big, generous IF), any of that stuff works AT ALL, the gains are extremely short lived, and often your condition ends up worse later than when you started. Prove me wrong.

I’m not a particularly complicated guy, and I am a big believer in Occam’s Razor (the simplest theory is likely the correct one). So in February (I waited until the New Years resolutions faded), I joined a gym. I set my alarm clock for the time I used to go to bed as a young person, and I got my very large butt up and went. I picked things up and put them down. A lot. 5 days a week. I’m not gonna lie, in the beginning everything hurt and I was positive I would die. Then I was afraid I might not. It was rough.

But something started to happen. I could pick up bigger things, and everything quit hurting all the time. I started to feel – not just better – but pretty good, actually. 

And the scale started to be friendlier. And I began to look like a kid wearing his dad’s clothes. And while initially I really hated getting up earlier, something else happened. I started to actually look forward to getting up and going in the morning. 

And then I was waking up without the alarm clock. 

Then, I decided to up the ante by adding cardio to the mix. I spent a ton of money to buy jump ropes that I would hopefully feel obligated to use because of the cost. It worked. Now everything hurt again and I was dying. Then it got better. And so did my conditioning. 

The point of my sharing all of this isn’t to talk about me. It’s so you’ll understand what I mean when I say that I’ve found the magic bullet. Many people are looking for magic bullets in a lot of different areas of their personal or business lives, and they’re expecting that they’ll be EASY. That’s not how it works. I believe that magic bullets exist – but they are anything but easy to execute. The magic isn’t in the execution, it’s in the RESULTS.

So let me bring this around and make it relevant for us.

Since we at PSM Marketing have become full-house, in-house marketing providers, it’s been very enlightening to see the different levels of commitment that dealers across the country have to the business of marketing their dealerships.

Some folks are all-in, some are a bit half-hearted, and others are very hit and miss. It reminds me of the different types of folks you see at the gym. 

There are guys that you see there every day. In fact, when they aren’t there you wonder where they are. They are in great shape. And they stay that way by showing up. They have the routines down, the habit formed, and reap the rewards of consistency over time.

The half-hearted gym folks show up a couple of times per week, and usually walk on the treadmill (because that’s easier than the elliptical). They don’t walk particularly fast, and are usually watching the television. They aren’t sweating. They never lift or push themselves very hard. The rewards they reap from this are minimal at best. I find them to be undetectable, actually. And from what I’ve seen, eventually they simply disappear.

The hit and miss folks are the most pitiful. I really feel bad for them. They’re usually the two 40+ year old housewives, or the 40+ married couple who sign up for the 6:30 A.M. high intensity interval training class because they want to get in shape. 15 minutes in, they have had their butts handed to them, and because they’re in bad shape and completely overexerting themselves, they’re unable to walk for two weeks. They wake up on day two and promise each other that they’ll never make that mistake again, and don’t return.

Some dealerships are all in when it comes to the business of marketing their dealerships. They may have started simply, doing the things they initially learned. They may have started with a website. Later dialing in SEO best practices. Seeing some success, they likely bolted on Google Ads, and maybe Facebook advertising. Those small, incremental successes provided the confidence to begin email advertising – which really fueled success. Harvesting social proof through reviews came next, using a ninja style mobile app, which allowed their sales staff to ask for them at the best possible time. Maybe lastly, these are the guys that run at least one (sometimes two) Sharp Shooter campaigns per month, driving leads to a survey site and crowds of people to their dealership. These guys are reaping the rewards of executing the routines, having the habits formed, and consistency over time. I’m not guessing here. Any dealership that does this becomes a juggernaut in their market. If this isn’t you, you’ve already said their name in your head.

Half-hearted dealerships are those that want to do the right thing when it comes to their marketing, but let’s not get crazy. Let’s not do anything that’s too hard, or requires too much follow-up. Maybe we’ll do an email newsletter. You know, something unquantifiable with no call to action. Hey – maybe a billboard, radio, or T.V. commercial! Sometimes, maybe a couple of times a year, they might do a Sharp Shooter. They’re hard, but they drive a lot of traffic on the day of the event, so even if we don’t do any follow up afterwards on the leads, we can feel pretty good about it. The effort isn’t excessive, and neither are the overall results. 

The hit and miss dealerships…. In the South we say, “Bless their hearts.” Trust me, here in Georgia you don’t want your heart blessed….

These are the guys that still think the Yellow Pages are a good idea. These poor souls are pretty clueless about marketing in general, much less the specifics of digital, print, direct, or branding. They’ve heard that marketing is something they should be doing, and maybe one day they’ll get around to giving it a try. At some point, one of our amazing sales reps signs them up for a Sharp Shooter campaign. Since we do all the initial legwork, the response is predictable. Big.

The picture here is like a poor, overweight, middle aged, person trying to jump on a treadmill going 20 MPH. They will likely survive it, but there will be bruising and pain. The initial response is “Are you CRAZY! We aren’t going to do THAT again!”

The whole point here is that the magic bullet is the hard work, the routines, habits, and consistency. What kind of marketing do you have? What kind of marketing do you WANT to have? If you aren’t already, I would encourage you to be an all-in dealership. That doesn’t mean that you dive in and do everything right now, like flipping a switch. You simply have to decide that’s what you want to do. You don’t go into a gym and start benching 200lbs.  – but you DO have to go, and you DO have to start lifting SOMETHING. You build up, and over time the results come. Your team begins to see your commitment, and they buy in. Those that don’t, find their happiness elsewhere – that’s going to happen, and that’s okay.  

In time, you’ll look at your dealership and see what it accomplished by those routines, habits, and consistency. It will be amazing. I promise.

If you’re interested in making the commitment to exceptional marketing (and in turn, profits), we’d like to help. We’re expert trainers, and subject matter experts when it comes to marketing.  Not only that, since we’re full-house in-house, we own a marketing ‘gym.’ 

Give us a call and we’ll be happy to partner with you to bolt on all the best practices that will make your dealership the one that others compare themselves to.

So what’s it going to be? Reasons or results?

Talk soon,

Brad

 As I write this the internet is melting over Nike’s new Colin Kaepernick “Just Do It” marketing campaign.  According to the <leaning> left, online sales are up 31% and the campaign has already received $43 million in free advertising. According to the <leaning> right, stock immediately dropped $4 billion, but the real impact of losing the conservatives patronage will take time as shoes and clothing aren’t daily/weekly purchases like the Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, or In-&-Out Burger controversies of past.  

As business owners we’re often taught to look up to the big mega companies, and even copy what they are doing because, after all, they’re big so they must be smart. In fact, I was taught early on that the purpose of my advertising was to get my name out there and build my brand. Well if you’re Nike, Budweiser, Ford or any of the household super companies this strategy makes some sense. But, it’s a huge myth in the small-to-medium sized business (SMB) world. 

We hear about the American economy on the news and social media as if it’s one big category. In reality, the American Economy is made up of 3 very different sectors. There is the ‘Political’ sector funded by us tax payers where Washington operatives, lawyers, lobbyists and lifelong politicians revolve around a fake money machine deciding how our money will be spent. I’m sure there are some good honest politicians out there, but corruption happens all too often in this sector. City officials like former Detroit Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who with the help of his friends extorted contractors and used public funds as his own piggy bank, stealing millions of dollars. It’s interesting to look at the homes, cars, and lifestyles of many of our state and federal representatives and cross reference that with their salary and see the obvious lack of congruence. When this sector spends money, it is not their own. When they earn money, its sources can be mysterious.

Then there is the ‘Wall Street’ sector of the economy made up of publicly traded companies and banks where industry insiders seek to capitalize profits in any manner possible, including fraud, collusion, and conflict of interest to maximize personal wealth. Like Madoff did with his 65 billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. There is plenty of upstanding and legal business going on Wall Street, but the lines between systematic corruption and honest business can be very blurry. This is where most of the big business world like Nike lives, and just as in the political sector when Wall Street CEO’s and pundits are spending money, it is investor money, not their money, worked for and earned by them. 

Then you have a huge pipeline of money flowing between those two sectors. This is where Washington Lobbyist come into play. A lobbyist is someone hired by a business (or a cause) to persuade legislators to support that business or cause. Lobbyists get paid to win favor from politicians. For example, oil companies send lobbyists to Washington to try to make life easier for oil companies.

In the 2013-2014 election cycle Wall Street banks, companies, and trade associations spent $1.4 billion to influence policy making in Washington. Lobbying is legal, and bribery is illegal, and separating the two can be a real challenge. Many consider this an ongoing cycle of legalized bribery and systematic insider corruption. 

One thing is for sure, money modifies behavior, and that makes the difference between bribery and lobbying feel like semantics. 

The 3rd sector is Main Street America, where you and I live and work. Where small-to-medium sized businesses drive the economy, do real work, and provide real jobs. In the first two sectors, up is often down, and left is often right. No logic. However, in the Main Street sector honesty, hard work, and smart business best practices reign supreme. 

This is important to understand, because only in the 3rd sector do the laws of money have authority. In the first two, it’s a fantasy land. You and I must understand where we live and work, in the Main Street economy, and not drift over into watching and copy-catting those other two fictitious worlds.  

The only money we have to spend is our money. And nobody spends someone else’s money the way they spend their own money. 

The Main Street sector truly is the backbone of our economy, and since 1995 two out of every three jobs created comes from the SMB sector. And it’s also important to note that small business is what creates big business. Bezos started Amazon in his garage and Zuckerburg started Facebook in his dorm. 

Unlike the Wall Street folks, the purpose of your advertising isn’t to build your brand, it’s to grow new market share and increase retention through lead-generation marketing that builds relationships with your target audience. And when you do this properly you get branding and a positive ROI as a happy by product.  

We’re proud to be part of the Main Street Economy, and that’s why our goal here at PSM is to enrich lives by providing powerful turn-key marketing so people, businesses, and our (main street) economy can thrive!

We realize that you work hard for your money and that when you spend it on advertising you expect quantifiable results.  That’s why every single product we sell we also use ourselves in our day-to-day business. If I wouldn’t spend my money on it, we don’t sell it. 

For more information on lead generation marketing contact us today at 877-242-4472 or shoot us a message at www.powersportsmarketing.com

 OBJECTIVE

Space Coast Harley-Davidson is a community focused dealership.  They know that a customer can choose to drive to any nearby Harley dealer in Central Florida for the same product, but what sets Space Coast apart from their competition is how active they are in their community.  

With events every weekend, the Space Coast Harley team knows how to make their customers feel welcomed.  And, they know that welcoming everyone to their events is one of the best ways to grow in market share.  One of the driving forces in creating a new customer is the influence of friends and family.  

So, having events that create a compelling reason to invite friends and family down to the dealership is a very compelling way to increase affinity with current customers while creating interest and impulse purchases from prospective customers

SOLUTION

However, word of mouth – while extremely compelling – isn’t the most consistent and reliable way to communicate about the dealership’s events and inventory.  It’s also almost impossible to track.  And for a dealer as focused on growing market share in an area that has steep competition within an hour’s drive, they need a strategy that is quantifiable, measurable and that generates results!

So, they’ve also ensured that prospective customers can find out about the dealership and their upcoming events through a Google Ad campaign that includes extremely customer targeting and conversion tracking. 

RESULTS

By investing in quantifiable digital marketing through Google Search and Display campaigns, Space Coast Harley-Davidson has seen an incredible influx of traffic to the website and their events page.   And even more compelling is that the traffic on their site from their Google Ads campaign is converting at exceptional rate.  In July, their Conversion Rate was over 12% for the Search Campaign and an impressive 3.8% on the Display Campaign.  That means not only did they send an additional 2,700 visitors to their website, but they generated 95 phone calls to the dealership from their Google Ads.   

Plus, they had 30 forms submitting (including Get a Quote and Finance Applications).  With a conservative closing ratio of only 10%, the Space Coast sales team could have sold 3 new Harleys from the Google Ads campaign alone!  Not to mention the increased store traffic from the 40 visits they had to their Events Calendar!

Does your Digital Marketing campaign generate those kinds of conversion rates and targeted website traffic?  If not, we’d love to show you how our team of Premium Google Ad Partners is able to generate a positive ROI for our Local Web Dominator clients.

Give us a call at 877-242-4472 to schedule a FREE Market Analysis of your current Google Ad account, or a custom recommendation for your local market.

 Dealership: 

Ehlerding Motorsports began business in 1965 from a garage on the family dairy farm near Decatur and expanded into a new facility in 1971. Over the years, the business has grown tremendously, but the original foundation still exists – a love for motorsport vehicles and the desire to consistently offer high-quality products, competitive prices and superior customer service. Today, all operations have been centralized on one campus with two modern buildings totaling over 46,000 square feet in Fort Wayne, IN. 

Solution: 

For Don’s third Sharp Shooter Event, he decided to market to 3,000 past customers. Using a nice mix of active and inactive customers, he knew they could reactivate customers who hadn’t spent money with them in the previous year and continue to increase frequency of visits from their active customers. The ultimate goal was to increase the number of customers spending money with them over the next year and increase how much they spent, by getting them all to walk through the door more often. By utilizing 12 different media methods to touch customers, we increased the amount of traffic on event day and the number of leads generated. 

Big picture, we know Powersports Dealers need to touch their Buying Base a minimum of 52-104 times per year to increase retention and grow market share. 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). The reverse is also true; focus on the sale and you will alienate the 99.99% of customers who don’t have ‘buy a motorcycle’ on their list of things to do this weekend. 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:

Don was extremely pleased with the results and turnout on event day; he has done direct mail campaigns in the past for years and never gotten the level of response he has with our Sharp Shooter campaigns. 

His third Sharp Shooter campaign is currently in progress and he is amazed each time at the door swings and increased sales he sees. He agrees that our multi-touch approach, along with focusing on the right audience and using the right message is what does the trick. 

His Sharp Shooter campaign generated 134 completed surveys, which created a total of 105 in P&A, Service, and riding gear, PLUS 59 responses for a new or used bike!

Don has been in business for over 50 years and is relieved to have finally found something that works.

What’s Next:

September means Labor Day Parties and New Model Open Houses! New models are more exciting to your customers that Christmas morning is to 5-year olds. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to capture the excitement that the new model year brings! Check out the website (www.powersportsmarketing.com/sample-campaigns) for killer campaign options and for more information on how the Sharp Shooter Program can help you achieve your marketing goals in 2018, call me on my direct line 877-242-4472 ext: 112. Happy selling.

So, last month we talked about how email has a reputation. If you missed it, I HIGHLY recommend either finding last month’s paper copy, or going online to our site (Click the Marketing Best Practices navigation) and reading it. It’s important.

This time around, I’d like to talk about an element of that email reputation that nobody ever seems to talk about, but plays a big part of how your email is perceived by internet service providers and can impact your deliverability with them.

I’m talking about list quality.  In the Sharp Shooter end of the world, we have guidelines for mail files that we use to ensure the highest level of deliverability for our clients. We run those files through an extremely rigorous process to weed out addresses that are anything less than the most accurate.

That’s what internet service providers want you to do with your email addresses as well.

If you remember from my example last month, traffic on the information superhighway is pretty congested with email traffic, most of which (spam) is just out there getting in everyone’s way. To keep with the analogy, the service providers would like to make sure we’re all doing our due diligence to make sure those cars are taken to the junkyard, and/or never leave the garage to make a mess of the roads by slowing down legitimate traffic.

How do we do that? 

First and foremost (and it should go without saying) never buy a list to use. Just don’t. There are more reasons not to do that than I have space to list.

Always harvest your own list from your own marketing efforts – and best of all – from your parts/service/sales department. 

This is the foundation. This means you’ll get good a good list that contains people who want to receive your communication.

That said, email addresses are in many ways the same as mailing addresses. They change. Sometimes, a lot.

In the physical mail world, we’ve got an advantage. The National Change Of Address registry can tell you that someone moved or died and that you shouldn’t send to that address and expect to get a response. It’s a bad address. It might have been good in the past, but not anymore. If the individual is on the right side of the dirt, you get back a corrected current address. Good stuff.

The world of email isn’t as cut and dried, unfortunately, there is no email address database to run folks through. This means that if you don’t know any better, you can keep sending emails to people who will never see them – cluttering up the highway unnecessarily all along the way.

Just like people move from one place to another in the real world, the same thing happens in the world of email as well. People change from Comcast to AT&T, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail (hahaha) or some other provider all the time, leaving behind inaccessible, unattended email accounts that may not stop getting emails for a very long time.

Email addresses are incredibly easy to get too, and a normal practice for some folks is to have a “junk” email address. I’ll bet most of the folks reading this have at least one. You know what I’m talking about, an email address you give out when you have to provide one for something/someone and you have absolutely no intention of ever reading what they might send, and you don’t want their crap to clutter up your real inbox.

In an effort to improve “highway conditions” providers have begun to pay special attention to emails that get sent and never get opened, and have drawn two basic conclusions from senders who keep sending them.

First, they use their own algorithms based on percentages, frequency and other factors and decide based on the results whether you are likely a spammer. If things don’t add up, your mail doesn’t go through, and your domain and IP address get put on blacklists and deliverability goes through the floor. It’s like the postman gets a tray of mail, looks at the “from” address and says, “These guys aren’t legit,” and just throws the tray in the dumpster. And he doesn’t go back to the sender to tell him what he did. After all, it doesn’t make sense to notify a spammer that you’re on to him. Better to just quietly get rid of his mail. In our business, that doesn’t really happen, although it did once for a dealer we worked with who bought an enormous email list and tried to use it. After a big hassle, we got him taken care of, and lessons were learned.

If service providers determine that you’re not a spammer, but you still have a list with lots of “never opens” they assume that your list is of poor quality due to a lack of attention on your part. Sloppy housekeeping, for lack of a better way to say it. While you may not get blacklisted, your mail could be subject to greater scrutiny, and deliverability impacted. 

Long story short, you can’t just keep sending emails to mailboxes that never open them. It’s a poor reflection of you as a sender, and can potentially create problems for you with deliverability. If you’re a Firestorm user, we can help with list hygiene, especially when it comes to providing a platform that creates emails that customers will want to open. If you haven’t already attended our webinar on Firestorm email you should make plans to do so very soon. We go over tons of best practices and tricks of the trade to get open and click rates up. And according to reputable sources, it’s even better than a Kiss concert.

Talk soon,

Brad

 Forgive me if you’ve heard this analogy before, but it’s one of my favorites. Let’s say you and I were in business together and we recently opened a Golf Pro Shop. We desperately need to get customers through the doors and make the cash register ring, so we turn our attention to our marketing plan.  

We know that going after everyone utilizing mass media will cost a lot of money and won’t be quantifiable. Therefore, it’s extremely unlikely to generate an ROI on dollars spent, so we stay away from radio, TV and billboards.  This leads us to look at buying a list of prospects to market to. 

The market research we’ve done has shown that the average person who plays golf is a male between the ages of 30 & 55. Playing golf requires some free time, so parents with young kids may not be the best fit. Golf isn’t cheap, so prospects will need to have an annual income that’s over $55,000. We also know they need to live close to the shop, or within 15-miles.  

All of this psychographic and demographic data sounds precise, and this is a list we could purchase and market to. We move forward with our strategy and send out a direct mail piece with a great call-to-action, but it yields zero results. 

Then it hits us, and we recognize one huge flaw. The overwhelming majority of people we were marketing to don’t play golf! Only approximately 8% of Americans play golf, and if a person doesn’t play golf, they won’t buy golf equipment from us. No amount of marketing will change this fact, no matter how good or consistent our ads are. 

We then ask ourselves one of the most important questions before any marketing campaign, “who is most likely to buy from us?” Our answer is amazingly simple… people who play golf. We have a good shot at getting a golfer to respond to our marketing, so we move forward with this strategy. We don’t get mesmerized by all the bright and shiny psychographics and demographics, we decide to get a list of golfers. 

We send out the same direct mail piece with a great call-to-action to our new list, and this time it generates a 5% response rate and an incredible ROI on dollars spent. 

Remember the four fundamentals of marketing?  1. Audience (most likely to buy from you); 2. Media (most likely to reach your chosen audience); 3. Message (tell them what you want them to do); 4. Timing (have an event and implement drip-marketing). It all starts with choosing the right audience. The right media, message and timing to the wrong list will fail every time.

For a powersports dealer, the right audience is powersports enthusiasts. This is a niche industry where only approximately 6% of people ride what we sell (less than the number who play golf). People who don’t ride won’t respond to your marketing or buy anything from you. Doesn’t it just makes sense to spend your limited budget marketing to those who will? 

Powersports enthusiasts fall into three groups:

1. Active Customers – They’ve purchased from you within a 12-month period. 

2. Inactive Customers – Their last purchase was over 12-months ago. You’ve lost them and they need to be reactivated. 

3. Conquest prospects - These are people who live in your backyard, ride what you sell, buy what you sell, but they’ve never purchased anything from you.   

These three groups of people are where the majority of your sales across all departments will come from over the next 12 months. You need to reach out to them every month and invite them into the dealership. Inviting them to the dealership every month will increase their frequency of visits to your dealership (instead of a competitor), which also increases how much they buy from you (increases annual customer value).  

Marketing to this audience will not only increase sales from past and current customers, it’s also the best strategy for generating new customers for your dealership every single month. And it’s 100% quantifiable.

Want to know how many Active Customers, Inactive Customers and Conquest Prospects your dealership has? Call 1-877-242-4472 for a free Data Analysis. 

-Tory