Here’s an exercise you might want to try this month. Take a box. Preferably a moving type box…one that’s got a little size to it. Place it in your office. For the next month, put a sample of every piece of marketing communication your dealership produces: TV spots, radio spots, print ads, stationary, signage, drive out tags, screen grabs from your Website…everything. At the end of the month, dump it all out on a table and take a look at what you’ve got. Odds are most of your current advertising doesn’t look or say the same thing. There’s no continuity. Don’t freak out too much…your competition’s doesn’t either, but you need to correct it…quickly.

You see, especially in times like these where every penny counts, you’re working against yourself and wasting money if your store hasn’t adopted a compelling unique selling proposition and adopted a uniform look for the store and made sure it’s plastered over every communication channel the store employs. The print ad needs to look like the TV spot; the TV spot needs to look like the Website graphics; and the Website graphics need to look like the in-store signage. Your messaging needs to work in concert with each other and not at odds with each other. That way you are building on marketing investment each month and not having to reinvent the wheel every month. Over time, you can probably get away with spending less per car because everything you have been doing is “pulling in the same direction”.

If you are really on your game, you’d also take whatever messaging your association is running during a given month and integrate that into your store’s message as well. Your respective manufacturer’s are spending millions of dollars to get their message out…you would do well (and save some money) by piggy backing off that message so that the general public associates your store with your manufacturer’s large ad spend.

Again, not rocket science and perhaps some of you are doing just these things. All I am saying is that it’s not unusual for me to see stores with multiple slogans, logos, drive out tags, no match between what the buying public sees on TV (for instance) and on the Website and it all wastes money and dilutes whatever message you have out there.

Sync it up, save money and sell more cars. So, grab your box and start filling it up….I bet you’ll be surprised at what you find at the end of the month.

Tim Lantz is a 20 year veteran of the car business having served in both sales and advertising capacities. He currently is an account director with Intermark Automotive in Birmingham, AL and can be reached at 205-776-2276 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
 

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