When we think of the term Customer Loyalty, it is usually describing the behavior of repeat customers, who offer good ratings, reviews, or testimonials about your business. In a marketplace such as automotive new car sales, it is critical to build strong customer loyalty. A one size fits all approach to selling and retaining customers does little to fend off competitors and create loyalty. When customers come in to buy a new car today, most auto dealers will try to up sell by offering an extended warranty or rust proofing or possibly theft protection. However, many sales staffs forget about what more they can offer and focus purely on making the single sale. They forget to ask themselves if there are any additional products or services that could be offered that could mean the difference in getting the one time sale and bringing the customer back again and again because the dealer was so helpful and offered something that another dealer may not have.
As we can all attest to, when customers aren't happy with your business they won't hesitate to let you know and many of their friends and family as well which results in lost business to your competition. That's why Stratham Audi and North Shore Porsche with new strategies towards selling to the customer, dealers are doing simple things such as making follow-up calls or mailing a customer satisfaction questionnaire immediately after the sale has been made. The results in many cases are that the customer might be more likely to do business with them again in the future and refer the dealer to others.
Staying in contact with your customers is one of the best ways to build customer loyalty and a relationship with that dealer. As an example, once the sale has been made, Jake Sweeney Mazda interacts with the customer in areas such as service and customer support. A good sales person will keep in contact with a customer to make sure that even in a service situation things are resolved to their satisfaction and assist in any way they can to make them happy after the fact. The more a customer sees you the more likely they are to remember your name when it comes time to buy again.
For dealers today, building customer loyalty would be a much easier if they had a workforce that had the best interest of the dealer in mind. But in a world where it is all about “ME”, that can be hard to come by. In the long run, Los Angeles Honda Dealers know it is important to retain the employees who interact with customers such as sales people, service personnel, and customer-service staff. But loyalty should work from the top down. If the owner of a dealership is loyal to his or her employees, that loyalty will usually filter down and then get passed on to customers. A lot of associations today such as Used Cars Boston Dealers are instituting programs to train their employees of the art of dealing with customers and how to satisfy their needs. By teaching how to interact more effectively with customers, they give the customer a reason to want to come back. Employees should look for ways to get to know their customers and their needs and try to anticipate what they want in order to provide the highest level of service possible in every area of sales and service.
Providing good customer service is the lifeblood of any company who wants to remain in business. You can bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your company won't be in business for long. Creating and nurturing customer loyalty should be a top priority for every company.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Automotive Strategy For Today
In today’s society, we are finding that it is more important than ever when trying to insure the survival of ones business that we focus on how what one entity does can trickle down and affect the success or failure of another.
In the automotive market as an example, a dealer, such as Porsche Portsmouth or a region, Southern Maine Honda Dealers, are finding it harder to attract the level and quality of customers needed to keep them in business year after year. Even with all of the aggressive advertising and moves to more online internet based strategies, it sometimes is not enough. To aid in these efforts and to insure their own survival, manufacturers are stepping in and doing a lot to help dealers in a variety of ways. From simple things such as advertising programs, certified Used Cars Cincinnati, on the manufacturer web sites that drive more traffic to individual dealer sites, to incentives for using online programs such as Google PPC where a dealer is paid back a portion of their budget each month by the manufacturer.
Manufacturers around the world have stepped up to the challenge and are now looking at new strategies aimed at reinforcing their relationships with dealerships and consumers alike. They are creating road maps that point the way to understanding the consumer of today and what can be leveraged to create even more desirable programs that entice consumers to buy. Additional traffic can be enjoyed by all Chrysler NH dealers for a marketing effort surrounding New Hampshire. The manufacturer’s job now is to create expanded marketing opportunities for its dealers in the auto industry to enable them to be successful and help them to sell more cars.
By creating more opportunities for dealers and using these relationships to encourage dealers to work more for their own best interest, manufacturers ensure their survival and in many cases can improve the bottom lines of dealers by as much as 10 percent or more.
In the automotive market as an example, a dealer, such as Porsche Portsmouth or a region, Southern Maine Honda Dealers, are finding it harder to attract the level and quality of customers needed to keep them in business year after year. Even with all of the aggressive advertising and moves to more online internet based strategies, it sometimes is not enough. To aid in these efforts and to insure their own survival, manufacturers are stepping in and doing a lot to help dealers in a variety of ways. From simple things such as advertising programs, certified Used Cars Cincinnati, on the manufacturer web sites that drive more traffic to individual dealer sites, to incentives for using online programs such as Google PPC where a dealer is paid back a portion of their budget each month by the manufacturer.
Manufacturers around the world have stepped up to the challenge and are now looking at new strategies aimed at reinforcing their relationships with dealerships and consumers alike. They are creating road maps that point the way to understanding the consumer of today and what can be leveraged to create even more desirable programs that entice consumers to buy. Additional traffic can be enjoyed by all Chrysler NH dealers for a marketing effort surrounding New Hampshire. The manufacturer’s job now is to create expanded marketing opportunities for its dealers in the auto industry to enable them to be successful and help them to sell more cars.
By creating more opportunities for dealers and using these relationships to encourage dealers to work more for their own best interest, manufacturers ensure their survival and in many cases can improve the bottom lines of dealers by as much as 10 percent or more.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Glitz and Glamour – The New Age Automotive Dealer
You are in the market for a new car so you sit down in front of your computer, you bring up your favorite search engine, enter your search criteria, click the most promising link and BOOM …. Suddenly you have lights, sound and action. Welcome to the world of the new age automotive dealer.
Years ago, dealers realized that in order to stay competitive that they had to embrace the age of the computer. The trends and ways that people were looking for goods and services were changing and they had to change as well. Taking what used to be paper advertisement and TV screen and transitioning it to paperless and computer screen was a huge task. New websites were popping up all over that now had all the graphic content and advertising that once was part of full page color ads in the local newspaper and it worked for awhile for what has commonly been called the “Baby Boomer” generation.
But as time went on and the generational gap has widened, the consumers of today now are looking for a little more excitement and action as part of their everyday life.
Automotive dealers such as such as Chrysler NH, Honda Seacoast, and Dallas Mazda have seen this change and have embraced it. Websites have gone from flat and informational to lights, camera, action and informative. Now instead of just being able to read content and click links on a screen, you see action, have people on screen talking about products and services and the whole user experience comes alive.
Consumers today are more sophisticated and are looking for so much more and to address this, a search engine marketing firm can step in and help dealers with this. Dealers now realize that in order to capture the eye of this new age consumer, some dramatic changes may be in order. Looking at what a dealer should do to incorporate the latest in technology, but design it in such a way that allows optimization based on non-graphical content is a huge task. Getting the right mix while keeping the new generation in mind can be difficult. Search engine companies, such as Google and Yahoo, are also starting to see this and as a result are making adjustments to their processes and how they rate and rank website page content.
As consumers get tighter with where and how they spend their money, they look for products that grab their attention, pull them in and make the sale. Being able to see 3D rendering of vehicles, view and hear many of the accessories and build their own 3D version of the vehicle of their dreams in today’s world are all possibilities.
So as the world continues to evolve and as the consumer attitude towards what they expect grows with the times, dealers will constantly find themselves changing, growing and looking for that next great answer to “What do consumers want”. You won’t want to miss the exciting series of changes on the interactive front.
Years ago, dealers realized that in order to stay competitive that they had to embrace the age of the computer. The trends and ways that people were looking for goods and services were changing and they had to change as well. Taking what used to be paper advertisement and TV screen and transitioning it to paperless and computer screen was a huge task. New websites were popping up all over that now had all the graphic content and advertising that once was part of full page color ads in the local newspaper and it worked for awhile for what has commonly been called the “Baby Boomer” generation.
But as time went on and the generational gap has widened, the consumers of today now are looking for a little more excitement and action as part of their everyday life.
Automotive dealers such as such as Chrysler NH, Honda Seacoast, and Dallas Mazda have seen this change and have embraced it. Websites have gone from flat and informational to lights, camera, action and informative. Now instead of just being able to read content and click links on a screen, you see action, have people on screen talking about products and services and the whole user experience comes alive.
Consumers today are more sophisticated and are looking for so much more and to address this, a search engine marketing firm can step in and help dealers with this. Dealers now realize that in order to capture the eye of this new age consumer, some dramatic changes may be in order. Looking at what a dealer should do to incorporate the latest in technology, but design it in such a way that allows optimization based on non-graphical content is a huge task. Getting the right mix while keeping the new generation in mind can be difficult. Search engine companies, such as Google and Yahoo, are also starting to see this and as a result are making adjustments to their processes and how they rate and rank website page content.
As consumers get tighter with where and how they spend their money, they look for products that grab their attention, pull them in and make the sale. Being able to see 3D rendering of vehicles, view and hear many of the accessories and build their own 3D version of the vehicle of their dreams in today’s world are all possibilities.
So as the world continues to evolve and as the consumer attitude towards what they expect grows with the times, dealers will constantly find themselves changing, growing and looking for that next great answer to “What do consumers want”. You won’t want to miss the exciting series of changes on the interactive front.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Search Engine Marketing - Automotive Miracle or Myth
In the early days when computers were just coming of age and the internet as we know it today had yet to be born, it was difficult to see what lie ahead. Information was not as plentiful and moving from paper and pen to keyboard and mouse just did not seem to be what people were pushing for. But as time went on and more and more people began to see the growth of what has now become the world’s biggest repository of electronic information, people and businesses alike have looked far and wide for how they can take advantage of this new age miracle to get their products and services seen by people everywhere.
The automotive market, in particular new car dealers have relied on traditional methods such as newspaper ads, TV commercials and radio spots to get the message out about whom they were and what they had to offer. It was not only costly, but reaching the market area desired and beating out the local competition was very difficult in deed. Like other large metropolitan areas, new car dealers markets such as Boston Honda, Los Angeles Toyota, and Dallas Mazda have caught on to the technology know as Search Engine Marketing.
Companies such as Elite Search Engine Marketing, a search engine optimization company, who know the ins and outs of how search engines promote people and products on the internet, are in the business of helping dealers to position themselves better and rank higher for their particular market areas for the goods and services they offer. They work with dealers to not only design a strategy for how the dealer needs to market themselves, but also help dealers to understand what they need to do better to both attract the customers and offer them what they are looking for to make the final sale as well.
The marketing initiatives in the automotive industry are completely different than they were a few short years ago. When a dealership changed hands or branched out from a larger dealer group, such is the case of Audi Seacoast and Porsche North Shore breaking out from Dover AutoWorld, the concerns were less complicated than they are today. Beyond the obvious of relocation and spreading the word about the move, there are now additional issues that need to be dealt with that a few pieces of advertising cannot typically accomplish. The daunting task of designing, developing, and optimizing a new website is now part of this overall marketing strategy. Because a very high percentage of all dealership customers find and research their new cars via the internet, it is imperative for each dealership to have a strong presence on the internet. Search Engine Marketing was designed for just this type of situation.
The greatest majority of dealers are beginning to take this more seriously and moving dollars away from the traditional methods of advertising to a more substantial investment in an internet marketing strategy where they can get far more bang for their buck. The methods for how a dealer can market to a wider market area and how quickly advertising can change when necessary based on customers needs makes this one of the best investments any dealer can make.
The automotive market, in particular new car dealers have relied on traditional methods such as newspaper ads, TV commercials and radio spots to get the message out about whom they were and what they had to offer. It was not only costly, but reaching the market area desired and beating out the local competition was very difficult in deed. Like other large metropolitan areas, new car dealers markets such as Boston Honda, Los Angeles Toyota, and Dallas Mazda have caught on to the technology know as Search Engine Marketing.
Companies such as Elite Search Engine Marketing, a search engine optimization company, who know the ins and outs of how search engines promote people and products on the internet, are in the business of helping dealers to position themselves better and rank higher for their particular market areas for the goods and services they offer. They work with dealers to not only design a strategy for how the dealer needs to market themselves, but also help dealers to understand what they need to do better to both attract the customers and offer them what they are looking for to make the final sale as well.
The marketing initiatives in the automotive industry are completely different than they were a few short years ago. When a dealership changed hands or branched out from a larger dealer group, such is the case of Audi Seacoast and Porsche North Shore breaking out from Dover AutoWorld, the concerns were less complicated than they are today. Beyond the obvious of relocation and spreading the word about the move, there are now additional issues that need to be dealt with that a few pieces of advertising cannot typically accomplish. The daunting task of designing, developing, and optimizing a new website is now part of this overall marketing strategy. Because a very high percentage of all dealership customers find and research their new cars via the internet, it is imperative for each dealership to have a strong presence on the internet. Search Engine Marketing was designed for just this type of situation.
The greatest majority of dealers are beginning to take this more seriously and moving dollars away from the traditional methods of advertising to a more substantial investment in an internet marketing strategy where they can get far more bang for their buck. The methods for how a dealer can market to a wider market area and how quickly advertising can change when necessary based on customers needs makes this one of the best investments any dealer can make.
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