Some dealerships are well versed in their marketing practices, while others may be relatively new to the game. The following Marketing Toolbox is designed to help get you started down the path of effectively marketing your dealership, or for some, serve as a reminder of best practices with a few tips and tricks.
Determining Target Demographics
Your target demographic may vary slightly based upon your market and product mix, but the following target demos are typicaliy used for Bayliner and Heyday, and are a good baseline to use if you are unsure:
Bayliner
• Primary = Gen X - 35-55 years of age - 80 million in US
• Secondary = Baby Boomers - 56-70 years of age - 70 million in US
• Tertiary = Millenials - 18-34 years of age - 75 million in US Heyday
• Primary = Gen X - 35-55 years of age - 80 million in US
• Secondary = Millenials - 18-34 years of age - 75 million in US
• Tertiary = Baby Boomers - 56-70 years of age - 70 million in US
Review your sales history, website and social media analytics to find out who is
interested in and buying from you. Fine tune your customer demographics, as this will be crucial in any marketing efforts moving forward.
Creating a Digital Marketing Strategy
Review your marketplace and set objectives:
• Determine what digital marketing opportunities are available to you.
o Budget can be a determining factor in these decisions.
• Audit your brand and benchmark your competition:
o Make sure you and your team know and are on the same page about who you are as a company/brand.
o Review what your competition is doing in order to adjust your efforts.
Create a digital strategy:
• Select your target markets and demographics based upon your goals.
• Define your online value proposition - what makes you different from your competition online.
• Review your online marketing mix options for the 4 Ps - Product, Price, Promotion and Place.
o Decide which channels will serve you best.
MARKETING TOOLBOX
B AY L I N E R · H E Y D AYo Example: You may determine that for a particular Promotion, target and reach goal, you’ll be best served using a mix of Facebook and local spot cable.
Implement and manage digital marketing communications:
• Build your audience by integrating paid, owned and earned media.
o Paid Media = advertising, pay per click, social media ads, retargeting
Examples: Print ads, Google Adwords or Facebook ads o Owned Media = website, blog, social media channels
Examples: Your dealership’s website, a monthly blog with boating tips relative to your area, or your Facebook and Instagram pages o Earned Media = mentions, shares, reposts, reviews
Examples: A mention on Instagram, a share on Facebook, a retweet on Twitter or a review on a reviews platform or other digital media
• Use content marketing to foster brand interaction and leads.
o Content marketing is creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract and engage a target audience
o Blogs and videos can be two good choices
Growing Your Audience Online = Increased Leads and Consumers
Growing your reach (audience) involves building awareness of your products and services on other websites or offline media:
o Examples: Local partnerships with like businesses to share exposure with joint seminars, events or web presence, podcasts or relevant blogs that get shared on like websites
o Build traffic to your website or social media pages.
o Use inbound communications and planned campaigns:
Create multiple interactions using paid, owned and earned media.
• Define your key brand messages to grow audience awareness, familiarity and purchase intent.
• Set realistic targets:
o In building website traffic o In building awareness
Use surveys, web traffic, search volume analytics and social mentions as measurement tools.
o In growing social media followers
• Review the effectiveness of your current digital media:
o Use Google analytics to measure CTR, site referral traffic and lead generation.
o Determine areas for improvement – what’s working and what isn’t?
• Select relevant media and targeting.
• Prioritize channel media spend:
o Where is your budget best spent given its size? We use website traffic analysis and incoming lead sources to help determine our spends.
• Optimize your content marketing:
o PR and SEO o Paid search
o Display advertising
o Social media
• Invest in continuous inbound marketing:
o Inbound marketing is promotion through blogs, podcasts, video, newsletter, white papers, SEO, social media marketing and other forms of content marketing to attract customers.
o Strive for “always on” communications to reach customers during their point of interest:
Social media marketing
Search
• Key measures:
o Unique visitors to your website o Fans and followers
Increasing Interactions to Build Leads
• Identify best options to increase lead conversions.
• Review customer journeys for desktop/mobile visits using analytics.
• Review social media platform engagement.
• Define your goals for measuring customer interactions.
• Create a website improvement plan based on your findings.
• Define your content marketing plan.
• Create a campaign plan with associated calendar.
• Create content assets, including video marketing.
• Improve landing pages.
• Develop a content marketing strategy:
o Integrate online communications to increase leads and grow reach.
• Key measures:
o Leads and lead conversion rate o Website traffic
o Shares, comments and likes
Using Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing is the process of gaining website traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts. SEM includes both SEO (web traffic earned through search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click traffic).
• Search Engine Optimization is adjusting your digital content to rank higher in keyword searches:
o SEO is a slower method of getting your website to rank, but often more trusted by users.
o Roughly 60% of traffic to the Bayliner website comes from organic search.
• SEO is influenced by:
o Website keyword optimization and link building
o Fresh content from blogs and videos o Social media content
• Paid search (PPC):
o Advertisements on search engines like Google and Bing that appear along with organic, non-paid results.
o Advertisers pay only when their ad is clicked, hence pay-per-click.
o Paid search is a quicker way to see ranking results.
o Beneficial for sales promotions because you can connect with customers at the point of interest in a boat
o Campaign types - where your ad is shown and in what format:
Search Network Only = relevant ads shown on search results pages
Display Network Only = matching your ads (including text, image, rich media, and video ads) to websites with content related to your targeting.
• We often create ads for you to use locally.
Search Network with Display Select = budget shared across both types of placements
Campaign sub-types offer more customizaion like specific times and locations, retargeting, ads in mobile apps, ect.
• Keywords are the foundation of SEM:
o Keywords set the advertising process in motion, so keyword research is critical.
o Without the right keywords, your ads won’t appear in front of the right people o Several tools available to help with keyword research, such as Google’s
Keywords Planner or Bing’s Keyword Tool.
o Once keywords are established, ads can be written and they can be used in your website optimization.
• Ad ranking:
o Ad rank is determined by the CPC (cost per click) Bid x Quality Score.
o Quality Score is determined by CTR (click through rate), Ad Relevance and Landing Page Quality:
CTR = number of clicks ads receive per number of impressions
Ad Relevance = how well the keyword matches the ad message and whether an ad is directly relevant to what’s being searched
Landing Page Quality = content of search matches content on website. ease of use and navigation on website
• Tips for PPC campaigns:
o Do your keyword research.
o Make sure your website content is relevant and uses these keywords.
o Constantly monitor and tweak campaigns when necessary.
• Key measures:
o Website traffic for overall and landing page o Cost per click
o Click through rate o Lead generation o Conversions
Using Social Media Marketing
Many social media channels can be very effective marketing tools when used correctly,
however contrary to some popular belief, social media is not free. We have found that social media, and Facebook in particular, has proven very effective for Bayliner and its demographic in the past year.
When using social media to market your dealership, sales, or events—in combination with other channels or exclusively—here are some best practices to consider.
Why use it:
• Reach - social media currently has over 2.3 billion combined active users
• Builds brand affinity, loyalty and allows for focused targeting
• Relatively easy to manage compared to other forms
• Allows consumers to interact with you directly and helps to build your dealership “voice”
• Often “trusted” more compared to traditional forms of marketing
• Inexpensive compared to traditional media
• Improves search exposure within search engines Best practices:
• Always determine your goal, target audience specific to the goal, and budget before launching into any marketing initiative.
• Determine the channels that will best fit your initiative and target demo. For
example, your social platform mix might differ for promoting a Heyday vs. a Bayliner, or an event vs. general dealership awareness.
• Many social platforms will let you specify a target audience and then set the region parameters where it will be seen.
o For example, you might know from past sales data that your customers are typically male from the ages of 35-55 and come from a three-county area around your dealership. You would want to set the parameters of your promotion to target those customers in that region.
o Or, you may want to try to tap into a market that you’ve been missing out on and specifically target them.
• Use relevant messaging to the platform and type of promotion.
• Use engaging imagery. This is important for any marketing, but seems to be especially influential in social marketing.
• Be careful not to “over sell.” Remember, this is “social” media and users are not visiting the platforms to look at ads or be sold to.
• Craft messaging designed to reach your target:
o Make your message both intrusive and persuasive:
Intrusive - stand out, grab attention, cut through clutter
Persuasive - persuade to take action based upon your goal
• Consider the channel’s ability for paid promotion:
o Most offer this now, but some like Facebook have fine-tuned your options to allow for laser targeting.
• Primary channels include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and most recently, Snapchat.
o Facebook
1.79 billion active monthly users
Good appeal to GenX and Boomers
Good for Bayliner, necessary for Heyday
Provides good opportunities for paid promotion
Good mix of user demographics
Business page offers good mix of options for disseminating information
Good for consumer engagement
Good for building brand affinity
Good for event promotion
Relatively good analytics o Instagram
500 million monthly active users
Primary appeal to GenX and Millennials, though reach is expanding as platform becomes more popular
Good for both Bayliner and Heyday
Highest user engagement levels of any of the major social platforms
Rapidly accelerating growth
Not as many opportunities for paid promotion, but improving
Now offers analytics o Twitter
67 million monthly active users
We use this primarily out of necessity to be in the space
Good platform for engaging with consumers
Limited in message delivery, though improving with addition of photos and video
Now offering paid promotion options
Can be used effectively for conveying time-sensitive information
Used for delivering messages more often in smaller bites o Snapchat
37.2 million unique US users
Primary appeal to Millennials
Good for Heyday
Second only to Facebook Messenger in mobile messenger apps
Relatively new, this platform is still in its infancy for marketing use
Ways to use Snapchat in marketing:
• Discounts - sent to specific customers based on buying habits
• Insider marketing - send insider information to loyal fans to build affinity
• Contests - crafted and sent to specific users can create a sense of immediacy. Send clues or tips that must be gathered to collect a prize or discount.
• Events - encourage users to snap photos or videos of your event
Use in conjunction with other social platforms, such as promoting your Snapchat contest.
• Optimize your pages and profiles with current, relevant information.
• Ensure your pages are well branded with Bayliner or Heyday.
• Use relevant hashtags where appropriate for searchability.
• Use a conversational tone - be friendly and approachable – again part of building your brand or dealership voice.
• Avoid speaking in a salesy tone, a turn off on social media.
• Monitor and respond to your audience.
• Budget for social media post - it’s a pay-to-be-seen game now.
• Let us help:
o Repost Bayliner social efforts.
o Keep us informed of your big news or events that we can share on our platforms.
• Key measures:
o Follower engagement
o Number of followers to your page o Referral traffic to your website o Social media advertising
Cost per click
Click through rate
Word of mouth is now digital and it’s crucial that your dealership stays on top of your online reputation.
85% of customers use the internet to research before marking a purchase. During that research process, customers look to see who they can trust. Your dealership needs a strategy to receive and respond to positive and negative online reviews.
How to respond to positive reviews:
• Always thank them.
• Include your dealership name in your response. You want positive reviews to show up in search results.
• Ask the customer to try something your dealership offers when they return.
How to respond to negative reviews:
• Always apologize.
• Acknowledge their concern or issue.
• Keep the response simple.
• After you apologize and acknowledge their concerns, shift the conversation offline by providing a contact number or email to discuss in more detail.
• Do not start a thread with any unhappy customer.
• Do not include your dealership name in your response. You do not want negative reviews showing up in search results.
How to remove a negative review:
• Resolve the issue with the customer offline.
• Ask them to kindly remove the review after having a positive experience offline.
• Bury negative reviews by collecting new positive reviews.
How to get positive reviews:
• Always ask for reviews from all happy customers.
o Ask in person and online.
• Use an automated system that will help solicit reviews from customers based on data from your CRM.
• Be careful about incentivizing reviews as they should be true, unbiased reviews, not something the customer was rewarded for doing.
Try, Test, Revise, Repeat.
Marketing is not an exact science. There are no set recipes that will work across all territories or dealerships. Consumers’ shopping and buying triggers vary, and what works very well for one dealer’s area or product mix may not be the right solution for another.
Start with the basics:
• Define key terms.
o Optimize your website to utilize these terms.
Ensure that Bayliner and Heyday have a large presence on your website.
• Develop your social media strategy based brands that you carry and your market demographics.
• Ensure that your brand and social media voice are the same.
• Link everything back to your website.
• Give consumers incentive to deliver their lead information.
• Advertise!
o What’s been working for us?
Social media post boosts
Social media ads
Adwords
Display ads – economical channels first
