What to look for when choosing the best marketing vendors for your dealership.
BY AMY FARLEY
If you’re like many dealers across the country, you recently returned from another successful NADA Convention & Expo energized and filled with ideas for the year ahead. Now is the time to ask yourself – do you have the vendors in place to meet and exceed your goals for 2015?
There are three keys to choosing your vendors and maintaining relationships with them that will allow you to be more effective and more efficient with your marketing for the year ahead.
Key #1: Better Vendors
There are a number of factors that you should look for when you’re choosing a vendor, all of which will help ensure that you select the most reliable companies that will give you the best return on your investment.
Accountability
The best vendors are the ones who aren’t just successful in their efforts to boost your dealership’s bottom line. They’re also accountable to you, checking in with your dealership staff regularly to show you how the efforts they’re making on your behalf are working.
Transparency
The vendors you choose should be transparent with you, keeping you informed about the way they spend your money and the results they get. They shouldn’t just tell you how much they spent – they should be able to show you in detail how they spent that amount, as well as to identify the channels in which your investment was the most effective. This can help you and your vendor work together to determine where to put more money and where you may want to reevaluate your focus.
Industry knowledge
While some dealers find success with vendors who work outside the automotive industry, it’s often in your dealership’s best interest to work with industry-specific companies. Vendors who work in multiple verticals may be skilled at some of them, but they are unlikely to be an expert at them all. A vendor who is focused on working specifically with dealers will be able to provide you with the most relevant experience and the most effective services.
There is one more factor that can’t be ignored when it comes to choosing a vendor – the people. Take a look at who is behind the services they provide. Are they experienced and knowledgeable, not just about what they do, but also about your dealership and your market?
Ask for references when you’re evaluating a new vendor, and follow through on them. Think about it – when you interview someone at your dealership, you may ask for references, but how frequently do you actually call them? Oftentimes, you’ll find that when you do not, those are the people with whom you end up parting ways. If you had called their references, you may have been able to save yourself time, money and training.
The same is true for vendors. You should always ask a vendor for references. Don’t just ask for the clients with whom they see the most success, either. Ask for the clients who don’t perform as well. Speaking with the vendor’s success stories, as well as the clients who might be struggling, will help you get a true idea of how that vendor can help your dealership thrive.
Key #2: Fewer Vendors
How many vendors are too many? In your automotive career, you may have experienced the confusion that comes along with having too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen at one time or another. Sometimes when a dealership utilizes too many vendors, wires can get crossed and signals can become mixed. Even when all parties involved pride themselves on their communication skills, confusion is often unavoidable.
There’s no definitive number of vendors that’s just right – it can depend on the specific vendors you work with and your dealership’s individual needs. That said, if you can consolidate the number of vendors you work with to as few as possible, then you may see a marked improvement across the board, including better creative alignment, improved overall ROI and consistency in your value propositions
To narrow down the number of vendors you use, lay them all out at once. Where do they overlap? There may not be overlap in the actual services they provide, but is there overlap in the areas in which you’re looking to reach consumers? For instance, if you have separate vendors for your PPC, SEO and social media, can you consolidate that by choosing a vendor in the digital space that offers all three? Not only will this lead to a more comprehensive approach to messaging, but it will also help you reach customers in a way that reflects consumer behavior. Auto shoppers may find your dealership through a paid search ad, then later search for you organically, and then later still look for you on social media or an online reputation site. Your messaging should be consistent across all these channels, and that’s much easier to accomplish when one provider handles all those services.
Relying on trusted, quality vendors who can provide more than one service for your multi-channel marketing approach can help you trim your vendor list, while also streamlining your marketing. When a vendor can successfully provide more than one of the services that make up your marketing program, communication will be simpler and much more efficient.
Key #3: Post-NADA Analysis
At this year’s NADA, you likely met with many different vendors, all of whom claimed to have the latest, coolest, most valuable tools and services. But can they truly all be number one?
It’s important that you take some time after you return from the convention to do your research, both online and through calling the references that you collect. Be sure to compare apples to apples when you compare vendors to one another so that you can make the best assessment of which vendor is right for you – not just who is the cheapest or flashiest.
Even if you’re feeling pressured to select a vendor, remember that it’s a much better idea to invest the time it takes to make the right choice rather than the quickest choice. Your patience and diligence will pay off in the long run as you develop strong, quality relationships with the vendors you carefully choose.
If you haven’t finalized your marketing plan for the year, there’s still time. Take a look at your successes from 2014 and evaluate what you can improve upon this year. The bottom line is that choosing fewer, better vendors can help lead your dealership to greater success in 2015.
