Mets Kramer and Ron continue their discussion on the Digital Dealership (3 of 4)

I still really enjoy being called young man.

So it's work. You need to write this out. You know, I've put together some workshop sheets to help dealers walk through this discussion because it's in starting to write it out that it just all starts to make sense. You know, if what we're really trying to do is find these intersections between the audience segments, what defines the audience. the content that we want to the types of content the the product that's in the content and then the challenge the channel where we expect to find the audience that we're looking for you know and and so it's just you can use a matrix little grid um to do it but it's really just saying okay this is the audience segment that i want to go after and why do i want to go after this right so you can say these are my existing customers, and I've segmented them by the fact that we don't see them using the shop. And then we say, okay, so that's my audience segment.

And the product that we're going to place there is some products related to service. And we also want to understand then what kind of content is going to pull or educate the people in that audience segment about the service product. Am I going to do a video that shows what's happening in the shop, the types of things that we do, our paint shop? I've seen that one of the dealers I work with does these great videos out of their paint shop that are just super engaging. And everyone now understands that that dealer offers that. And then we look for the channel. We say, okay, we've defined that we're after existing customers who don't use our service department. We've got this great video about what happens on our service department day to day. And what were this product we want to sell as them to bring their machines in. And then the final thing is, OK, where does the video play well?

What channel do I both know my audience is on and that likes videos? You know, there are platforms that are much better for videos. Everyone knows TikTok now. My wife makes fun of me for being on it, you know, but it's videos. That's where you put it, right? LinkedIn loves videos as well, but people don't do as much of it. You can send video through email a little bit. So you've got to kind of think through these things, right? And that's just piece by piece, one dimension at a time, building that strategy up.

I think you definitely need to build some expertise or like we've talked about in doing data analysis, rent in the expertise. There are people who understand what plays well and how to play it and how to use the systems of Facebook. better than any of us will do if we're running our day-to-day job and we're trying to learn on the side. It's definitely worth whatever dollars it takes to bring someone in for a period of time to teach you and help set it up. You can blow your brains out on Google AdWords if you go in by yourself and set it up and pay for clicks and you can get all kinds of traffic and none of it's valuable. You hire someone who understands how it works. And you'll start getting less traffic, but it's the kind of people that you want.

Yeah, that would be my recommendation. I still use them. When I set up my AdWords, I call a friend or colleague who knows it inside and out. And I say, hey, just give me a couple hours of your time and help me get this debt on. Because otherwise, every day I'm spending, even if it's just $20 a day on it, it really starts to add up if it's wrong.

Just because it's accessible in developing the content and getting it out because it's all on your laptop doesn't mean you should do it. Right. It's like you could print your own brochures off of the color printer in your office, but you wouldn't send them out. You send them to a graphics house that cleans up the graphics and prints it properly, and it looks professional. It's no different. Just because it's accessible doesn't mean that you need to do it yourself. There's definitely better ways.

My favorite topic.

They are.

Personally, I think like, I don't know, you can confirm this because you've seen the history of this. But the website, the company website started as a billboard. Yep. It was like, oh, I want to, I need a website. Everyone has a website. We can't be a real dealership if we don't have a website. So, okay, well, put up a website. Well, what do we say? Well, just say some stuff about who we are. And it probably sold a list, you know, some information about our machines that we have, you know, and we should tell them that we have service. Okay, good. We'll do one page on service, which is like the most, what I see most of the time, like one or three quarters of a page on the service department. And what it assumes is that, you know, everyone coming to your website is the same audience member, the same audience segment. They're like people who don't do business with me. A website is like for people who don't do business with me.

Yeah, I think it's as important as it is. It's also the one that defines. understanding or make it easy for people to understand what an audience means, right? Like what the difference between your audience members is. It's like if you go to, we've talked about this in the past, but if you go to Amazon, then you go to Amazon because you want to buy something. And two, it kind of remembers you from the last time you were there and the thing you didn't buy, it's reminding you you should buy. And it recognizes why it's there and why should... Why would you go to Amazon if the first thing you came to is like this generic Amazon, who are we? Website. That the first thing you do, you have to look through that. And then if they click through over here and say, I want to go shopping. So, no, of course I want to go shopping. That's why I'm here. I don't, if I want to learn about, you know, you're thinking through what people are there to do.

And the website is responsive to that. And the dealership website should be no different. If someone keeps coming back to your website, which your website knows. then it should know where they're going and why they're there. And then the next time they show up there, just take them there. Like they don't need to read again about the history of your cat dealership, which is on the first page.

Yeah, they're analyzing their data. and applying what they learn from the data to make their, the visitor's experience more applicable.

There is no avoiding it. But we've always done hard work, haven't we? Everything's always been hard work.

Yeah, bring knowledge. Yeah. It's why your customer brings you in to talk about the equipment they're thinking about buying for the project they have because you're the expert. So why wouldn't you do the same thing and bring someone who's an expert in? whatever channel you want to think about in to help contribute. I think that's what would help a lot of dealers that you see where they have someone running their social account on whatever platform and or the opposite where you have your sales reps spending all their time posting content because they think it's important for the dealership. I think someone who has a better understanding of what the platform is meant to do could help close that.

Vetting, guiding, teaching.

Yeah, understanding what makes for good content, what ranks well.

It makes it work better. Like, are you on Twitter? Yeah. Yeah. How many people are following you?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, but someone will do it. Someone's going to keep figuring out more and more of it, and it will continue to become an advantage. You know, as people drift in that direction, there's no reason not to. And I think, like, if we look at, we're technical people, right? Like, most of the people in the equipment business, they're pretty technical. They like equipment. They don't have any problem learning technical things about machines or parks or the service department. They're all pretty technical people. We've learned all of this about our equipment and the specs and what it can do. I mean, it's really not that different. So it shouldn't be off-putting. It actually should be like right up our alleys. Like, oh, you mean there's a technical thing that I could learn about that would help me? you know, sell and promote and communicate with my customers in a better way. Well, that's easy because we're technical people.

I always think you know when to cut us off.