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
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