At times, such as a national outage for major auto management provider CDK Global, effective marketing strategies become even more crucial to maintaining business flow and customer satisfaction. To shed light on navigating these turbulent times, we turned to Colin Carasquillo, Digital Marketing Director for Nielsen Automotive Group and soon-to-be host of “Marketing Matters” on CBT News. Colin’s insights provide a roadmap for dealerships facing similar disruptions, highlighting the importance of quick thinking, transparency, and leveraging existing resources to keep the wheels turning.
Takeaways
- Colin Carrasquillo emphasizes the need for dealerships to triage their digital marketing operations during outages. He recommends immediately contacting all digital partners, including website providers and third-party services, to ensure that they route all incoming leads to specific email addresses instead of the CRM. This will ensure that no potential sales opportunities are missed due to the outage. Adapting quickly to maintain lead flow and customer interaction is critical.
- Even during outages, Carrasquillo highlights the importance of leveraging dashboards provided by vendor partners. These dashboards can offer visibility into ongoing traffic and lead generation activities, helping dealerships monitor and manage their marketing efforts effectively. This proactive approach ensures that dealerships can still track their marketing performance and make informed decisions based on the data available through these external platforms.
- Carrasquillo advises dealerships to maintain transparency with their customers about the situation. Informing customers through website banners, social media, and other channels about the outage and its potential impact on service can manage expectations and prevent frustration. He also suggests using this opportunity to educate younger staff on traditional sales methods, like pen-and-paper transactions, which can foster team resilience and maintain operations during technological disruptions.
Check out our full coverage of the CDK cyberattack here.
"People can't access a CRM or a DMS to go through their daily workflows, build out payments, conduct deals, and so on. But that doesn't mean your advertising stops." - Colin Carrasquillo.
