Making an Impact for an Auto Dealer Group: 8 Locations
In 2019, an East Coast dealer group—with eight total dealerships—needed help to manage the chaos of keeping up with the ever-changing digital trends in the automotive industry. The business was being bottle-necked and looking for ways to regain control of their organization.
Like other organizations, this group had a Director of Operations responsible for all eight dealerships. Unfortunately, this manager was also the individual who was actively managing things like SEO, Web Banners, Paid Media, and Email Marketing. In addition, they had to ensure campaigns were being built, sent, and optimized monthly.
While managing the marketing hands-on, the manager needed more time to focus on other parts of the organization that needed attention. In addition, pain points affected the team and the business daily.
Ultimately, with limited access to resources like people and technology internally, the dealer group saw a decline in year-over-year sales. They were finding it very hard to keep up with the curve. The group decided that they needed a solution that would make a serious impact on their business. They were looking for a team that could bring them this solution in an organized way that didn’t cost an arm and leg since they had multiple shingles.
The Solution
PIN’s solution was to give the dealer group back control of their time and energy and ensure they could focus on the dealerships while everything related to marketing was handled. In addition, PIN built the dealer group a managed service solution to alleviate the burden of juggling marketing for all eight dealerships.
The managed services included media planning and process mapping, including initiatives to get each of the eight dealerships ahead of the curve. Each dealership received a twelve-month planning schedule that allowed the PIN marketing teams to build campaigns and creatives well ahead of schedule to ensure a smooth launch as seasonality and specials changed.
On top of creating a bulletproof plan and processes to ensure the plan was activated, PIN activated additional marketing services on behalf of the dealer group that included; email marketing campaigns, web banner updates, search engine optimization strategies, and other marketing tool management for call recording and reputation monitoring.
- Centralize marketing initiatives
- Ease the chaos of trying to manage all channels effectively
- Monitor campaign effectiveness
- Related to form submissions, test-drive requests, finance pre-approval applications
- Eliminate room for errors
- Drive towards accuracy and precision upon execution and planning
Additionally, PIN highlighted opportunities within their geography to increase brand awareness and drive more conversions to the dealerships. Then deployed campaigns aggressively targeting both their top-performing zip codes and their top opportunity zip codes, aiming to increase sales volume and new registrations within their sales region.
The Results
In Q1 of 2020, PIN launched marketing and data services for the dealer group’s eight locations on the east coast. Reports for the year’s first month indicated an immediate lift in their business. Tactics and strategies that went into the market included a New Year’s sales event across social, search, and display channels. Additionally, the dealerships gained access to the vast network and deal offer platform PIN built and managed nationally.