DealersEdge Insider article

April 15th 2008

Toyota of Orlando is the largest Toyota dealer in central Florida, which is saying something. The dealership’s director of marketing, Kate Frost, used to work for Gold Digger. Kate observes that there was no easy way for a dealership to pull all of the relevant data points together in order to offer prospects a real value story that included a comparative payment on a new vehicle.

Kate attributes the fact that her store had one of its best Februarys in its history to the test of AutoExcavations going into a down  market. She can attribute 61 cars sold so far using the program and notes that even non-buyers have said they like the idea of getting a comparative repurchase price and payment as part of a dealership marketing offer.

Dealer Marketing Magazine

November 2009

The key to this type of marketing is the trust factor gained when your customer correspondence references pertinent details and specifics relevant to that customer’s previous purchase, as well as the specific details going forward regarding their repurchase options.

There are several things to keep in mind when choosing a company that provide these services. Like wine, the products may look very similar from a distance but have vastly different degrees of quality when experienced.

Things to look for:

1. Is their product sophisticated enough to match the trim level, of the vehicle the customer is driving now, to the closest current trim level offered? Or do they just come close?  Example: A customer driving a 2Dr Honda Civic Si 6spd is offered a quote on a 4dr Honda Civic Hybrid Automatic. Obviously two different demographics!

1. Does their final quote offer incorporate State specific sales tax ramifications as well as doc fees, title fees, etc, or will you have to place the dreaded asterisk informing the customer that these are not included?

1. Is their product web based so that a dealer can make instantaneous quote parameter changes that can be applied to thousands of quotes in a matter of minutes?

As you can imagine when consistently applied the ROI on this type of marketing is substantially higher than current efforts. So it is not a question of if you should market this way…it is just a question of when?

Chip King is the CEO of AutoExcavations a CRM company focused on marketing to Dealers, Direct Mail Companies and OEMs. He can be reached at 860-777-5471, chipking@yahoo.com or www.autoexcavations.com