Mets Kramer and Ron talk about Strategy for the digital world (3 of 3).

Well, as I said in the last segment, it's about needs and wants. So now that... you understand or have a way to find in your audience a group of contacts, then you can decide when you have something to sell, which segment fit those needs or has the needs and wants that fit that product. Way back when I was running service at the dealership, we would have like a very... one size fits all kind of metric, sell mark contracts with everything. And then when I started visiting customers with some of the sales reps, you start to realize that one size doesn't fit all because some don't even understand what a mark really means. All they see is a giant number. This contract is worth half a million dollars and it sees no value. And so for each customer, As we looked at service, we had to look at, you know, what is the service product that best fits this customer?

And then from a pure marketing perspective, it's like which customers in general fit this product type? Well, last segment, we talked a little bit about the do it with me, do it for me, do it myself types customers. That segment helps you understand, should you be sending a information package to that customer about, the technician capability and hourly rates, or should you be sending a package on marked contracts?

It is, but that's what computers help you do.

No, unfortunately, most dealers have an advertising department.

And the definition of marketing has very often been forgotten. I ended up in a conference one year for a manufacturer. And they said, we're going to do a group working session on marketing. And all they sent were two junior people from the advertising department who wanted to know if the brochures were adequate. Now, if we go back to the definition of marketing or like some of the simple ways to remember the four, something like the four P's, product placement, price and promotion. Most people only have the promotion, the advertising piece. But the really important part of marketing is defining the product and then the placement. Where do you want to place it? And this discussion on audience and segmentation is all about the placement and the product and matching those up properly. And if I have a bunch of people who are large contractors with mechanics, then for that, I want to place in front of that piece of my audience a product.

that matches their needs and wants rather than something that doesn't. And especially in the digital world, when it's so easy to flood out a ton of information, if you're just hitting everyone with the same message, you're going to fatigue segments that don't match the product that you're sending out.

Marketing needs to be a continuous piece of the business. When you build your business plan for the business, when you started it, it was hugely based on marketing. You understand the market, the product, what you want to sell, and you build your whole business on it. And then people forget to do their marketing. But marketing, you say it's everything that helps support the sale of something. It really should be the strategic cornerstone of almost all of your operations.

agree. And it should be changing. Where are you selling parts? Well, you sell them over the counter. In 2021, Why aren't you selling parts online? I asked this at a recent conference that I spoke at, and I said, put up your hands if you sell parts on your website, any of them, and not a single one put their hands up. And yet we had a presentation on how Amazon is coming for your business because they're already selling your parts online. They're not doing it well yet, but they're already doing it. Yeah.

That's kind of stunning to me.

Oh, yeah. I remember that when I commented on it.

It's very true. People emulate what they do. They think the way. But when they set up online part sales, they think like it's the parts counter. You still have to go through all the same steps. You know, it's not it's not rethinking how would you do would you do this if you had a completely different way to do it? You know, it's still, you know, like you said, paper, paper to glass or electronic hammer and nails. Instead of rethinking the attached things, you know?

Well, that's what we need to do. That's what dealers need to think about because as we do the last generation of advertising, marketing, and try and bring that into the current world, we're seeing the same thing. I've spoken to people from dealers and say, yeah, we have an advertising department or a social media department. They're all the way over there and they don't talk to anyone. They're missing the entire... doing social media like they were doing print advertising. Just going to the platforms and posting the same kind of stuff that they were posting on in the magazines, they're now posting it on social. And they're thinking that that is going digital. Whereas if you really talk to people doing digital marketing, social media marketing is about person-to-person engagement. You want to be able to have your customers see...

social content about their sales rep because that builds the relationship and changes that customer's perspective of their sales rep. You need to come up with a different way to think about what your advertising department working with social media should be thinking about. They have to think differently. At the same time, I see dealers who have their sales rep spending 20%,30% of their time. creating social media content because they know it's important and they want to be out there, but they're doing the work of the advertising department because the two are disconnected.

Some people aren't doing it. Some people will buy all of the data and not know what to do with it. They just, you know, they spend a few thousand dollars and buy it and then they don't build a strategy from it. So, yeah, I ran a couple of weeks ago. I ran a workshop exactly on this and I have a worksheet to share, to walk dealers through just rethinking this. Like this stuff is fundamental and it's you don't need to be technical or digital or a millennial to understand it. It's just taking the time to rethink. how you're approaching this part of the business. And the heart of it is understand who the people are that you're going to talk to. And for each group, create a message that fits and put it in the place where they're looking. If you're selling breaks, it's great to put a billboard at the end of the road at the stop sign. But for all the other products, there is a great place to position it digitally.

and find ways and there are tools to make sure that the right people are seeing it and it's not being shown to everyone.

Just do the work. Like if people want a copy of the worksheet that I put together for that session, I'll happily send it out. But it's a simple couple of hours of work to walk through it. But just like you said, the dealership needs analysts. The dealership needs to have someone who's a true marketer, head of marketing or whatever you want to call it, the person. But you need to think marketing if we're going to keep the dealership ahead as the market continues to change.

Thanks, Mark.