[powerpress]
New Jersey dealer group Nielsen Automotive is reporting year over year growth for their seven dealerships in the Newark area, thanks to pent up demand. According to digital marketing manager Colin Carrasquillo, those numbers were done while running leaner than ever as well. What this shows us, is that consumers will always need vehicles regardless of their financial situation. In fact, Colin is seeing a better engaged and higher quality shopper even though dealers are throttling back their marketing spend. Consumers are still finding dealers organically which speaks volumes.
It’s time to hit the reset button says Colin. That is the biggest takeaway from the COVID-19 pandemic. He recommends looking at the overall dealership operation, organizational structure, and advertising spend. He asked himself, Where can we cut inefficiencies? How can we produce more with the same resources?
Nielsen throttled everything back at the beginning of March when the state of New Jersey required them to shut down brick and mortar stores. Even after returning, their marketing strategy is throttled back. However, Colin is confident that they will bring everything up to speed in July and start running campaigns again.
“The bulk of what we did before, we’re not doing now,” says Colin. “We had year over year growth at the majority of our stores, granted it wasn’t every store. And I know dealers are all in different markets, and there are different situations for different dealers, but what we saw was more vehicle sales and more gross profit on those vehicles sold.”
