Forecast, Plan & Execute

Build your marketing ‘Yellow Brick Road’ for Success in 2011

It is January 1st, 2011. You have 365 days to exceed your sales goals for the year. Are you going to take it month-by-month, week-by-week or even day-by-day?  Are you going to base your marketing decisions on how you did last weekend? 

As Peter Drucker said, “the best way to predict the future is to create it” and most successful dealerships agree. Now is the time to build your marketing ‘Yellow Brick Road’ for success in 2011. 

Forecast

Start by looking at December 31st and where you project to be in sales volume. Reverse engineer the plan backwards month-by-month. Take into account the uniqueness of each month, holidays, pay periods, buying habits and factory pushes. Each month is very different and presents new challenges and opportunities. This is a macro to micro approach and is slightly different from what most dealers do. It will make you think about the year, not just this month or the first quarter. 

Once you have those numbers, you can multiply them by your investment criteria to get your annual and monthly gross spending. Deduct your fixed advertising expenses from that amount and you will have your net budget based on real sales goals and unique months, not average numbers. Dealers who do this ALWAYS outperform dealers who make decisions on a month-by-month basis. 

Plan

Marketing can equal profit for your dealership, but only if you plan for it. It is not about how much money you spend, it is about where and how you spend it. This way of thinking requires planning, but can save you thousands of advertising dollars. At this stage, you MUST build in measurements of success and quantifiable outcomes for each campaign. If you don’t, you are just spending money for spending sake. Focus on the profitable customers and leave the others for your competition. 

Now you can provide your agency with your month-by-month and annual sales forecast and budget numbers. They should build and present you with an annual plan, quarterly focus and monthly specifics. Think of your agency as ‘money managers’, not as ad guys. Require them to track and measure each campaign and make the necessary course adjustments along the way. The key difference here is that they will be making those adjustments off a forecast and plan, not a knee jerk from a bad month or a nice sounding “package deal” from a sales rep who walks in your door. 

At this point, you should have 12 monthly calendars, each with their own unique sales goals, spending levels and media plans to: Identify, Find, Touch & Thrill your customers and give your dealership a better ROI on each dollar invested. 

Execute

Okay, now for the hard part. You can have a targeted and relevant strategy but fail in the execution. Success does not live in isolation, it takes an integrated team approach to build and complete the marketing bridge from the dealer to the customer. The wind will blow and the tides will shift and the only way to stay on track and meet or exceed your sales goals on December 31st is to have a plan and work it hard. Consistency kills in the advertising game. You should be in weekly communications with your agency to review and optimize the plan based on your measurements. 

Thomas Hensey is the managing partner at Rhino Marketing, a full service advertising agency. He can be reached at  713-681-6711 or at thensey@rhinomarketing.cc