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Before jumping into a breakdown of each media’s pros and cons, I’ll lay down a foundation. First, let’s look at the actual definition of Media: The means of communication that reaches or influences people.

Notice there is an emphasis on reaching people, and also influencing them. There is a big difference between these two.

In terms of reaching people, the first step is determining who you want to reach. What defines your audience? For the powersports industry, too many dealerships, OEMs and marketing companies focus excessively on psychographics and demographics. They determine who their average rider is; let’s say it’s a white male between the ages of 25 and 55 with an annual household income greater than $55,000. This data then leads to two erroneous approaches to marketing. 

1. Marketing that focuses on males between the ages of 25 and 55 with an annual household income that’s greater than $55,000.

2. Marketing that’s excessively focused on segments of psychographics and demographics that are NOT the average rider. So, marketing that concentrates on Women, Hispanics, African Americans, Millennials, etc. 

Why is each one erroneous? 

1. Just because you’re a male between the ages of 25 and 55 with an annual household income greater than $55,000 doesn’t mean you’ll buy a powersports vehicle. In fact, most people that fit within this group, the vast majority of them, will NEVER ride what you sell. 

2. It’s a waste of money to implement marketing based on race, age, or sex. Again, most people that fit within any psychographic and/or demographic segment, the vast majority of any grouping, will NEVER ride what you sell.

So, who is your audience?  Powersports enthusiasts. When you market to powersports enthusiasts, the vast majority of them ride what you sell and have a high likelihood of responding to your marketing and ultimately buying something from you. 

Then what about new riders, Tory?! We need new blood!  

Fact: People don’t start riding because of marketing… first time riders do so because of the influence of friends and family. Therefore, the best approach to getting new riders is marketing monthly events and asking (or even incentivizing) customers & prospects to bring their non-rider friends and family. This is single handedly the best way to grow new riders. Be sure you’re inviting all non-rider visitors to take part in your new rider training if you have one. 

I cover the new-rider subject in detail in last issue’s Ask Tory article. You can find it in the ‘Articles’ section at www.PowersportsMarketing.com.  

Now that we know who we need to reach, let’s shift our attention to different media’s ability to reach and influence them.

• Radio & TV: You’re paying to reach 100% of the population. Only 4%-6% of the population rides, so you’re wasting more than 90% of your budget. It can be expensive to produce. There are now HUNDREDS of stations which decreases the likelihood of a viewer/listener being on your station when your ad is playing.  The addition of DVRs, satellite radio and Bluetooth also decrease the likelihood of someone seeing/hearing your ad.  As far as influencing folks, TV and radio don’t do a good job of swaying folks to respond and/or make a major purchase. It’s an obvious “no” on Radio & TV for me, but if you must do it, do it sparingly and only when you get an incredible buy. 

• Billboards: Doesn’t target riders. You’re paying to reach 100% of cars that drive by it. Directional billboards work for restaurants targeting travelers. 100% of people eat, and vacationers use billboards to find an exit to make a stop. Directional billboards might make sense for a dealership that’s hard to navigate to, but this will be extremely rare. They do a terrible job of influencing people to stop at a dealership.   

• Newspaper – This is an older media that’s slowly dying. You can’t reach/target riders. The only success I’ve heard from a couple of dealers is with classifieds, but even these results are dilapidated. Newspaper is not very influential on the marketing side, and I don’t recommend it. 

• Direct Mail: You can target riders extremely well… both your customer list, and conquest prospects as well. Conquest prospects are those that ride what you sell, live in your back yard, but they’ve never purchased from you. Direct mail is the best way to target them, and it’s a no brainer to do so. Direct Mail is influential. In fact, it’s one of the only media (if not the only one) that you’re guaranteed face time. A person has to look at it and decide what to do with it. If your message is good, you can get great results.

• Email: Obviously, you can target riders, and can be very influential. 

• SEM/PPC & Online Ads: With this media, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, which is only if they’re interested in what you offer (like 100% commission). Highly targetable, quantifiable and engaging. 

• Local Print: This media typically isn’t targetable or influencing. However, if you run a classified in a Thrifty Nickel type of publication and it gets you calls, do it (but don’t count on getting any calls). I don’t recommend this media.

• Texting: This media focuses on the right audience (customers) and can influence them. Consider this… while folks don’t mind texting during the research & purchase process for any department, most people don’t want to be marketed to via text. 

• SEO: This is not a media, but I wanted to throw it in the mix. In industries where website content is lacking, i.e. HVAC, restaurant, and many other businesses with 4 pages on their website, SEO/content services may be necessary. In the powersports industry, your website is loaded with content, and consistently updated with your inventory and showroom feed.  If you’re paying for SEO services, stop it! 

Whichever media you use, be sure your message has a call-to-action, telling prospects what you want them to do. This enables you to quantify if it’s working. If it’s working (reaching and influencing people), keep doing it. If it’s not, stop wasting your money and move on. 

- Tory

 Forgive me if you’ve heard this analogy before, but it’s one of my favorites. Let’s say you and I were in business together and we recently opened a Golf Pro Shop. We desperately need to get customers through the doors and make the cash register ring, so we turn our attention to our marketing plan.  

We know that going after everyone utilizing mass media will cost a lot of money and won’t be quantifiable. Therefore, it’s extremely unlikely to generate an ROI on dollars spent, so we stay away from radio, TV and billboards.  This leads us to look at buying a list of prospects to market to. 

The market research we’ve done has shown that the average person who plays golf is a male between the ages of 30 & 55. Playing golf requires some free time, so parents with young kids may not be the best fit. Golf isn’t cheap, so prospects will need to have an annual income that’s over $55,000. We also know they need to live close to the shop, or within 15-miles.  

All of this psychographic and demographic data sounds precise, and this is a list we could purchase and market to. We move forward with our strategy and send out a direct mail piece with a great call-to-action, but it yields zero results. 

Then it hits us, and we recognize one huge flaw. The overwhelming majority of people we were marketing to don’t play golf! Only approximately 8% of Americans play golf, and if a person doesn’t play golf, they won’t buy golf equipment from us. No amount of marketing will change this fact, no matter how good or consistent our ads are. 

We then ask ourselves one of the most important questions before any marketing campaign, “who is most likely to buy from us?” Our answer is amazingly simple… people who play golf. We have a good shot at getting a golfer to respond to our marketing, so we move forward with this strategy. We don’t get mesmerized by all the bright and shiny psychographics and demographics, we decide to get a list of golfers. 

We send out the same direct mail piece with a great call-to-action to our new list, and this time it generates a 5% response rate and an incredible ROI on dollars spent. 

Remember the four fundamentals of marketing?  1. Audience (most likely to buy from you); 2. Media (most likely to reach your chosen audience); 3. Message (tell them what you want them to do); 4. Timing (have an event and implement drip-marketing). It all starts with choosing the right audience. The right media, message and timing to the wrong list will fail every time.

For a powersports dealer, the right audience is powersports enthusiasts. This is a niche industry where only approximately 6% of people ride what we sell (less than the number who play golf). People who don’t ride won’t respond to your marketing or buy anything from you. Doesn’t it just makes sense to spend your limited budget marketing to those who will? 

Powersports enthusiasts fall into three groups:

1. Active Customers – They’ve purchased from you within a 12-month period. 

2. Inactive Customers – Their last purchase was over 12-months ago. You’ve lost them and they need to be reactivated. 

3. Conquest prospects - These are people who live in your backyard, ride what you sell, buy what you sell, but they’ve never purchased anything from you.   

These three groups of people are where the majority of your sales across all departments will come from over the next 12 months. You need to reach out to them every month and invite them into the dealership. Inviting them to the dealership every month will increase their frequency of visits to your dealership (instead of a competitor), which also increases how much they buy from you (increases annual customer value).  

Marketing to this audience will not only increase sales from past and current customers, it’s also the best strategy for generating new customers for your dealership every single month. And it’s 100% quantifiable.

Want to know how many Active Customers, Inactive Customers and Conquest Prospects your dealership has? Call 1-877-242-4472 for a free Data Analysis. 

-Tory

I’ve studied hundreds, maybe even thousands of dealership ads, and the majority consistently share one of two fatal flaws. And by majority, I mean the masses. Probably over 99% are contaminated. Both are an issue of message, which is simply what is said in an ad (including the copy (words) and the graphics). 

Fatal Flaw #1 – The ad is designed to build a dealer’s brand, enhance their image or get their name out there. There is no call-to-action that tells the prospect what to do or why they should do it.  If you don’t tell prospects what you want them to do, they won’t do it. And a branding-style of advertising isn’t quantifiable.  

We consistently hear from dealers that one of their biggest concerns is they can’t quantify their marketing and aren’t sure if they’re wasting their money. It’s a viable concern… their message makes their marketing unmeasurable! Take note… if your goal is to get your name out there you ARE, in fact, wasting your money. 

At the same time, most dealers have a fear of stopping this style of advertising, which is most often mass media (radio, TV, billboards, newspaper, etc.), because they think it may be working. 

I’m not a fan of mass media… especially in the motorcycle industry. The main reason is that 5% to 6% of people in America are powersports enthusiasts.  With basic math you can quickly conclude that most of the folks a dealer is paying their limited budget to try and reach via mass media do not ride. You’re wasting over 90% of your budget.  

You may be saying to yourself, “well, it includes my address & phone number, some people have to be noticing it.” On more than one occasion we’ve added tracking phone number to mass media. All of them get similar results, including a group of Harley dealers in the south who added a call tracking number to their radio commercial. After 60-days the tracking number had 3 calls: 1 where we tested it, 1 where the dealer tested it, and 1 where the dealer tested it again because no one had called it.

Fatal Flaw #2 – The ad is based on discounting. This has become an epidemic for many dealers. Here are few examples:

• Radio = save thousands with big rebates and low APR’s. 

• Direct mail = several units with the cheapest they can sell them, often dipping into hold back.

• Website = quote request, which means a discount.

• Email = focused on discounts.

• Industry inventory sites = the lowest price wins.

What is your U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition)?  In other words, why should someone buy from you?  If the best answer you can come up with is you’re the cheapest, you’ve got a lot of soul searching to do. 

When your marketing is basically saying, “I’m only interested in you if you’ll buy something from me” you alienate most of your list and it becomes unresponsive. No more than 2% of your list is interested in the products you could feature in any ad, so you end up alienating 98%. 

The most successful dealers market to powersports enthusiasts. They utilize direct mail, email, SEM, phone calls, web banners, social media, event signage, fliers/bag stuffers, and more. There is a consistent message across all of the media. Instead of promoting products & discounts they have an event/party/open house and answer the question, “Why should I, your customer, come to your event?”

By inviting customers to the dealership for a party, more of them respond. This in turn increases P&A counter sales, books out more service appointments, and gives salespeople even more opportunity to sell major units.

To strategize how to get your marketing budget to get more traffic in the store, and more leads for each department, give us a call… 1-877-242-4472.

- Tory

As you may have read in the last Ultra Marketing Machine Newsletter, Google recently released an update to their ‘Maps User Contributed Content Policy’ and it greatly impacted reviews. The biggest change has to do with what’s called Review Gating. 

To address this, Google’s guideline says, “Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” This means a business can’t ask customers for feedback on their experience in a way that separates potential good reviews from bad, that’s Review Gating.  

A good example of this would be an email to customers having 2 links in it; one for ‘Excellent Experience’ that leads folks down a path to get an online review, and another link for a ‘Less Than Excellent Experience’ that leads to a private feedback page. 

Not abiding by this new guideline can lead to catastrophic consequences, like ALL of your Google reviews being deleted. Think that’s not possible? It is. In fact, several years ago Google came out with a new guideline that prohibited reviews being submitted by the same IP address. At the time, it was a big deal to be close to 100 Google reviews, and the dealers that had reached this level were asking for reviews by handing customers an iPad while they were in the dealership. Google didn’t want businesses putting pressure on customers by standing with them while they wrote the review. The end result was what we call a ‘Google Slap’… they removed ALL of their reviews. They’ll do it for this as well. 

This is one of the reasons we’ve invested a lot of time and resources into our Reviews and Rankings Mobile App. This app gives your front-line staff the ability to take a picture of their customer at the point of purchase and email it to them. It will also post the picture to Facebook automatically, and then send a review request the next day. We’re close to releasing an update to the Reviews and Rankings App that includes the ability to also send a review request via text message, which studies show increases review conversions. 

It’s no secret that nearly 100% of prospects & customers do research online before choosing a product or a dealership, but did you know reviews also help prospects choose a sales person? As your front-line staff utilizes the Reviews and Rankings App, it grows their personal reviews. If they sent the review request, they get credit for the dealership review. It doesn’t take long for folks to start coming in to the dealership asking for a staff member by name that they’ve never met before. In fact, research shows that 84% of people trust online reviews as much or more than they trust a referral from a friend. 

If increased reviews (that avoid the Google Slap) & and an easy system to put customer photos on Facebook aren’t enough value to give the Reviews and Rankings App a try, here are some other benefits:

-Increased gather rate of customer email addresses & mobile phone numbers 

-Improved customer loyalty & referrals

-Better customer engagement 

-Incredible future marketing

-And more…

Whether you’re already a client or not, you’re invited to join a webinar covering the details of our Reviews and Rankings App:

When: Tuesdays in July

Time: 3:30pm – 4:00pm Eastern

Link: join.me/psmtraining

Dial-in: 1-213-226-1066

Conference ID: 274-467-152

See you on the webinar,

- Tory

The best way to make up for a slow start to 2018 (or if business has been great for you, to continue improving it) is through marketing and training. Good marketing generates measurable leads and traffic through your doors. Training your staff ensures that you’re selling as many new & used units, PG&A and Service as possible.

Marketing and training go hand-in-hand, and they must consistently happen simultaneously, not sequentially. Don’t fall into the trap of believing you must do one before the other.  

Also, you can’t afford to wait for business to get better before implementing good marketing. We hear dealers say this frequently, and they end up wasting a lot of time just waiting for business to pick up when they could have been ‘making’ it better. This way of thinking reminds me of a friend of mine who once told me he wanted to get in a little better shape before he joined a gym… wait, what? 

With that said, I do understand why dealers want business to get better before spending money on marketing. Their past experiences include spending (wasting) money on advertising that didn’t make one iota of difference. While, it didn’t generate more profit than the expense, they know they need to advertise, so business has to pick up before they can afford to spend the money. 

Their challenge: BAD MARKETING

While this may be a bit of a moot point right now because the weather is warm, and the riding season is upon us, spring being in full force means there’s even more reason to drive traffic and generate leads. You have to make hay while the sun is shining.

Even when business is booming, however, it doesn’t mean you can view your marketing budget as an expense. You can’t just spend it and hope; it must be invested. 

Our Sharp Shooter program has been utilized literally thousands of times over the past decade by well over 1,000 dealers. It generates a positive return in Gross Profit, which makes it a true investment. It has stood the test of time and it always works.  

It generates leads in 6 ways: new sales, pre-owned sales, parts, accessories, apparel and service. You may be wondering how? 

We find the best people to market to – those who are most likely to buy something from you. Our strategy not only increases customer retention, it also carves off new market share and generates new customers. It’s the best of both worlds. 

Once we know who to target, we utilize several 1-to-1 direct marketing strategies to get the best response possible.  It’s not uncommon for us to get well over a 10% response rate, and 1% is considered good by most.

We write ad copy that relates to everyone we’re marketing to with a call-to-action that generates leads and gets traffic into the dealership. 

Staff training is included to maximize your R.O.I. 

Call me at 877-242-4472 for a quick one-on-one. I guarantee you’ll be glad you did.

Speak with you soon…

- Tory

One of the most common questions I currently hear from dealers is, “Why should I switch to a Firestorm Website?”.  This article will have no fluff or hyperbole… just good ole meat and potatoes answers.

Let’s start with a foundational question: What is the main purpose of your website? 

I’ve mentioned this question before in past articles, but I’d be remiss not to state it again because your answer is like a compass that lets you know if you’re heading in the right direction. For instance, if your website’s main purpose is to get your name out there, you’re done!  It’s doing that. 

The correct answer is: To generate leads. All other functions are secondary.

The average website in the powersports industry gets around 4,000 website visitors and generates about 60 leads per month (or a 1% to 2% conversion rate). Our chief goal with Firestorm Websites is to generate more leads. 

This is meat and potatoes reason #1: Firestorm Websites have a 100% success rate at generating more leads each month, and we'll generate more leads for your dealership as well. For details on what type of increase you could expect for your dealership, call me at 877-242-4472.

But what about quality of the leads? First, let’s address the big fat ELEPHANT in the room:

1. Your website blatantly leads customers and prospects down the path of requesting a quote. Ever wondered why all your website leads are focused on price?

2. The MSRP is listed on your inventory pages, which means you’re pushing website visitors to expect a discount. Ever wondered why all your website leads want a discount?

3. Any good salesperson who follows up with website leads has been taught to avoid price. They’re trained to do their best to get the prospect into the dealership, and whatever they do, avoid talking price!

To recap, your website is actually leading visitors to focus on price and request a quote, but your salesperson is taught to avoid giving them a price? Wow! How is this the norm? Why haven't we caught this... it's terrible?! This process, which leads to a headbutt between your dealership and the prospect, causes less website leads (or a bad conversion rate) and less prospects in the store. 

When “quote request” is your call to action, it’s the equivalent of greeting a showroom guest with “Can I get you a discounted price on any of our inventory?”  That would kill your margin and your closing ratio. Oh yeah, this all leads to salespeople not being excited to get a website lead. Your salespeople ever said, “They’re all junk! It’s a waste of time! They just want our best price out the door! They never come in!”?

Recap: This is meat and potatoes reason #2: Firestorm Websites generate a higher quality lead that’s not just focused on price. Want details? Call me.

What about having real, authentic pictures of your inventory on your website. 

The auto industry is often said to be 10-years ahead of the powersports industry. In the auto industry, if you’re not adding 20 to 30 actual pictures of each unit, you’re doing it wrong. 

The problem is that it’s so darn time-consuming to take all those pictures, save them to your computer, organize them, then add them unit by unit to your website. This is where our back office mobile app comes in handy. 

Recap: Meat and potatoes reason #3: Now you can walk around your showroom and add inventory pictures to your website instantly using a tablet or mobile phone. The time savings and increase in leads this produces is amazing. 

Let’s move to your identity. 

Most dealer’s websites completely lack their culture, local geography and really any identity at all. You could literally slap any dealership logo on the site and it would work. This is not the case with a Firestorm Website.

Recap: Meat and potatoes reason #4: We work tirelessly to provide a completely custom, one-off site that tells your story. 

There are plenty of other features like DMS Integration, VIN Decoding, SSL Security Certificates, Responsive Designs, Great SEO and more, but I’m out of space.

I’m available for a ‘Meat and Potatoes’ phone calls and can show you dozens of live examples and results – call 877-242-4472 and ask for me.

- Tory 

 Whether you like President Trump or not, there is no arguing that the economy is booming. Unemployment rates are the lowest they’ve been in a decade, which, on a side note, has also led to food stamp assistance being at a 10 year low a well. Things are looking good and you can grab your portion of this good economy, but you gotta work for it. 

There are 2 types of dealers:

1. Market-Driven Dealers – Their success is strictly dependent upon the market, good weather, hot OEMs and a good economy.

2. Marketing-Driven Dealers – They create their own success through marketing to their buying base every single month (I’ll explain in more detail later).

Obviously, there’s no denying that a great economy, good weather and a hot OEM make a difference. The best combination, however, is to be a Marketing-Driven Dealer while the market’s hot. I’ll focus this article on how to implement a System for Predictable Growth and become a Marketing-Driven Dealer. 

It all starts with your buying base. These are the folks who live close to your dealership and fall into 3 buckets:

1. Active Customers – Customers who’ve done business with you within the last 12-months. 

2. Inactive Customers – Past customers who haven’t done business with you in the last 12-months.

3. Conquest Prospects – Riders in your market area who buy what you sell, but not from you. 

95+% of your sales across all departments over the next 12-months will come from these 3 groups. Less than 5% will be riders who move into your area, or first-time riders. 

I understand the need for brand new riders, and that’s what most of the OEMs are focused on right now. Your culture needs to celebrate new riders and make it easy for them to buy, but you can’t spend a disproportionate amount of your limited time and budget going after where less than 5% of your sales will come from. Leave that to the OEMs; there’s a much better way. 

Our Sharp Shooter program scientifically goes after the 95+% (Active Customers, Inactive Customers and Conquest Prospects) and gives them a reason to provide their name, email address, phone number and tell you what they’re most interested in purchasing right now. We send you this information in a spreadsheet on every campaign. This alone creates a positive ROI, but it gets even better. We also give your buying base a reason to visit your dealership... a fun event/party with your choice of food, drinks, door prizes, demo rides & more.   

The Sharp Shooter program’s success in creating leads (in both the lead list and traffic coming in to the store) is through a proven marketing system that targets the right people, reaching them with the best media, utilizing a specific message with perfect timing. Mess with any one of these components even a little and the campaign fails. 

Important Note: The Sharp Shooter program is not designed for a one-off event. While it will drive in lots of traffic and create a list of leads for you, that’s not its true purpose. This is where the Predictable Growth System I mentioned earlier comes in. Implementing a Sharp Shooter every single month will predictably grow:

• The number of Active Customers year-over-year. If more customers do business with you in 2018 than did in 2017, you’ve grown the dealership.

• The average value of each customer year-over-year. 

For easy math, let’s take a look at a $5,000,000 store with 2,000 Active Customers who have an average value of $2,500. 

With 10% growth in Active Customers (2,200) and their average value ($2,750), this same store does $6,050,000. That’s 21% growth, or over $1 million dollars.

The Sharp Shooter program is specifically designed to increase those 2 metrics, and nothing does a better job if you do it every month.

For more information call 1-877-242-4472 or visit

 www.powersportsmarketing.com/sharp-shooter

- Tory

The short answer to how frequently you should be sending emails is once per week, or at least once every other week.  If you think that sounds like too much, or would take too much work – you’re doing it wrong.  This article is dedicated to the best practices of sending email, and making it easier for dealers to do it the right way. 

Harley released a study about a year ago that concluded a customer must be ‘touched’ 29 times before they buy a motorcycle. A touch is outbound marketing including email, direct mail, text, voicemail blasts, salesperson phone calls, etc. Here at PSM, our goal is to help clients touch their Buying Base (active customers, inactive customers, and conquest prospects) 52 to 104 times per year. 

While email can’t reach everyone, it is a big part of touching active and inactive customers. Therefore, most dealers think the main purpose of email is to stay in front of their customers, increase loyalty, build their brand, and enhance their image with ‘pretty’ emails.  While email can certainly fulfill each of these, they’re simply happy byproducts of sending out good emails consistently. The main purpose of email is to generate website traffic. Everything else is secondary. 

So, here are some tips on how to get more folks clicking in your emails and visiting your website:

1. Add more links. Every picture in your email should link to your website, and don’t forget text! The most consistent high Click Through Rates come from emails that have “Click Here” in several places (or some variation). Yes, some customers will figure out that a picture is clickable by hovering their mouse over it, but in marketing, people want to be told what to do. Plus, blue text that’s underlined (hyperlink) draws more clicks.

2. Don’t segment your list. “But… but… but… everyone says to segment your list!”  I know, and here’s why you shouldn’t do it.  Basic logic tells you that segmenting a list means dividing it, so you’re reducing the number of people you’re sending to. The outcome is less clicks. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for list segmentation for select emails (i.e. VIP customers, etc.). It should just be limited, and your weekly emails should go to everyone. Tip #3 makes this possible...

3. Include something for everyone. New & used inventory, service, and PG&A. You can also include event information and/or custom offers in some emails.  The default email we recommend (see image) has a section for New Inventory and Pre-Owned Inventory with 3 in-stock units listed. Dealers add make and model above the photo, and the words “Click Here” below it that links directly to that unit’s page on your website. If you have on and off-road motorcycles, ATVs and side-by-sides, include a diverse representation in your email. You can have 6 units under the new and/or pre-owned sections if you need to.

For the service and P&A sections, we recommend “Click here to visit our <department name> request page!” If you add other custom images, be sure they include a Click Here button and link it to your website. Call 1-877-242-4472 to see a full email and results.

4. Avoid having a back-to-back-to-back stack of custom images. This is the most common way to build an email today, and it reduces opens and clicks. Our Firestorm Email system has almost 200 different themes to choose from. Once a theme is chosen, you can choose a done-for-you template, or drag-and-drop different sections of text/images combinations enabling you to easily build a custom email in minutes.  Our themes are designed by dealers for dealers… no more sending emails that look like they’re for Nancy’s Bakery or ABC Accounting Company.  

For a quick demo of our Firestorm Email system call 1-877-242-4472, or visit www.powersportsmarketing.com/firestorm-email

-Tory 

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?  

In the late 1990’s, new motorcycle sales started booming and peaked in 2006 at close to 1.2 million units retailed! To put that into perspective, in 1996 there were 330,000 units sold.  Wow… that’s an increase of over 360%. 

Sales began to skid in 2007 & 2008, and by 2010 the recession had taken its toll. The Powersports industry lost over half its sales (439,000 units in 2010).  By 2015, we’d bounced back to over 500,000 new registrations, but 2016 & 2017 have seen moderate declines. 

Most motorcycle sales since the 90’s have been derived from the Baby Boomer generation. In fact, the median age of the typical motorcycle owner in 2016 was 47. It was 32 in 1990 (300,000 new units sold) and 40 in 2008 (when over 800,000 new units were sold). 

The data supports what you and I have heard… Baby Boomers are getting older and they’re not buying bikes like they used to, and Generation X isn’t buying bikes like the Boomers did. This has many of the OEM’s freaking out. As Baby Boomers phase out, where will their sales come from? Time to panic!

The OEMs, Motorcycle Industry Council, and others have all drank the Kool-Aid that the only way to save the industry is to get new riders from the low-performing demographics/segments. If the vast majority of riders & sales come from middle-aged white males, they believe we need to center in on cultivating new riders from Young Adults (Millennial Generation), Women, African Americans and Hispanics. 

Consequently, they have focused their marketing efforts on attracting these new riders. They’ve also pushed their dealers to follow suit. 

History lesson over. Now what? I’ll start by debunking the idea that focusing on demographics/segments to get new riders is a good one. 

From a financial stand point, middle-aged folks will always have more money and credit. They can afford to buy, and they have more time to ride. And, have you noticed that these new units aren’t cheap?

Furthermore, people don’t begin riding because they’re a man or woman, young or old, or because of their race. This is a passion-based industry that is full of enthusiasts/hobbyists of all shapes and sizes. No dealership cares if their next sale if going to be to a hispanic male or a white female… they want to make any customer happy. 

But, here is the biggest nail in the coffin: the number one reason a new rider starts riding is the influence of their friends and family. It’s not marketing! Marketing can shape an enthusiast’s buying habits (i.e. get them to buy PG&A more frequently, shorten their trade cycle, or get them to try a new dealership), but it will never be a good way to generate new riders. 

This isn’t a new concept. Think of any hobby. Golf enthusiasts, for instance, share many of the same demographics as the Powersports enthusiasts, and anyone who plays golf will tell you it all started with an invitation from a friend, family member or co-worker. 

I’ll go as far to say that it would be just plain silly for the golf industry to focus their marketing efforts on getting Young Adults, Women, African Americans and Hispanics to give golfing a try. It doesn’t work that way. PEOPLE get other people to play, and it’s the same in our industry. 

So, what should you do? Start by NOT focusing your marketing efforts on attracting new riders. Instead, hold monthly or bi-weekly events with a never-ending emphasis on having your customers inviting their friends and family to join in on the fun of the event. This kills two birds with one stone… increases sales right now across all departments, while fulfilling the best way to get new riders. Better ownership experiences will ultimately attract new riders through the influence or friends and family. 

Also, be sure not to alienate or ignore the Baby Boomers – they’re still buying. Or the Gen Xers – they’re becoming the wealthy generation with time, money and credit. They’re most influenced by other people who ride.

Our Sharp Shooter program is a Predictable Growth System designed to do both of those things. For more info call 1-877-242-4472, or visit www.PowersportsMarketing.com.

- Tory

It’s well known that the Powersports industry is a good 10 years behind the automotive industry in many areas, including technology. For several years now, automotive dealers have been taking 15 to 20 actual pictures of every unit, new and pre-owned, that is in their inventory and showcasing them on their website. I say “actual” to denote they’re real picture of each vehicle. They’re not using the same pictures over and over again when the same type of vehicle is back in inventory.

This has become an expectation on the consumer side, and it’s not just the automotive industry. Whether it’s Cragislist, eBay, Amazon or any other website, consumers want real pictures of what they’re shopping for. 

In this Social Media world, shoppers are craving authenticity. And the craving for ‘genuineness’ on the internet is increasing. So, the answer is… You absolutely need to be adding bona fide pictures of every in-stock unit in your inventory. 

I know what you’re thinking. “Tory, I have 50 or more units on the floor. Do you realize how difficult it is to take 10 pictures of each unit, import them to my computer, rename the files, organize, then find each unit on my website and upload those 10 images 50+ times? It will take forever! And I have to stay on top of inventory that’s coming in every day/week?” You’re right… it’s a huge hassle, but I’ve got good news. There’s a much easier way with Firestorm Websites. 

Firestorm Websites feature a Back Office Mobile App that’s loaded with features, including the ability to add/edit inventory, and add photos of your inventory to your website in real time. Simply open the app and click on ‘Inventory Missing Images’, then select the unit and take photos on the fly! No more importing, renaming, organizing and uploading, which save you hours every week. 

Websites containing multiple pictures of inventory have higher page views, increased visit duration, and more web leads. 

On a side note, all Firestorm Websites also include DMS inventory integration (units are added and removed automatically as they are received/sold), VIN Decoding (specs are automatically added for each unit), a Responsive Design & SSL Certificate (leads to higher Google rankings & conversions), and an all-new conversion point for units that takes the focus off price and discounting.

Want a quick and easy low-pressure demo, or to see some sites we’ve built?  Go to www.powersportsmarketing.com/firestorm-websites, or call 1-877-242-4472. You’re gonna like what you see. 

- Tory

In this 100th Issue, I’ll breakdown what’s offered in our Local Web Dominator, which is Powersports Marketing’s suite of digital solutions.  Here is what’s available within our different packages:

Reputation Management – It’s no secret that online reviews are just as powerful and trusted as word of mouth.  Our reputation management system grows online reviews (primarily Google reviews) to make your dealership the obvious choice in your local market area. We even create a custom review site to boost SEO. The good reviews go for all to see. The bad is sectioned off into what we call Feedback, and only the dealership’s management team can view them. (Note: We do not remove bad reviews. Call 1-877-242-4472 for more information on our proprietary Feedback system.)

As consumers view your review site they’re able to see reviews for your team members. Consumers are more likely to choose the employee with the best reviews, so your staff has something to gain by asking for reviews. This is called the Employee Ranking System.

Reviews & Rankings Mobile App – This app really drives the Employee Ranking System because your frontline staff uses it to email the customer a picture of their purchase at the point of sale. This is particularly effective in the Sales Department. Who doesn’t want a picture of themselves with their new ride shared on Facebook the day they bought it?!  This image is also saved in our database to be used for future marketing to that customer. 

Directory Listing Submission – We submit accurate data to the top four Data Aggregators to boost SEO. This includes your dealership’s name, address, phone number & website. The more your dealership’s information is consistently listed online, including your website, the more backlinks/citations it creates. 

SEM/AdWords Management – Search Engine Optimization is very important, but it doesn’t cover all the bases. Pay Per Click advertising ensures you’re on the first page of Google when prospects in your area are searching for what you sell. 

Facebook Advertising – Whether you’re looking to increase traffic to your website or grow your ‘Likes’, our dedicated team of Facebook Specialists can give you the biggest bang for your buck. 

Firestorm Email System – Our email platform is an easy to use drag-and-drop solution that includes done-for-you content that’s cool & creative. It’s not built for Nancy’s Bakery & Carl’s Shoe Store... it’s built for you. It generates higher open rates and more clicks. In fact, when clients use Firestorm Email as prescribed it quickly becomes the top source of traffic to your website! 

Firestorm Onboarding – I’ve written about this subject a lot lately because the amount of leads/sales/revenue this solution can produce is ridiculous. First, let’s cover the challenge. 75% to 80% of your websites page views are of your inventory. Sweet, right?! The gut punch is that only 1% to 2% of visitors fill out a Quote Request form.  This means 98% (+) of your traffic remain anonymous, including what is likely thousands of customers browsing your in-stock inventory. Website providers have solely focused on improving Conversion Rate, which increases the smaller 1% to 2% number. There is obviously nothing at all wrong with that, but even if you doubled to 4% (which ain’t likely) there would still be 96% that remained anonymous.

Firestorm Onboarding begins linking the customer data you have in your DMS with anonymous website visitors. Every morning, we email you a list of the customers who were on your website yesterday looking at inventory. The system automatically sends those customers a pre-built email from your Sales Manager (Marketing Automation), and we provide a script for your sales people to call and make sure the customers received the email. GUARANTEE: Use this system as prescribed and you will earn multiple unit sales within the first 2-weeks. 

Firestorm Websites – Ever heard of Marketing Incest?  It’s where one company copies another company’s marketing, who copies another company’s marketing and things just keep getting dumber and dumber. I believe this has happened with many website providers. The Firestorm Website platform is different:

• Increased Conversion. Again, there’s nothing wrong with improving a site’s Conversion Ratio, and we do it without focusing on price. Having a ‘Quote Request’ button is the equivalent of asking customers if they’d like a discount when they walk through your front doors. 

• Fully Responsive Design.  boosts SEO / page rank because it improves usability by creating a consistent experience for desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. 

• SSL Security Certificates. Google boosts page rank for sites that utilize HTTPS. 

• Inventory Integration with VIN Decoding. We pull inventory straight from your DMS saving you time and money on data entry. Then, the system loads the details and specs of each model by decoding the VIN. 

• Mobile App Back Office. Enables you to instantly add multiple images of your inventory from your mobile phone while standing on the showroom floor. Includes access to the Internet Lead Manager and more. 

• Lead Manager. Track progress of leads (sales process), log calls, set follow-up reminders, and more.

As of late, I’m noticing a trend of dealer’s inquiring into the solutions with the Firestorm nomenclature, and for good reason. Firestorm Websites, Firestorm Email & Firestorm Onboarding fit together like Peanut Butter & Jelly. In fact, they were made to complement each other.

For a low-pressure demo of any of our solutions, or to learn more about packages & pricing, call 1-877-242-4472.

- Tory

For those who are unaware of our Firestorm Website Tracking system, it identifies when some of your past customers are browsing units/inventory on your website. We send you a daily report of these customers so your sales team can follow-up. 

This is an extremely valuable feature because only 1% to 2% of your website traffic fills out a form on your website each month. That means 98% remain anonymous; you have no idea who they are.

So, whether your website generates 20 leads per month or 200, we’ll identify and show you hundreds of additional customers/leads every month.

If this new technology doesn’t have you ready to do a back flip off of your desk, the light bulb hasn’t lit up yet.  I’ll elaborate… there are 3 phases of customers:

Phase 1: Ready to buy right now, just waiting for the right moment. With good marketing, they’ll buy now.

Phase 2: Planning to buy soon… between 2 – 12 months. Left to their own timeline they procrastinate. With good marketing, they’ll buy sooner.

Phase 3: Won’t be buying for at least 1 year out. 

The customers in Phase 1 & 2 are the ones browsing the inventory on your website; it’s typically not Phase 3 customers. Inventory page views make up 75-80% of your page views each month. Yet only 1-2% of your traffic fills out a form and identifies themselves. This is a problem that our new technology solves!

With Firestorm Website Tracking, we send you a list each day of those Phase 1 & 2 customers so you can engage them, which brings us to the original question. What do you do with this list of customers each day?

Our most successful clients do what we call a one-two-punch with the list, which is an automated email followed by a phone call. Here are a couple examples of the email we can setup to send automatically to customers who visit inventory pages on your website:

Email Option 1

Tory,

We’re inviting a few of our customers to stop by the dealership this week for a low-key, 1-on-1 experience with a dedicated staff member to check out the new models coming in, or our pre-owned inventory. 

This is a really low-pressure experience, but it is by invitation only. So, just reply to this email and let me know if you’d like to reserve a time slot for a 1-on-1 demo experience this week.

Dealer Signature

Email Option 2

Tory, 

We have a shortage of pre-owned inventory right now and we’re offering Top Dollar trade-in values.

If you or anyone you know is interested in a Free Evaluation of their bike, please reply to this email or call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Dealer Signature

Again, these emails send out automatically the day after customers visit your website. You don’t have to lift a finger. Then the next step is to have your salespeople follow-up to make sure they received the email.

I’m sure many reading this article are questioning calling a customer who’s been on your website. It just feels weird to call people you know were on your website. But the reality is that your staff calls customers all the time who had been on your website recently. It wasn’t a weird call because your staff didn’t know. Customers don’t find it weird at all.

It’s not like you’re calling to say, “Hey Mr. Customer. I’ve been tracking you on our website. By the way, I really like the shirt you’re wearing today!”

The email and phone call have the feeling of, “We’re reaching out to all our customers and you were next on my list.”

In closing, if you want to quantifiably sell more units and make more money you should call 1-877-242-4472 or visit www.powersportsmarketing.com to schedule a demo.

If you’re not interested in increasing your sales and profit, don’t bother… this new feature isn’t for you.

Also, if you haven’t read my last 3 articles regarding similar subjects, go to 

www.powersportsmarketing.com/blog and click the Ask Tory section to catch up.

- Tory 

 Before we began working on the Firestorm Website platform, we started with a simple question: What is the main purpose of a website?

I’ve asked hundreds of dealers this question over the years at OEM trade shows, our Marketing Boot Camps and in one-on-one meetings. The answers I’ve received include: digital brochure; virtual showroom; online/silent sales person; the new yellow pages; map, hours and contact info; branding – to help get my name out there & more.

While your website may at some level serve all the above points, none of them are the ‘main’ purpose. Here’s why. If the main purpose of your website is to be an online brochure or virtual showroom, you’re done. You can put a check beside it. There’s nothing to improve. 

But that’s not the case. The fact is that the main purpose of your website is to Generate Leads & Identify its Visitors. All other functions are secondary.  

From the foundation, we’ve specifically developed the Firestorm Website platform to generate more web leads & identify more anonymous website visitors each month. We are revolutionizing the way web leads are received, and our conversion-point is second to none. 

We’ve heard dealer after dealer speak about their frustration with the quality of the web leads they receive. Sales people and sales managers often have a sense of apathy/indifference with internet leads because most only want your “best price out the door.” 

It doesn’t have to be that way… Firestorm Websites generate better quality leads. Imagine your salespeople being excited to follow-up with prospects again because they’re not expecting a discount every time.

Our Lead Manager enables a quick and easy way to qualify leads; log calls, notes & store visits; set follow-up tasks; and track the progress of the sale. When it comes to internet leads, it’s not the big that eat the small, it’s the fast that eat the slow.

Plus, when Firestorm Websites are combined with Firestorm Onboarding, we identify anonymous visitors who are looking at inventory each day. We send your team a daily report of those customers that viewed inventory the day before, and we train your staff how to follow-up with them. This produces a quantifiable increase in unit sales – guaranteed. 

In terms of Inventory Management, we integrate with the major DMS platforms and automatically add your inventory to the website for you. This means that after a new or pre-owned unit is entered in to your DMS it’s automatically added to your website’s inventory!  

Then, our VIN Decoding feature adds all of the specifications and an image of each unit without you having to click a mouse or touch a keyboard. Boom goes the dynamite!

If that’s not enough to make you want to see a demo, every Firestorm Website client has access to our Back Office Mobile App where they can take live pictures of inventory and instantly add it to your website while standing on your showroom floor. No more downloading images from your camera, sorting through them, renaming them, only to have to login and upload them to each unit on your website. If you load 20 images to the inventory page of each in-stock unit, your staff is wasting hours every week. There’s a much more efficient way.

Every Firestorm Website has a fully responsive design that gives visitors a consistent experience with the same content on all devices. Our coding and site engineering are the most up-to-date technology that’s prescribed by Google and other search engines. Our client’s websites rank higher because of this.

All Firestorm Websites feature an SSL Security Certificate for additional security. SSL Certificates also boost Page Rank, and Google favors secure sites over those that aren’t. 

There’s plenty more to show you in a demo, but I’ll mention one last benefit. Our clients have full, open access to all controls, settings and design in the Firestorm Website control panel. If you’d rather not DIY, our Client Success team are here to get it done for you – fast!

For a quick demo of these features and more, call 1-877-242-4472 or go to: 

www.powersportsmarketing.com/firestorm-websites 

- Tory

In my last article, I wrote about the main purpose of your website.  Remember what it is?

The primary purpose of your website is to identify its visitors and generate leads.  All other functions are secondary. 

I also wrote about the 3 primary ways you can identify more visitors and get more leads:

1. Increase Traffic to Your Website – More visitors equal more leads.

2. Increase Conversion Rates – Converting a higher percentage of traffic means more leads.

3. Utilize Firestorm Website Tracking – Identifying anonymous website visitors for effective follow-up.

In this article, I’ll go into more detail on using Firestorm Website Tracking to increase sales.

First, let’s cover the high-level math. The average powersports dealer gets around 4,000 website visitors each month. Of course, it varies from dealer to dealer, month to month, with an increase during the riding season, but 4,000 website visitors per month is pretty spot on as an average.

The conversion rate for a dealer’s website is typically at 2% (or less). This means 2% of a dealer’s website traffic will fill out a form and identify who they are. So, a website with 4,000 visitors will generate around 80 leads each month. While there are outliers who have a higher conversion rate, 2% is on the high-side. 

Website providers and SEO companies have historically focused on generating more traffic and/or increasing conversion rate. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, they should be trying to improve in these areas. The problem is it’s their exclusive focus. Here’s why…

It would be a real success to grow a dealer’s monthly website visits by 25%. It’s almost unheard of. That would mean an average website with 4,000 visits would grow to 5,000. 

It would also be a real success for a dealer to grow their conversion rate to 3%. A website with 5,000 website visitors at a 3% conversion rate would provide a dealer with 150 leads!  That’s 70 additional leads, which would be great, but still leaves us with an underlying challenge. So, even if you killed it with 150 leads, there would still be 4,850 unidentified website visitors each month who are totally anonymous. 

This raises a great question... how can we identify who more of those anonymous visitors are?  Especially the ones looking at your inventory! 

This is what Firestorm Website Tracking does. We identify anonymous website traffic and report each day on who was looking at new and used inventory on your website… and a little bit of success goes a long way. For instance, identifying 20% of your anonymous traffic would mean you’ve uncovered 970 customers (4,850 x 20%).  

We’ve done a soft rollout of this exciting new product to some of our Local Web Dominator clients and the results are impressive. Below is a sampling of 20 dealers from today’s reporting. The first column is the dealership’s name, which I’ve smudged to hide them. The second column is the number of people who used to be anonymous, but our clients now know who they are. The third column is the number of identified customers who looked at inventory on the dealers’ website yesterday!

Imagine getting an email each morning with a list of customers who were actively looking at new and used inventory on your website yesterday. I can’t think of a better daily list for your sales team to call… and we’ve got the perfect word tracks for them to use.

For more details on Firestorm Website Tracking, give me a call 1-877-242-4472. 

- Tory

With any website related subject I like to start by asking, “What is the main purpose of your website?”

Most think the purpose of their website is to be an online brochure, or to be a glorified phone book where folks can find your phone number, address, and basic information about your dealership. Others would say it’s a virtual storefront where customers and prospects go to research the products they’re interested in. While all of the above mentioned may transpire on your website, none are its primary objective. 

The main purpose of your website must be to identify website visitors and generate leads.  All other functions are secondary. 

There are 3 primary ways you can identify more visitors and get more leads to follow-up with: 

1. Increase traffic to your website. The more traffic/visitors coming into the top of the funnel, the more opportunity it creates at the bottom.  The following are some ways to boost website traffic:

- SEM/PPC: Pay Per Click (i.e. Google AdWords) is a great way to attract folks who are searching for the products you sell. For instance, when someone who lives close to your dealership does a Google search for a “2017 Honda Recon” or for a “Harley Street Glide”… if you sell the product being searched for, you want to be as close to the top of the first page of the search results as possible. If you’re not doing PPC at some level, you’re missing a lot of opportunity. 

- Facebook Website Clicks Campaign: In the past, I’ve not been impressed with the thought of Facebook advertising. Unlike SEM/PPC where folks are actively searching for a want/need, a person is on Facebook to waste time and snoop into other people’s lives. However, the results our Digital Marketing Department is achieving are impressive to say the least. We’re getting more clicks/traffic and more conversions for less ad spend, ultimately driving more traffic to websites and creating a compelling ROI for our clients.

- Firestorm Email: The purpose of email has long been perceived as another way to create TOMA (Top of Mind Awareness) and build loyalty with customers. While it is good for those things, Powersports Marketing is revolutionizing the way dealers think about email. We’ve built the Firestorm Email System to not only make it easy to send a custom-built email full of incredible done-for-you graphics, but also to make ‘increasing website traffic’ the primary purpose of sending an email.  Every email theme gives users the ability to quickly add links to get more folks to your website. While that sounds rudimentary, once you’ve seen our Firestorm Email System you’ll get it. 

Tia, who writes an article on page 5, recently showed me some research she did for one of our clients. They had 6,151 website sessions in March, and 12.43% of their website traffic came from the Firestorm Email System.  Want a 12% increase in your traffic (or more)?  Call 877-242-4472 for a demo of our Firestorm Email System. 

2. Increase conversion ratios. The average dealership gets around 4,000 website visitors with a 1%-3% conversion rate, meaning between 40 to 120 visitors on any given month will fill out a form and identify who they are. We recommend a conversion point to be on every page of your website. While I don’t think you should utilize all of these because it’s overwhelming and feels gimmicky, here are some common conversion points: Quote Request, Schedule a Demo Ride, Parts Request, Service Request, Finance Pre-Approval, Trade Evaluation, Internet Value Package, Free Premium (T-shirt, etc.), Free Report, Join Email Newsletter, etc. 

Improving your conversion rate will make a big difference, but still 90% or more of your website visitors will be anonymous (unidentified), which leads us to number 3.

3. Utilize Firestorm Onboarding: Onboarding is a new technology that identifies some of the customers who are looking at new and used inventory, but who don’t fill out a web form.  

Imagine knowing that your customer, “Joe Smith,” has been on your website 5 different times over the past 2 weeks and that he’s looking at different variations of the same make and model, and yesterday he viewed 3 bikes that are in your inventory right now. If you had that data, it could make a big difference, couldn’t it?  

That’s what Onboarding does.  Every morning we send select members of your team an email that notifies you of who was looking at new and used inventory on your website yesterday, so your sales staff can see what they were looking at and follow up with them via email and/or phone call. 

Onboarding has helped our clients begin to sell additional units every month that they wouldn’t have otherwise even known about. 

To start fulfilling the main purpose of your website, or for more information on any of the topics above, give us a call at 1-877-242-4472.

- Tory

As most know, we got our start on the dealer’s side of the fence. Rod, CEO of Powersports Marketing, owned a 4-store dealer group in the Atlanta metro area, and most of our leadership team (myself included) was involved in the operations of those stores. 

I’ll never forget a valuable lesson I learned from Rod around the year 2000 after Dealer Expo in Indy. Rod required all of our dealership staff who attended any dealer meetings to attend the seminars that were being offered, and he practiced what he preached. This particular year, the late John Wyckoff, author of Mind Your Own Business, was one of the instructors and Rod attended his seminar. 

John Wyckoff had asked a room full of dealers to raise their hand if they had held an event at their dealership during the spring or summer of the previous year. Most dealers raised their hand. Then, he asked how many of those events were successful, leading to an increase of traffic and sales. Again, most dealers raised their hand. He then asked the room who had held more than one event in that calendar year. Only a few dealers raised their hand. 

John Wyckoff was on to something. Most dealers in our industry know that events are one of the best ways (if not the very best way) to drive floor traffic, but most will only do 1 or 2 each year.  In the before-mentioned seminar, John Wyckoff asked why the dealers didn’t do more than one event. The reason?  Because having an event at the dealership is a lot work, and it’s especially tough on the Dealer Principal and/or GM.

This is a bit of a ‘Catch 22’ though. When a dealer only holds 1 - 2 events per year there’s no routine. No routine means a lack of systems and processes. When there’s no system in place, chaos ensues. That chaos equals a bunch of hard work and headaches for the Dealer Principal who then decides he doesn’t want to sign up for his own butt-whooping again. 

Dealers who decide to conduct monthly events, however, develop the appropriate systems, which make their events much easier to conduct. SYSTEM is an acronym for Save Yourself Stress Time Energy & Money. And, while systems are never perfect to begin with, the headaches decrease rapidly as a routine is developed.

Shortly after Rod attended this seminar, our 4 stores started holding an event every single month. One system we developed was an Event Planning Checklist. Yes, a checklist is a system! The GM of each store was responsible for using this checklist to assign tasks to their staff and ensure no details were overlooked. If you’d like a PDF of this Event Planning checklist, call 1-877-242-4472 and ask for me, or tell the PSM team member who answers that you’d like us to email a copy to you.

Events are also a paramount piece of the Predictable Growth System. For those who don’t remember what the Predictable Growth System is, there are 2 parts to it:

1. We Grow Your Active Customers – An active customer is defined as someone who has spent money with your dealership within the last 12 months. 

We grow active customers in two ways. First, we focus on reactivating inactive/lost customers who haven’t spent money with you in the last 12 months. Second, we get new customers through the door by focusing on the people who live in your market area, ride what you sell, buy what you sell, but have never purchased something from you.

Increasing the number of active customers who do business with you each year grows your business.

2. We Increase Your Average Customer Value – This is the amount of money your average customer spends with you each year.  

When enthusiasts visit your dealership, they’re like kids in a candy store. Many of them can’t help themselves but to make a purchase. So, when you increase the amount of times a person visits your dealership each year, they end up buying more parts, more accessories, more gear, they service their unit more often, and they shorten their trade cycle. 

I’ll explain the Predictable Growth System for a dealership that had 2,500 active customers in 2016 and did $5,000,000 in total sales, meaning their average customer is worth $2,000 each. 

1. Grow Active Customers by 10% or 2,500 grows to 2,750.

2. Increase Avg. Customer Value by 10% or $2,000 increases to $2,200.

3. 2,750 customers multiplied by $2,200 avg. value = $6,050,000 in total sales. That’s over $1,000,000 in growth (over 20%).

We CAN grow your dealership predictably through marketing an event each month. We’ll give the enthusiasts in your area (both customers and new prospects) a reason to visit your store every month and grow your active customers. When enthusiasts visit your dealership frequently it increases the amount of money they spend with you each year. 

Sound too good to be true?  It’s not. Call me and I’ll give you all the details: 

877-242-4472

- Tory

Good news… winter is over and spring is here! That means you’re about to be busier than a one-legged cat trying to bury a mouse on a frozen pond, if you’re not already. This is the time of the year when it can be tough to get things done. The late Ed Lemco called it “getting caught in the swirl”. It’s when the ‘important’ things you should be doing end up getting sidelined for the ‘urgent’ things that are happening all around you.

It takes incredible discipline to simultaneously work ‘in’ the business (doing the urgent things) and ‘on’ the business (creating and following your vision/values, improving, training, following a well thought out marketing plan, etc.) when it gets busy, but you have to make ‘working on it’ a priority. 

In the book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey devotes one of the habits specifically to time management. Habit 3: Put First Things First

He writes about how all the ‘things to do’ that come up on a daily basis can be divided into 4 Quadrants that differentiate between activities that are important and those that are urgent.

Important: Activities that lead to the achievement of your goals, both professional & personal.

Urgent: Activities that demand immediate attention, but are often not associated with the achievement of your goals, or are related to someone else’s goals.

The 4 Quadrants

1. Important & Urgent 

2. Important, but Not Urgent

3. Not Important, but Urgent

4. Not Important & Not Urgent

Following is more detail on each of the four. As the things to do pile up on you each day, I challenge you to decide which quadrant they fall into so you can start taking better control of your time.

Quadrant 1 – Important & Urgent – Things that fall into this quadrant include putting out fires, crises that arise, other pressing problems, and things/projects that are deadline-driven. If you’re not careful, this quadrant will occupy your time and leave little to nothing left for Quadrant 2.

Quadrant 2 – Important, but Not Urgent – Prevention, improving capabilities, team building, your culture, finding new opportunities, planning, recreation, exercising, and marketing. This Quadrant is where your focus & time should be spent, but it’s tough to live in this quadrant because it’s not Urgent. It doesn’t jump out and demand attention. 

Quadrant 3 – Urgent, but Not Important – Interruptions, some meetings, some calls/texts/emails, immediate pressing matters, popular activities.  This quadrant is tricky because the activities feel Urgent, they need to be done Right Now! Therefore, you want to jump on it and get it done. This quadrant can give you a false sense of accomplishment. You may have accomplished something, but the only problem is that it wasn’t Important, so you likely were wasting your time. 

Quadrant 4 – Not Important & Not Urgent – Trivial/busy work, time wasters (like constantly checking Facebook, YouTube, or playing games), some calls/texts/emails, etc. The endless amount of distractions around you every day fall into this Quadrant. Avoid them at all costs.

As you probably noticed, your marketing plan falls into Quadrant 2 – it’s extremely important, but it’s often not urgent. Especially during the busy season. But, as the old farming quote goes, “you have to make hay while the sun is shining.” 

The good, direct-response marketing you do right now, when it’s busy, will not only generate more opportunities for your team and profit for the dealership each month, it will also carryover in to the slower season and makes those months better as well. In other words, you can make your peak months even higher and your low months better too.

So, no, you shouldn’t consider turning off your marketing during the busy season. Instead, learn to live in Quadrant 2 for all things business, especially your marketing. Simply put, there is no higher valued and rewarded skill in this great country than the ability to get your product sold.

PSM can drive QUALIFIED traffic to your store, generate leads who raise their hands and tell you what they want to buy in New & Used Sales, Parts & Accessories, Apparel, and Service. This level of lead generation provides a positive ROI on what you spend. Hands down, every time.  And it’s even better in the Bull Market we have right now. Consumer confidence is super high and enthusiasts are spending money. 

If your focus is of the ‘digital sort’, PSM can drive traffic to your website with a more holistic approach than just SEM/PPC. We can increase your web leads/conversions, grow your online reviews, and even email you every morning a list of the customers who were looking at inventory on your website yesterday. 

Call 1-877-242-4472 for more info. Ask for me - I’m happy to help.

- Tory

Here at Powersports Marketing, we’ve focused on the 4 Fundamental Components of Marketing for over a decade now:

1. Right Audience

2. Right Media (that will reach that audience)

3. Right Message (Direct Response instead of Branding)

4. Right Timing

Generating new riders falls into category #1, the Right Audience. To generate ‘new’ riders, it means you must focus your marketing efforts on getting folks who don’t ride to change their mind and start riding. I’ll bluntly state that this is a bad idea because marketing doesn’t create hobbyists and never will. The best analogy to prove my point here is golf. No one starts playing golf because of marketing or advertising no matter how good the ad(s) is. If you play golf you can think of the person who got you to play the first time. 

Likewise, no one starts riding because of marketing/advertising either. Just like golf (and more other hobbies), it’s always the influence of another person, usually a friend or family member. 

I suspect that the original question, while the subject of new riders is mentioned, is really looking for growth in their dealership and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if that growth comes from new riders or those who already ride.  For instance, let’s say you could grow by 30% in 2017 but the growth all came from existing riders – would you turn it down?  Of course not.

Who you’re marketing to (your audience/the list) controls whether you’ll get responses or not, and whether an ROI will be generated or not.  The right audience for a powersports/motorcycle dealer is people who ride motorcycles. Hands down, no question. Marketing may not create new hobbyists, but it will get hobbyists to buy more products, more quickly. Marketing can also get the riders in your area who aren’t customers to respond and begin buying from you.

We are in a niche industry where only 3% to 6% of people in America ride motorcycles. That means more than 94% of people in your area don’t ride and probably will never ride. If I were running your dealership, the way I’d grow is to uncover the people closest to the dealership who fit into one of the following 2 groups: 

1. Past customers – I say it all the time, the single most likely person to spend money with you is the person who already has. The fact is the majority of your sales this year will come from past customers, and you can sell them even more with good marketing.

2. Conquest prospects - These are people who live in your backyard, ride what you sell, buy what you sell, but they’ve never purchased anything from you.  Essentially, these are your competitor’s customers and other orphan owners in your market area. Consistent marketing to this group will generate a response and create ‘new’ customers. You have to be consistent though. 

We call these 2 groups of people your Buying Base and they represent where 99% of your business will come from in 2017.  Once this group is identified you need to go after them. Ideally, you’d reach out to your entire Buying Base every month and invite them into the dealership. However, if your budget will not allow for this we can utilize your specific budget to target the best, closest customers and prospects in your market area – and in doing so we always generate a positive ROI.

Powersports Marketing will increase the frequency of visits from past and present customers while acquiring new customers, driving leads and good traffic through the doors every single month.

Want to know what your Buying Base looks like for no cost?  Call 1-877-242-4472 and ask for a Free Data Analysis. 

-Tory

Here at Powersports Marketing, we’ve focused on the 4 Fundamental Components of Marketing for over a decade now:

1. Right Audience

2. Right Media (that will reach that audience)

3. Right Message (Direct Response instead of Branding)

4. Right Timing

Generating new riders falls into category #1, the Right Audience. To generate ‘new’ riders, it means you must focus your marketing efforts on getting folks who don’t ride to change their mind and start riding. I’ll bluntly state that this is a bad idea because marketing doesn’t create hobbyists and never will. The best analogy to prove my point here is golf. No one starts playing golf because of marketing or advertising no matter how good the ad(s) is. If you play golf you can think of the person who got you to play the first time. 

Likewise, no one starts riding because of marketing/advertising either. Just like golf (and more other hobbies), it’s always the influence of another person, usually a friend or family member. 

I suspect that the original question, while the subject of new riders is mentioned, is really looking for growth in their dealership and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if that growth comes from new riders or those who already ride.  For instance, let’s say you could grow by 30% in 2017 but the growth all came from existing riders – would you turn it down?  Of course not.

Who you’re marketing to (your audience/the list) controls whether you’ll get responses or not, and whether an ROI will be generated or not.  The right audience for a powersports/motorcycle dealer is people who ride motorcycles. Hands down, no question. Marketing may not create new hobbyists, but it will get hobbyists to buy more products, more quickly. Marketing can also get the riders in your area who aren’t customers to respond and begin buying from you.

We are in a niche industry where only 3% to 6% of people in America ride motorcycles. That means more than 94% of people in your area don’t ride and probably will never ride. If I were running your dealership, the way I’d grow is to uncover the people closest to the dealership who fit into one of the following 2 groups: 

1. Past customers – I say it all the time, the single most likely person to spend money with you is the person who already has. The fact is the majority of your sales this year will come from past customers, and you can sell them even more with good marketing.

2. Conquest prospects - These are people who live in your backyard, ride what you sell, buy what you sell, but they’ve never purchased anything from you.  Essentially, these are your competitor’s customers and other orphan owners in your market area. Consistent marketing to this group will generate a response and create ‘new’ customers. You have to be consistent though. 

We call these 2 groups of people your Buying Base and they represent where 99% of your business will come from in 2017.  Once this group is identified you need to go after them. Ideally, you’d reach out to your entire Buying Base every month and invite them into the dealership. However, if your budget will not allow for this we can utilize your specific budget to target the best, closest customers and prospects in your market area – and in doing so we always generate a positive ROI.

Powersports Marketing will increase the frequency of visits from past and present customers while acquiring new customers, driving leads and good traffic through the doors every single month.

Want to know what your Buying Base looks like for no cost?  Call 1-877-242-4472 and ask for a Free Data Analysis. 

-Tory

If you cut through the clutter of your dealership, there are only 4 ways to grow your business.  

1. Improve Your Closing Ratio 

2. Raise Your Average Value per Customer 

3. Generate New Customers

4. Increase Visits/Purchases from Your Existing Customers

The first 2 are a matter of training, the second 2 are driven by marketing. 

I often write about 3. Generating New Customers and 4. Increasing Purchases from Your Existing Customers through our Sharp Shooter event based marketing program, and the Local Web Dominator digital marketing program. If you haven’t given them a try at this point, what’s holding you back?  Call 1-877-242-4472 and get started with the industry’s most quantifiable and ROI generating advertising.

In this article, however, I want to focus on the first 2 ways to grow your business in a more indirect manner than usual. As I previously mentioned, 1. Improving Closing Ratio and 2. Raising Your Average Value per Customer are both a matter of training. The following are strategies to get more from your team than you ever have, while improving the culture of your dealership. 

EVERYONE IS IN SALES

Every person who could ever talk to or work with a customer is in Sales. Even your grumpy Office Manager. 

The attitude that everyone is in Sales raises the ante on what’s expected out of your staff, and one thing I’ve learned over my years of managing is that people tend to adapt and fulfill what’s expected of them.  Change your culture to one where the wants and needs of every prospect and customer is the chief responsibility of ALL of your staff members. 

INVEST IN YOUR TEAM

In most dealerships, the investment in training is small or non-existent. Training is a journey, not a destination. You can get more from your top-performers, the average salespeople, and those in the bottom third. Although it is important that your training isn’t dumbed-down to be catered to your new guys or those at the bottom of the list,

good, steady training has a way of turning some poor performers into average, and ultimately top performers.  While it’s difficult and time-consuming, it’s the best way to of getting more out of your team. 

At Powersports Marketing, we spend 45 minutes to 1 hour in training EVERY DAY. Yes, you read that right. Every. Single. Day. We cover everything from product knowledge and looking at the numbers to role playing how to handle objections. It’s a big investment of time and money, and it’s a big part of our growth. It will be for you, too. 

SALESPEOPLE SHOULD SELL

Your salespeople should be spending as much of their work hours as possible…… selling. Not cleaning bathrooms, sweeping the floor, cold prospecting, stuffing envelopes, filling out forms, reading the newspaper, playing on their phones, etc. They should be selling.

This means relieving them of as much of everything else as you can.

For instance, prospecting should be replaced with marketing, and the manual labor of prospecting replaced with media. Prospects can be found or created, brought forward, asked for their information (including what they’re most interested in) and more. 

As I wrote about a few issues ago, you also want your salespeople selling to the best and highest value, highest probability prospects—not just anyone, the most affluent customers in your market area. Putting good salespeople in front of poor prospects (including those who don’t ride) is simply not smart. There’s a better way. Call us and ask about our Sharp Shooter and Local Web Dominator programs– both of which focus on the best audience, use the right media to reach that audience with a message that get a great response and is quantifiable. 1-877-242-4472

ACCOUNTABILITY

“If the guy is selling and making things happen, I don’t care what he’s doing or how he’s doing it.” 

I’ve heard that from dealer principals and other business owners a lot.  Steve Forbes even said it on TV about the advertising reps that work for Forbes magazine. Steve Forbes may be incredible with money, but he’s off his rocker regarding this.

This is why 90 percent of the prospects that leave a dealership are never contacted again. This is why the sales process doesn’t get followed. This is why leads aren’t appropriately called and followed-up with. And Lord help you if your salesperson makes enough money to be happy by the third week of the month ‘cuz they’ll stop pushing and working hard – they’ll put it on cruise control for the rest of the month. No calling the prospects who visited but didn’t buy during the first visit. The opportunity just dies. 

You just can’t leave your staff on their own to decide how they’ll use (or waste) the company’s resources and opportunities.

You can’t leave them alone with ‘how’ they do it either. Your dealership’s reputation and long-term sustainability and equity are all put at risk by every spoken, written, emailed, facebooked, snapchatted, or tweeted word, and especially by every action of your representatives.

Listen to their calls, watch them as they work with customers so you can coach them to be the ambassador of your dealership you expect. Continue to inspect what you expect. Staff members who are given a good opportunity and want to excel will respond reasonably well to accountability if it’s aim is to help them improve. It’s best if the people who resist and resent this kind of accountability find their happiness elsewhere. 

For more information or questions regarding the 4 Ways to Grow Your Dealership, give me a call at 1-877-242-4472.

- Tory 

Merry Christmas!  Can you believe it’s the most wonderful time of the year already? I tell ya, the more gray you get in your hair (or for some, the more hair you lose) the faster the year just seems to fly by. 

Of course, part of Christmas seeming to get here faster is because companies are putting out their Christmas decorations and products earlier and earlier every year. In fact, this year I began to see Christmas trees and lights in stores before Halloween was even here.  

You ever wondered why the big retail stores start Christmas so early?

The reason is found in the math. The fact is that Americans spend 70% of their discretionary dollars between Halloween and New Year’s Day. If a family has $2000 in discretionary funds each year, $1,400 of that amount on average is spent during this time of year. (Discretionary money is what’s left over after the bills are paid and all responsibilities have been taken care of; it’s the money that a person or family can spend at their ‘discretion’. )

The majority, if not all, of our industry’s sales in every department in the dealership come from discretionary dollars. We’re a big toy store. 

Many of our clients have done the math: 70% of discretionary dollars are spent in November and December & most of their business comes from discretionary dollars. This means they can’t back off their marketing too much during these two months. They understand they have the power, through good marketing, to sway shoppers to spend some of those dollars getting the powersports enthusiasts on their list, and themselves, a Christmas present they’d really like.

There are lots of reasons to give people a reason to shop with you this time of year… Black Friday, Chrome Saturday, Cyber Monday (you can actually drive traffic into the store with this), 12 Days of Christmas, or a single Christmas event on a Saturday in December (12/3, 12/10, 12/17, or 12/24).

Have you ever heard of the 13th Month? 

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is referred to as the 13th Month because retailers will often do a month’s worth of business during that single week. People are spending their gift cards and Christmas cash. They’re returning the gifts they didn’t want so they can buy something they like. 

A popular campaign we’ve implemented for dealers during the 13th Month is ‘What Santa Forgot’. The focus is ‘Get What You Really Wanted for Christmas!’ This campaign can also be done the first or second week of January. 

Before doing business with us, some of our clients had stopped their marketing in November and December. They had tried everything to compete with the big box retailers and failed. Nothing seemed to work.

The truth is you can’t compete with the millions of dollars being spent on TV, Radio, Newspaper and other mass media. You’re just a drop in the ocean.

You can, however, target the enthusiasts in your market area (both past customers and conquest riders) with a Sharp Shooter campaign that gets traffic in your store and generates leads for every department. This gives your staff people to work with (and sell to) and leads to follow-up with. 

I’ve heard from dealers that October and November to date have been soft. We experienced this with the big election in 2008, when there was lots of uncertainty as Obama was elected. This year, we’ve experienced something similar with another big election, but it’s over. 

In 2008, business picked up in December and 2009 was a good year. Trump will be our next president. The general consensus I hear from people is that they believe Trump will be good for small-to-medium sized businesses, and that’s what the majority of our economy is built on. 

This Christmas shopping season is going to be “YUGE!”  It’s up to you to sway shoppers with good marketing.  Call 1-877-242-4472 to get a free quote on a Sharp Shooter campaign for your ‘13th Month’. 

- Tory

 What is your mission?  In other words, let’s cut through the clutter of everything your dealership does and answer the question… why does your dealership exist? 

Why do you do what you do; what do you stand for?

Many businesses write out a Mission Statement to communicate their mission & vision. While I’m a huge believer in the power of a good Mission Statement, I don’t believe that just having one is the end-all to a dealership’s problems. 

Most mission statements are generic, stale and completely useless. Often times they actually do more harm than good. For instance, when customers and staff know your mission statement, but it’s not genuine or lived out/executed, it’s nothing more than a constant reminder that having integrity and doing what you say you’re going to isn’t important in your organization.

At Powersports Marketing our mission is: “To enrich lives by providing powerful turn-key marketing, so people, businesses and our economy can thrive.”  Our goal is to enrich the lives of Dealer Principals, the dealership staff and customers, to grow the industry as a whole, which can impact the entire economy. 

We often discuss this (and our vision) with our staff to create a culture that desires a win-win for everyone we come in contact with. 

In my articles over the years I’ve mentioned Proverbs 29:18 a few times. It says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish…” What is your vision? Without vision your staff is just going through the motions and your business is more dependent upon the market, the weather and the economy than it should be. Without vision and passion your marketing isn’t working as it should be either.

The advantages of being mission-driven are large and ongoing and impact customers and staff. Below are some benefits of being mission-driven in not only your operation, but in your marketing as well. 

1. Gains interest from the affluent. People who have money spend it decisively – they are more careful with their money.  That can make it more difficult to earn business from them, but they are often more loyal. Plus, the affluent will spend more money with you and have a higher annual customer value than the non-affluent.  The affluent have a very strong preference for choosing companies that are more than “business as usual.” 

On the opposite side of the equation, poor people often just hope you can get them financed. Most won’t be able to buy, and even if they can/do, you’ll never see most of them again for additional purchases of PG&A or service.

2. Increased profits. Mission-driven marketing will generate more responses from your buying base (past customers and conquest riders in your area) and result in a higher frequency of visits. When you get more riders to come through your doors more frequently it’s a system for predictably growing your dealership.

3. Increased loyalty. Mission-driven marketing focuses on the emotional side of the purchase/shopping process. It utilizes 1-to-1 relationship style marketing instead of one-to-many and drives an elevated and emotional level of engagement. It gives customers a go-to place to come back and do business again and again.

4. More new clients. In addition to being very good at keeping old customers, mission-driven marketing also excels at bringing in new ones.  91% of consumers said they’d switch to a brand associated with a good cause, according to a recent study. 

5. Stronger awareness & a positive image. Aligning yourself with a higher mission enables you to be seen in an ‘operating for a greater good, rather than your own’ point of view. This is good, especially in a time when businesses and business owners are seen as evil, selfish and uncaring. Being mission-driven differentiates you in a significant way. 

6. Attraction and retention of high-quality employees. Am I saying that when you do mission-driven marketing you’ll have better luck at building a great team? Absolutely. Where there is no vision, the people perish. 

It’s no secret that one of my favorite restaurants is Chick-fil-a. They have the absolute best employees of any restaurant (especially fast food), hands down.  Chick-fil-a doesn’t pay more, have a super easy workload, or better hours of operation – what they do have is an excellent vision/mission that’s incorporated into their entire culture. 

Our Sharp Shooter and LWD programs are distinctly mission-driven. Our goal is to touch your buying base 52-104 times per year. We not only build loyalty for the long-haul for our clients, we also generate quantifiable traffic and sales for a positive ROI on marketing dollars spent - right now! It’s time to stop all the image-enhancing advertising designed to build your brand. It’s a complete waste of money. 

It’s time to build something greater. Call me to discuss - 1-877-242-4472.  

- Tory

Dealers who aren’t focused on increasing the value of their customers are leaving themselves extremely vulnerable. The cost and difficulty of acquiring a new customer is tremendously higher than it is to increase the value of an existing customer.  Putting an emphasis on increasing customer value cannot only lead to big dollars in gross profits, but also much higher net profits too. That’s why we’ve often called a customer database, “the hidden gold buried in your dealership.”
 

Before you can improve something, however, you have to know what it is and where you stand. This principle is actually the second of the five Core Values we live by here at Powersports Marketing.

1. Personal Accountability and Responsibility

2. W.G.M.G.D. – What Gets Measured Gets Done

3. ATTITUDE = 100%

4. Commitment to Teamwork and Systems

5. Dedication to Continual Improvement in Business and Life

If you’re not measuring, you’re not improving. How do you measure the average value of a customer? Usually it’s done annually. So, simply divide your total sales in a 12-month period by the number of active customers you had in that same 12-month period. If over the last 12-months you’re at $5,000,000 in total sales and you’ve had 2,200 active customers in that same period, your annual customer value is $2,272.

Once you know that number, your attention must focus on how to improve it. Here are 4 specific ways to maximize your customer value:

1. Don’t do as much discounting. You don’t have to offer a discount to make a sale. Hobbyists/enthusiasts almost always spend more money on their hobby than anything else in their life. Instead, focus on improving your marketing (to increase store visits), customer service (to build loyalty to your dealership), and selling skills (including handling objections) in every department. Don’t just focus your training efforts on the Sales Department; include PG&A and Service as well. Continual selling skills training goes a long way. 

Keep in mind that a lack of training will always equal low margins. The easiest way to close the sale is by discounting. The sale happens when value exceeds price. Rookie and un-trained salespeople will over-use the discount tactic and lower price instead of raising value. While I understand that you have to discount at times, it does not need to be the primary way you win a sale.

2. Increase the size of your transactions. Upsell. Look for related add-ons every single time. A customer buying one piece of apparel will often buy something else when value is built and they’re asked to buy. Helmets lead to a better visor or a jacket.  Jackets lead to gloves. Oil and filter lead to a drain plug washer and a can of brake cleaner and spray polish.

If you can get $10 more per visit from a customer who does 10 transactions per year, that’s $100. Over 5-years that’s and additional $500 from one customer. Done with 500 customers, it’s an additional $250,000. Done with 2,500 customers, an extra $1,250,000.

3. Put a fence around your herd. Customers are only as loyal to you as you are good at marketing to them. When not marketed to, they develop a sense of apathy. Like cattle wander from pasture to pasture, customers will wander from your dealership to the competition. Back to you, back to them. Your marketing must build loyalty and increase the number of times they visit you every year instead of the competition. Marketing guru, Dan Kennedy, often writes on how Direct Response Marketing is the proverbial ‘fence’ that keeps customers in your pasture.  It also immunizes your customers from competitor’s offers.

Every dealership also has thousands of in-active customers (they haven’t done business with you in more than 1 year). Good marketing will reactivate lost customers and increase their frequency of visits as well.

4. Come to our Marketing Boot Camp. We will be diving into this subject much deeper than I can in this article. According to past attendees, you’ll walk away with the equivalent of a “Master’s Degree in Marketing Your Dealership.”  Join us in Atlanta, Monday, October 24th through Wednesday, October 26th. Enroll at www.powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp Better hurry though… space is limited.

Dealers who aren’t learning new marketing trends, or who aren’t focused on increasing the value of their customers are leaving big money on the table. You’re also leaving yourself highly vulnerable to the ever-changing market/economy. Reserve your spot for our Fall Marketing Boot Camp now… you’ll be glad you did, or we’ll refund your money.  Hope to see you there.

- Tory

Last month, I spent three days in Nashville, TN at the Polaris Dealer Meeting. I always enjoy spending time with ourclients and prospective clients learning what’s going on in their market place, and understanding some of the challenges they’re facing. I’ve noticed a trend lately and it carried true at the Dealer Meeting as well. It’s very obvious that dealers are struggling with what works and what doesn’t work in marketing. They have a budget, and they’re spending it with no way to quantify the results – and it’s incredibly frustrating.

Speaking of being quantifiable, I love the quote from John Wanamaker that Rod wrote about. He said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” 

This brings us to the original question for this article… what really works? Should you be doing radio, TV, billboards, newspaper, print, and direct mail?  And that doesn’t even include digital – search marketing, display advertising, remarketing, SEO, mobile apps, etc.

You have a seemingly countless number of options for advertising. You’re most likely receiving multiple phone calls per day and/or salespeople walking through the front doors claiming they have the greatest new whiz-bang silver bullet marketing product that will change their life.

The world of marketing is more convoluted than it’s ever been.  The bad news is that it’s only going to get worse. The good news is there’s something you can do about it - attend our Fall Marketing Boot Camp coming up in October where we’ll specifically highlight what works, and how to avoid all of the wasteful options you’re given every day. 

Our Fall Marketing Boot Camp is in Atlanta starting the afternoon of Monday, October 24th and ending on Wednesday, October 26th and it’s only $249 to attend (Early Bird Special ends 8/31). Register now: www.powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp 

Not only will we break down what Media you should be utilizing, we’ll have sessions devoted specifically to how to craft a compelling Message.  Even if you are taking advantage of the right Media, if your Message isn’t good no one will respond. 

We’ve received dozens of reviews on www.PowersportsMarketingReviews.com from dealers who’ve attended our past Marketing Boot Camps. Visit the site above and scroll to March 11, 2016. You’ll see where Dixie from Vandervest Harley-Davidson said: 

“We strongly feel that we will see an increase in sales this year while spending less on our marketing and advertising. Thank you to all the presenters for the great information that can be immediately applied to our dealership.” 

It no secret that when you invest your budget each month in a manner that uses the right Media to put a compelling Message in the hands of the right Audience at the right Time, you will achieve an increase in sales that is quantifiable.

Quinn from Tytler’s Cycle posted the following review on October 29th, 2015 after attending the Boot Camp last fall. 

“In the Powersports industry you are regularly approached with solutions to get the word out about your business. … Now, having attended their Fall Marketing Boot Camp I have accelerated the process for building a successful game plan. I walked away with a Masters Degree in marketing for the Powersports industry. They walk you through the why and the how to approach each channel. We now have the tools and resources to cut through the noise and build a better business for our clients. Powersports Marketing is a fantastic organization with great people that truly care about helping you build the best business for your clients. Highly recommend their work and look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.”

This Boot Camp is NOT a pitch-fest of our products. You will be motivated, and leave armed with the very best ways to market your dealership. In fact, Virginia from RideNow Concord wrote: 

“Hi Guys- First I want to thank you all for having me at your spectacular Spring Marketing Boot Camp! I left with a ton of knowledge. I’ve attended multiple classes before and yours is one of the only classes I have walked away from fully motivated! All of your speakers were phenomenal!”

Stop what you’re doing and visit www.powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp and I’ll see you here in October.

-Tory

In the last issue (#84) I wrote about the 4 pillars of marketing (right audience, right message, right media, right time) being a test to run any and all advertising through. This applies to digital marketing too. There are advertising options out there that fall under the ‘digital marketing’ umbrella that are either a complete waste of money or simply not a good fit.

Our Local Web Dominator contains the most crucial elements of digital marketing, and it passes the ‘4 pillars test’. 

AUDIENCE:

There may not be a better audience than the folks who are actively doing a search (or searches) for a product you sell.  When a prospect Googles “2016 Street Glide” or “Color Options on New Yamaha Raider” (or anything else you sell) they’ve immediately passed the test.

MESSAGE:

All of our digital marketing maintains a well-crafted message that we tailor to the individual (what they’re searching for and more). Our messages always include a call-to-action that answers the question “Why should I click on this?”.

MEDIA:

The worst number in marketing is 1, meaning you have to diversify. Diversity equals stability. That’s why our Local Web Dominator includes multiple media, and other important features that generate business for your dealership:

•Firestorm Email System: Email is often overlooked as a digital media, but it’s a powerful way to increase customer purchases and loyalty. Our in-house development team has created the first and only email system dedicated specifically to the motorcycle industry.  Firestorm enables you to create original, creative emails in minutes that contain professional graphics designed for motorcycle enthusiasts by motorcycle enthusiasts. 

•Search Marketing (i.e. Google AdWords): It’s no secret that the vast majority of folks do research online before purchasing a product. You have to be visible when prospects are searching, and make sure you’re seen. Our years of dealership experience combined with our appetite to study and be marketing Gurus has led us to develop a Pay-Per-Click strategy that trumps any and every other company out there.  

•Display Advertising/Retargeting/Geo-Fencing: These add additional layers we utilize to reach riders who may not be

actively searching (and therefore we can’t reach with Search Marketing), enabling us to use a good media to put the right message in front of the right people.

•Grow Online Reviews: Reviews are completely shaping what a person purchases, and who they purchase it from. We create a review site for your dealership and activate an automated review acquisition system that grows Google reviews and makes you the obvious choice to do business with in your market area.

•Identify Unhappy/Lost Customers:  When our review acquisition system uncovers an unhappy customer we keep it private and notify you and your management team. Now you can save those customers and ensure they continue doing business with you.

•Boost SEO: The review site we create provides a huge SEO benefit, but we take it a step further. We create a uniform visibility across directory listing sites, which increases your backlinks/citations and makes your site more visible.

•Social Media Marketing: Social Media is ever evolving, and knowing which ones to take advantage of (and how) is only becoming more and more difficult. We cut through the clutter and get quantifiable results in the areas that matter.

•Lead Magnet: This form opens automatically when a customer visits your new and used inventory pages and offers an incentive to give you their contact information and tell you what they’re most interested in. Increasing your visitor-to-lead conversion means more quote requests, and ultimately more units sold. 

TIME:

We ensure you’re in front of the prospects who are searching and interested RIGHT NOW.  

To answer the original question, if it were my dealership, I’d spend at least 40% of my budget towards digital marketing. With the balance, I’d be investing in the Predictable Growth System that Eric writes about in his Case Study… check it out. 

For more information on our Predictable Growth System, or on how our Local Web Dominator can help you excel in all three areas of the search engine results page (SERP)… organic search, paid search, and Google Maps call
1-877-242-4472, or visit www.PowersportsMarketing.com.

-Tory

There are four pillars that we focus on here at Powersports Marketing. If you’ve read any number of the monthly Ultra Marketing Machine Newsletters, you’ve heard about our 4 Pillars of Marketing.  They are a filter/test that tells us whether or not the marketing/advertising that’s being done is going to be successful or not. 

The 4 pillars are: 

1. Right Audience

2. Right Media

3. Right Message

4. Right Time

The filter is this; you have to put a checkmark beside each of these pillars for ANY & ALL marketing that you ever do. Period. If you miss even one of the ‘pillars’ your marketing will fail. Therefore,

it’s crucial you understand each one, so I’ll give a high level summary of each below. I’ll also hone in on the original question of why events are so important.

Right Audience - The right audience is actually different for every industry. For the Powersports industry, it’s pretty straight-forward… you have to target people who ride. I know you want new customers, but targeting non-riders with your marketing is not the way to do it. 

Non-riders don’t respond to marketing, and they never will in any number. The number 1 reason someone starts riding is because a friend or family member influenced them to. It’s never marketing. On the events note, encourage your customers to ‘influence’ their friends and family by inviting them to your events.

Right Media – Which media will best reach the Right Audience? It’s not mass media like radio, TV, newspaper and billboards. These medias target everyone, but only 3% to 6% of the population in your state are riders. Plus, people are utilizing DVRs, satellite radio, changing the station when commercials come on, driving past your billboard and not noticing it, etc.  The number one person most likely to notice a dealership’s mass media is someone who works at the dealership. 

Instead of 1-to-many, you should utilize 1-to-1 media like direct mail, email, phone calls, online ads, and more. Any media that can specifically target a person who rides, and that helps build a relationship is where you should focus your marketing efforts. For a more complete list call me at 1-877-242-4472.

Right Message – The message is all about your design and ad copy (what you say). Do NOT try to build your brand or get your name out there. The opposite of branding-style advertising is Direct Response advertising. Direct Response advertising always has a call-to-action, which means it tells the person receiving the media exactly how you want them to respond. It’s also quantifiable so you can measure response. 

Be sure your message isn’t focused solely on trying to generate unit sales. Studies have shown that only 1% of your list is in ‘purchase mode’.  Therefore, when your message is focused mainly on why your audience should buy a new or pre-owned unit you are alienating 99% of your list. So, if your audience for a campaign is 4,000 people, you’re training 3,960 to ignore your marketing.

When your message is an invitation to an event, it relates to everyone. Who doesn’t like to be invited to a party? 

Event marketing not only gets the attention of the 1% who are in ‘purchase mode’ (and gives them a bigger reason to respond), it also gives the 99% a reason to come by the dealership. The more enthusiasts you have in the dealership, the more leads you generate, and the more sales you’ll have in all departments. Sales is a game of numbers. The more at-bats you get, the more hits you get and the more runs you’ll score. 

Why try to get a few sales leads when you can increase sales in P&A, Service, Apparel AND New & Pre-Owned Units?

Right Time – When you drip out multiple media over the timing of a 10-day period, and it’s all integrated into a single campaign, it really increases response rates. This is what our Sharp Shooter program does.

Timing also pertains to consistency. Once you identify the Right Audience, you have to market to and stay in front of them consistently. We recommend at least 52 to 104 touches per year (with different media). Event marketing gives you a great reason to reach out every month (or more), and even if a customer can’t come to the event, it still builds loyalty, so your touches weren’t a waste. 

You can’t market to your audience once or twice a year and maintain any level of customer loyalty. Consistency, however, puts a fence around your audience and immunizes them from competitors’ offers. When customers buy from you and rarely hear from you again they become apathetic or indifferent. 

Powersports Marketing has dozens of event themes and designs to choose from, or we can create a custom design for you. Our goal is to make your life a little easier and your dealership more profitable. For more information, visit 

www.PowersportsMarketing.com or call 

877-242-4472.   

- Tory

Many years ago, I heard a quote by Dan Kennedy, who is the direct marketing guru I often mention, and it’s really stuck to my ribs. He said, “Branding is for cattle.”

I advise against a dealer spending their hard-earned dollars on marketing that’s purely designed to ‘build their brand’ or ‘get their name out there.’  I’m a dealer advocate at heart, and quite frankly, branding is a waste of money. 

Don’t mistake having a ‘brand’ with ‘branding advertising.’ Having and building a ‘brand’ isn’t a bad thing, I’m not against that at all. In fact, here at Powersports Marketing we’re building a brand with our company name, our Sharp Shooter program, and our Local Web Dominator program. You’ll never see us, however, spending a single penny on branding style of advertising. In other words, I want all dealers to know who Powersports Marketing is, and what our Sharp Shooter and Local Web Dominator programs are all about, but every dollar I spend will have a call-to-action with a reason to respond.

When you focus your advertising on brand building, you should know that it cannot be, and never will be accurately quantified, so you can’t hold it accountable. 

Branding advertising is usually associated with mass media like TV, radio, billboards and newspapers. Mass media sales reps have to build value somehow, so they focus on branding so you won’t know if it’s working or not, and subsequently you’ll keep on doing it. There are 2 big reasons dealers do mass media: 

Number 1 is Marketing Incest - Dealers copy other dealers assuming it’s working for their competitor, so it must be the right thing to do. This often leads to the advertising getting dumber and dumber as they copy each other, hence the ‘Incest’.  :) 

Number 2 is Pride & Ego - It feels good to hear your commercial on the radio, see your dealership on TV, drive past your billboard, etc.  Did you know that the people most likely to hear/see/notice you on mass media are you and your staff members?  You hear your radio spot, but you probably couldn’t tell me the commercial that aired before or after it. Radio commercials don’t typically sway what you personally buy. Yet, dealers keep doing it because it feels good. It’s a faux security blanket that dealers think is always on. It’s not, and when your commercial plays most folks miss it.  

Instead of wasting money by going after the masses (when only 3% to 6% of people ride/buy powersports), you CAN create a name-brand identity and recognition for your dealership as a happy byproduct of Direct Response marketing that actually generates leads & sales every time you do it. 

Focus your advertising where it counts. For instance, we build a carefully selected audience group that we call a dealership’s Buying Base. It’s made up two groups: 

1) past customers

2)conquest riders who live in a dealership’s backyard, but have never done business with them.  

This group (Buying Base) is where the majority of a dealer’s sales will come from over the next 12 months. It also narrows the field down to a size  that you impact with the resources you have.  A giant market is only useful to someone with a giant wallet. Don’t try to make a difference by peeing into the ocean. 

A brand (or brand identity) is simply a recognized symbol that represents and reminds people of ‘what’ you and your dealership are all about. But, don’t overlook the fact that it should also resonate with ‘who’ your business is for. 

The ‘who’ is two-fold… you have to know who to market to, but you also need to let them know who you are. Personal branding is far superior to a corporate style of branding. People prefer dealing with people rather than nameless & faceless institutions. You have to put yourself out there!

Again, there’s nothing wrong with creating a name-brand identity and recognition for yourself and your business. Just be sure you’re doing it as a byproduct and bonus of solid, accountable, profitable Direct Response advertising.  Do NOT buy ‘branding’ outright with image enhancing advertising. 

For more information on Direct Response advertising, building your buying base, or all-things marketing call 1-877-242-4472 and ask for me. 

- Tory

I’m frequently asked by dealers if they should invest in an app for their dealership. Apps entered the marketing scene and became an instant fad, and many dealers jumped on the bandwagon. Dealers heard that other dealers had an app, so they started thinking they needed one too. I mean, if another dealer shows you up, you have to copy them, right? Wrong.  Before I jump in too far, let’s go over what an app is and make sure we’re all singing off the same sheet of music. 

App is short for application, which is a software written most often to be used on mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc.). Of course we’ve all heard the saying, “there’s an app for that,” and we’ve all downloaded plenty of apps from the App Store on Apple devices, and from Google Play on Android devices.

There can be big money in creating apps, so it didn’t take long for software developers to build cookie-cutter apps with simple functionality that they could sell to small businesses. Powersports dealers were targeted as well. 

If you’re wondering what they do, you’re not alone.  That’s the first question I asked as well. The sales pitch on dealer apps:

1. You can send Push Notifications to your customer’s phone and alert them of special events and promotions.

2. Your current inventory will always be in your customer’s pocket. It’s a feed from your website, so no additional work is required to load it.

3.Customers can watch a unit and be notified of price changes.

4. Apps build loyalty with customers and you stay in front of them more and create ToMA (Top of Mind Awareness).

5. It includes a button to call your dealership, and easy directions.

6. You can schedule a visit to the Service Department. 

Now for the second question I asked… “Why would a customer download it?”

Let’s go through the numbered points above and see if they are a good reason why the app should be downloaded.  

1. Hey Mr. Customer, download our app so we can send push notifications to your phone!

• Most customers will say “No thanks.”

• Of the small percentage of customers who download the app, most will uninstall it once you start sending push notifications to their phone.

• For many people, cell phone communication is more intimate, meaning it’s primarily for communicating with family and friends. 

2. Hey Mr. Customer, download our app so you can have instant access to our current inventory!

• I have trouble answering the question… “Why wouldn’t I just go to your website for that?”

3.Hey Mr. Customer, download our app so you can watch bikes/units you’re interested in and be notified of price reductions.

• This could actually get you some downloads, but it’s based on waiting for a discount, and someone will have to manage the pricing of the inventory (keep in mind you can’t lower prices on new inventory for some OEMs). 

• This sounds like a great benefit, but I’ve yet to see this be truly successful because the app is deleted soon after being installed.

4. Loyalty is a great dealership benefit, but customers won’t download the app for this reason.

5. When a person needs to call a business, or needs directions, they search for them on Google. They don’t try to find the business’ app on their phone.

6. It seems clumsy to have a customer download your app to schedule service. And if they already had the app, when they need service most folks won’t remember your app, they’ll do a Google search and call you.

We’ve done business with over 700 dealers and 2 of them have said they’ve had success with their app. They couldn’t quantify that success, except through the number of times the app had been downloaded.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know how many of those customers had uninstalled the app after downloading it.

At the end of the day, you and your team only have so much time and budget. I recommend not jumping on every bright and shiny product that comes along. Choose wisely what you spend your limited resources on. It’s better to be ‘Narrow and Deep’ over ‘Wide and Shallow’.

For more information, visit www.PowersportsMarketing.com/sharp-shooter or call 1-877-242-4472 and ask for me.

To put it bluntly, the biggest challenge with focusing your marketing on creating new riders is that you’ll get little to no response, and therefore little to no R.O.I.  Ultimately, you’ll simply be wasting your money instead of investing it. There is a way to create new riders, but it’s not directly through marketing, believe it or not. To prove a point, let me share a related story.

Growing up, some of my favorite things to do were play baseball, football, and ride motorcycles. My passion, though, was riding, and every minute I could, I rode.  I had pictures of motorcycles, Rick Johnson and Jeff Ward covering the walls in my room.  My first street bike came when I was 16 (an older Ninja 500), and I started working in a Powersports dealership at 17.  I still remember the first motorcycle I purchased from a dealership - a CBR 600F3.

Anything motorcycle related, including marketing, I paid attention to. 

On the other hand, Golf wasn’t something that I ever thought about. The first word that would have come to mind when I thought of golf is BORING, and I would have rather gone to the dentist than watch golf on TV. I did love Adam Sandler’s golf movie, ‘Happy Gilmore’, but I never visited any golf courses, or paid attention to any of the players. 

As I grew older, I knew who some of the famous players were, but that’s about it. While I could have afforded it, I wasn’t a golfer. You could have marketed to me with the best marketing methods, a million different times with incredible incentives. I wouldn’t have responded, and you would have been wasting your money.

About 7 or 8 years ago, however, a friend invited me to play golf. I explained I didn’t have golf clubs or shoes, thanked him for the offer, but declined. He called me back a day later and said, “I’ve got an extra set of clubs for you, and you can wear tennis shoes at the course we’re going to… and, oh yeah, I’ve already paid for you.” Then he said, “You should come if for no other reason than just to hang out with the guys, even if you don’t hit any balls.” 

I accepted, and ended up having a blast. I even hit a few good shots, which enticed me to go back the next time my buddies played.

Now, I’m a golfer… I love it. 

Over the last few years I’ve thought about the process of going from an almost anti-golf person, to now being an enthusiast. Yes, golf is an enthusiast based industry just like Powersports. But, before my friend invited me there’s no amount of advertising that would have made a difference in me playing. Now, I not only pay attention to golf marketing, I often respond.  

Did you know that the number one reason someone starts playing golf is the influence of friends and family? Makes total sense, doesn’t it?  And, if you play golf, it was a friend or family member that got you interested. 

Did you know that the number one reason someone starts riding motorcycles is the influence of friends and family?  Makes total sense, doesn’t it?  And, if you ride, it was a friend or family member that got you interested.

Again, focusing your marketing on creating new riders is a waste of time, money and resources.  The right way to create new riders is to host events at your dealership and entice your herd of customers to invite their friends and family members. There’s no silver bullet and it may not be the first or second visit to the dealership that leads to a purchase, but you and I both know that it’s hard to be around this amazing industry and not get bit by the motorcycle bug.

That’s is why our Sharp Shooter program is so popular and effective. We utilize several media methods to invite the Powersports enthusiasts who live in your market area to join you for a party (the ones who already ride because they’re the ones who respond to good marketing), and we tell them to invite/bring their friends and family.  

For more information, visit www.PowersportsMarketing.com/sharp-shooter or call 1-877-242-4472 and ask for me. - Tory
 

My family and I just moved into a new house a couple weeks ago, and I had forgotten how much work it takes to get settled in. I’ve completed a lot of the tasks and ‘honey-dos’ on the inside, so this past weekend I turned my attention to the garage because it always seems to become the gathering spot for everything any time we move.   My tools had been in storage for the past 2 months due to selling our previous house quicker than expected, and everything was a complete mess.  

The garage is really my domain and from home projects to drag cars, I relieve a lot of stress out there. One of my projects involved removing the inline 6-cyclinder from a 1978 Datsun 280Z and replacing it with a high performance 350 small block Chevy motor.  If you ever want to talk drag racing or Chevy engines, I’m your guy. Give me a call. 

Before jumping into the garage on Saturday morning, I sat with my wife after breakfast for a few minutes. I flipped through the channels on our new DISH Network service (unfortunately regular cable or internet isn’t available at my new house – another story for another article) and I came across the movie ‘A Few Good Men’.

It was the courtroom scene where Jack Nicholson screams, “You can’t handle the truth!” 

That movie, and particularly that scene, is one of those ‘stop what you’re doing and watch this’ when you come across it. My 14-year-old son was sitting with us and he asked why it was so good. I tried to explain the gravity of the scene, but didn’t do it justice. So, I told him that we’d just have to watch the movie together. 

There are so many good movies with attention grabber scenes just like this that would cause a person to stop what they’re doing and watch. From Braveheart, Star Wars, and The Godfather, to Lethal Weapon, Saving Private Ryan, Fast & Furious, Matrix (I’m dating myself here) and so many more.  As I was thinking through these, I began to consider how our upcoming Spring Break Out Marketing Boot Camp is also a ‘stop what you’re doing and pay attention’ matter as well. 

However, unlike a movie or movie scene that grabs you and doesn’t ever make a hill of beans difference in your life, our upcoming Marketing Boot Camp will dramatically change your business.  In  fact,  don’t  just  take  my  word for it, read the reviews at www.PowersportsMarketingReviews.com and you’ll see that this Boot Camp has impacted the operation and profitability of dealerships all across the country. Scroll through the reviews and check out where dozens of dealers have highlighted just how impactful their experience with us was. 

We’ll be covering:

•The True Value of a Customer & Why You Must Understand this Metric

•Internet Marketing (SEO & SEM Best Practices)

•Marketing Case Studies that Really Work

•The Four Ways to Grow Your Business

•Your Dealership’s Unique Selling Proposition – Why Should Customers Buy From You Instead of the Competition?

•Lead Generation Advertising vs. Image Advertising

•How the ‘4-Legged Stool’ can earn you money

•And, much, much more...

If you’d like to uncover how to make your marketing drive good traffic in to the dealership, sell more units and make more money, you can’t afford to miss this Boot Camp.  It’s a FUN, interactive event... not an information dump where you’re overwhelmed with knowledge, but can’t implement when you get back to the store. Leaving this event you’ll have a road map to implement your 100% quantifiable direct response marketing strategy when you get back to the dealership and ensure a more successful 2016.

When: March 7th - 9th (fly in on a Monday and out on a Wednesday)

Where: Peachtree City Wyndham (near Atlanta, GA)

Cost: $349 for first attendee - $149 for each  additional person

Just like a messy garage needs a good purging and organizing from time-to-time, your marketing needs it too. There is no better time to get fired-up about implementing good marketing than in March. Stop what you’re doing and go to PowersportsMarketing.com/Boot-Camp to sign up today. See you there.   

 You either have, or shortly will be receiving one of our 2016 Marketing Calendars. This is an amazing tool that’s designed to help you plan your marketing for the year. 

Each month the calendar lists out all the popular holidays that you can use to increase response. That may seem simple, but holidays should be an important part of your focus.  Have you ever heard of the Collier Concept?

Robert Collier was an early 20th century author that was well published in the ‘self-help’ niche. He was also a master salesman on paper, and one of his greatest revelations came in a book he wrote, “The Robert Collier Letter Book.” One of his primary principles is that in all your marketing you have to, “Tap into the conversation already going on in your prospect’s head.” 

If you’ve followed my past articles, you know I’ve referenced Dan Kennedy several times, and I consider him to be the Godfather of Direct Response Marketing. He’s known for doing an exercise where he’d have students write out a description of their favorite TV character. Most people have no problem filling up a whole page.

Then, on a separate piece of paper he’d have them write a full page about their ideal customer/prospect. Most folks can’t get past a couple sentences. This exercise demonstrates just how difficult it is to write copy that relates to everyone. That’s why holidays are so important – everyone is impacted by them.

When you tie events to holidays that everyone is familiar with (tap into the conversation going on in their heads), people respond at a higher level. Therefore, you can get more traffic in the store, and sell more products.

Along these same lines, it’s essential that you substantiate the reason for your marketing. If you’re having an event or a sale, you have to validate the ‘why’, or your marketing will be less impactful. Folks in today’s world are more educated and skeptical than they’ve ever been, and you don’t want them to think ‘you’re just trying to sell them something’. 

I mentioned having a ‘sale’ above, but I want to be clear that I don’t recommend them. While they’re extremely popular, promoting a sale/discount actually makes your marketing incredibly less effective, and it’s a race to the bottom. 

If you sent direct mail to 5,000 customers promoting new & used inventory specials,  only a very small percentage of that 5,000 are in ‘buy a bike’ mode, so you’re not tapping into the conversation going on in their heads. You can actually train customers and prospects to ignore your marketing because it doesn’t relate to them. It’s not the conversation going on their head right now.

Even if you were to include a discount for each department, you’re still alienating well over 90% of the folks you’re marketing to and missing out on a great opportunity to build loyalty with them. 

In the calendar we also provide several samples of the creative we’ve used for our Sharp Shooter program during each month. Whether you choose a theme that’s listed, or we create a custom design for you, we want you to know that our team of marketing experts is ready to generate a positive R.O.I. on your marketing dollars. We’ll generate traffic in the store so you can sell. We’ll also create a list of responses/leads who give you their contact information and tell you what they want to buy. 

Be sure you utilize this powerful tool. It’s a roadmap to growing your business and having a prosperous 2016. 

If you don’t already have one of Powersports Marketing’s 2016 Marketing Calendars, call us at 1-877-242-4472 right now and we’ll send you one at no charge.
 

If you haven’t already picked up on the fact that I’m a huge Chick-fil-a fan... I am.  I’m not sure what they put in their food that has hooked me so bad, but I eat there multiple times each week.  This morning I ate a chicken, egg, and cheese biscuit with a large coffee from there. Man, it was delicious.

Two years ago my family and I moved closer to the Powersports Marketing facility. Jokingly, Brad Cannon, who writes the Digital Marketing article in this newsletter, asked me if I had given the owner of my local Chick-fil-a fair warning that his sales would be dropping because I was moving. 

This year, I was the first person to be invited by my current local Chick-fil-a to join the new A-List customer VIP program that Chick-fil-a rolled out. With it I get special perks, coupons, VIP only family events, etc. 

I do eat there a lot, but it’s not just the food that keeps me coming back. It’s their people. I’m always amazed at Chick-fil-a’s ability to find and keep good employees. I’ve never, at any Chick-fil-a, encountered someone who didn’t seem to care. They are careful to hire the right people, and they continually train them to get better.  

The staff seems to care about doing a good job. They quickly learn my name when I come in, they make my family feel welcome, so I continue to give them business.  

Chick-fil-a sends me direct mail and email on a regular basis, and because I am an enthusiast of their business I pay greater attention to their marketing. I get 2 to 4 emails each month, and 1 to 2 direct mail pieces. Sometimes they send more of each. This quantity is not too much because, as weird as it sounds, I’ve become a bit of an enthusiast. They’ve developed affinity with me, and could actually send me more marketing. 

My family and I also eat at Taco Bell from time to time, and it’s a different story. Is Taco Bell a bad restaurant? Not at all. I know what to expect with the food, and sometimes have a craving for it. I also know what to expect from the staff. It seems that in every Taco Bell I’ve visited there’s a feeling of apathy or indifference on behalf of the employees. I can’t think of a time I’ve received ‘bad’ customer service, they’re just indifferent and don’t care whether I come back or not. I’m just an order.

Taco Bell never sends me marketing. They sit back and wait, hoping at some point I’ll have the craving and visit again. 

Which of these 2 do you want to be?  I can promise you that building affinity with your buying base (past customers and riders in your market area who have never done business with you) will always lead to additional sales and profit. 

Building affinity starts with good marketing. You should be touching your buying base 52 to 104 times per year with direct mail, email, phone calls, and more. When you market to your buying base consistently they also become more loyal. In fact, I’ll rob a sentence from last month’s article: “Your customers are only as loyal to you as you are good at marketing to them!” 

So, the answer to the question at the top of the page is 52 to 104 times per year (which is once or twice each week) is ideal. There is a big caveat though… ONLY market when you have a good message. In other words, don’t just send an email because you’re supposed to. Have something to say.

That’s where our Sharp Shooter program comes in. It’s a Done-For-You solution that includes multiple touches to your buying base. They respond with their name, email, phone number, and tell you what they are in the market for right now.  Pretty cool stuff.  Call 1-877-242-4472 for more info, or chat with us online at www.PowersportsMarketing.com.
 

There is a huge temptation to stop advertising during the slower months of the year. For many dealers that means cutting off their advertising during the 4th quarter of the year and getting started again in the spring. This, however, is a huge mistake.

Dan Kennedy, who I refer to as the Godfather of Direct Response Marketing, says you have to “put a fence around your herd.” Customers are prone to wander from dealership to dealership like cattle are prone to wander from field to field. That’s why ranchers have to put up a fence. Your customers are only as loyal to your dealership as you are good at marketing to them. Staying in front of your customers (i.e. marketing to them) creates loyalty and puts a proverbial fence around them. You can even get to a place where you’ve immunized your customers from competitor’s offers. 

Don’t make the mistake of believing that your customers are ‘all yours’ just because they’ve bought something from you in the past. You are NOT entitled to their business, or anyone else’s business for that matter. This arrogant way of thinking will lead to a terrible culture in the dealership and staff that doesn’t care. Customer service flies out the window and your staff will stop caring. 

When you don’t market to your customers they develop a feeling of apathy, or indifference. You don’t care about them and they don’t care about you. In all things there is a law of sowing and reaping. You can’t reap what you don’t sow. You can’t have loyal customers when you don’t work for it, and reach out to them consistently. Even in the fall and winter.   

Also, the fact that so many other dealers are throwing in the towel this time of year creates a void in your market place. With both our Sharp Shooter and Local Web Dominator program we are able to reach the riders in your market area who’ve never done business with you.  So, while your competitors are sleeping, you can fill the void and gain new market share. 

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that every dealer can sell the same level of units, PG&A, and service they do in the spring and summer. What I am advocating is that you can sell ‘more’ and create a positive ROI on your marketing dollars. But, better than the profit is the loyalty you can build in the off-season and ensure a greater success in the spring and summer.

If you were able to create a positive ROI on your marketing while increasing customer retention and gaining new customers…. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of it?  Powersports Marketing will make this happen for your dealership, but the ball is in your court.

For more information call 1-877-242-4472, or chat with us at www.PowersportsMarketing.com.
 

Answer:

For many big corporations branding is the major focus of their advertising. We see branding every day… everyone knows that Coca-Cola is “The Real Thing”. Gillette is “The Best a Man Can Get”. McDonald’s slogan is “I’m Loving It”.  KFC is “Finger Lickin’ Good” and so on.  

From a branding perspective each of these companies has to stand out and they do so by spending millions of dollars… literally millions. Also, their products cater to the vast majority of people. 100% of people drink every day, pretty much all men shave, and everyone is a prospective customer of a restaurant because every person eats.

Speaking of restaurant, I have a mild obsession with a restaurant that’s named Chick-fil-a that started in Georgia.  (Okay, okay... it’s actually more than a mild obsession. I’m addicted.) Chick-fil-a has incredible food, some really good healthy options, and I love the character/values of the corporation. 

Their advertising consists of cows holding up signs that say “Eat Mor Chikin”. It’s catchy – cows certainly don’t want you to eat beef. And why the misspelled words? Cows aren’t very smart I guess. Their advertising stands out and is hard to forget. Check out one of Chick-fil-a’s “Eat Mor Chikin” billboards. 

These billboards are all around the southeast. Chick-fil-a spends BIG money catering to the masses, and it makes sense to some extent because people typically eat more than once per day. For a Powersports dealer, however, the majority of people don’t ride. In fact, only 3% to 6% of Americans are Powersports enthusiasts, so a dealer’s mass media, no matter how creative the ad is, is wasting over 94% of the budget reaching folks who don’t ride and never will. 

And before you say it’s creating new riders… marketing doesn’t do a good job of creating new riders. Especially at the dealer level where there’s not a multi-million dollar budget. You can count the number of people on one hand who started riding because they heard or saw an ad.  The number 1 reason a person starts riding and becomes a Powersports enthusiast is the influence of friends and family. I know it’s why I started riding, and it’s most likely why you started riding.  Ask all of your friends and customers and it’ll also be why they started riding… it’s NEVER advertising.

And again, you don’t have millions of dollars to spend on branding your dealership. You can’t compete with the budgets of the big corporations, and the good news is you don’t need to. You’d only be wasting your money.
I wanna be clear here, branding and top of mind awareness (TOMA) isn’t a bad thing. It just needs to be a happy byproduct of your response generating marketing. So what should you do? Here is what we do for our clients here at Powersports Marketing:

•Target the folks in your market area who ride and buy Powersports products and gear. This includes your past customers, and sourcing a list of conquest prospects who already ride, but have never purchased from your dealership. 

•We take that list of every enthusiast in your market area and go after them with several different media. Direct mail, email, phone calls, web banner, signage, etc.

•Instead of a branding message we utilize a Direct Response message that tells prospects how we want them to respond and incentivizes them to do so, which dramatically increases response rates. 

•We drip out different media over a 10 day period so that we get more saturation. This also improves response rates.

We typically promote events at the dealership because the ‘message’ applies to everyone. Everyone likes to be invited to a party. And from a branding perspective, prospects remember being invited to a party way more than they will a sales message, or a branding message (if they ever even get to see or hear it).

To learn more about our marketing system call me at 1-877-242-4472 ext. 101, or join us at our Boot Camp in Atlanta October 26-28. Visit 

powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp for more info.

Here in the Powersports Industry the most used advertising message is a sale or discount of some sort. To be blunt, it’s completely overused and sabotages margin. 

I believe the reason it’s used so much is because business owners and marketers know they need to give a reason to respond, or a call-to-action, instead of wasting money on getting their name/logo out there. Plus, a ‘sale’ is one of the easiest messages to come up with and write ad copy for. All you have to do is lower your price, show a picture of the product and hope that a few of the folks you’re marketing to respond and buy the product. But it’s a lose-lose situation. The dealer makes little to no profit because of the discount, and customers become trained not to buy unless there’s a big discount.

This way of marketing is completely unnecessary. You don’t have to give away margin to get a response.  Are you a Not-for-Profit Organization?

I think most dealers realize this challenge, but don’t know what to do about it. So, right now, you should take a break from this article and go to powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp and sign up for our Marketing Boot Camp, October 26-28, in Atlanta, GA. You’ll discover how to craft a compelling message in detail.  Having the right message is one of 4 Fundamental Components of successful marketing. There is a way to create more responses than you’re currently getting, build affinity with your buying base of customers and new prospects, and do it without giving away the farm. 

Another fundamental component of marketing is going after the right audience. In other words, who are you reaching out to with your advertising?  Historically, motorcycle & powersports dealers want to focus on creating brand new riders. They feel they’ve already earned and own all of their customers once they’ve purchased something from the dealership. If you feel this way, stop what you’re doing and listen to the fog horns and sirens, and all the red lights flashing warning you that this is the wrong way. This ‘entitled’ way of thinking is completely erroneous. Here at Powersports Marketing we’ve proven with literally thousands of marketing campaigns per year for over 700 dealers that there is a ridiculous amount of opportunity in every dealer’s customer list. You just have to know how to get it.

It’s also important to create new customers. Note that I didn’t say create new riders. There is a big difference there. With very, very few exceptions, advertising will never make folks who don’t ride powersports products decide to spend thousands of dollars to give it a try. The number one reason a new rider is created is due to the influence of friends and family. However, there are prospects in your market area who ride what you sell but have never purchased from you, and marketing the right way will get them to respond. To delve deeper into creating your Buying Base (past customers and new prospects) sign up for our Boot Camp at
powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp.

The third fundamental component of marketing is choosing the right media that will reach the right audience. Mass media that reaches the multitudes feels good because it feeds your ego. For instance, you’ll ignore the 5 other radio ads that play before and after yours, but you’ll hear your ad and think that it’s working. Stop it. Only 3% to 6% of people in America ride motorcycles, and it’s far less than 10% if you include all off road categories. To learn how to use multiple media methods that quantifiably drives results…… you got it, come to our Boot Camp: powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp

The last fundamental component of marketing right timing. This refers to dripping out several different media on a schedule that increases results. Also, you can use the time of year to tap into the conversation going on in the heads of your customers & prospects. Everyone is impacted by holidays and seasons, and you can generate more results by leveraging them in your message. Miss even one of the 4 Fundamental Components in your marketing campaign, and it will not work. For more information on any of these 4 fundamentals, which is a small part of what we’ll cover, join is October 26-28 in Atlanta, GA. Sign up now at: 
powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp.
 

Have you heard about our Fall Harvest Marketing Boot Camp coming up in October?  Take a pen and mark your calendar for October 26th-28th and plan to join us in Atlanta. This is a must attend event that is guaranteed to make a difference in your dealership. 

The reason we chose the ‘Harvest’ theme for this boot camp isn’t just because of the fall season. One of the Merriam-Webster definitions of the word harvest is ‘a productive result’, and that’s what I can promise you (and all attendees) in 2 ways: 

1. You will get ‘productive results’ from attending. This isn’t a clouds-in-the-sky, come and be on vacation boot camp.  Every attendee we’ve ever had has left feeling more than satisfied, and you will too. 

2. Once back in the dealership, you’ll also get ‘productive results’ from implementing what you learn at the boot camp. We really draw back the curtain and uncover the secrets of Direct Response Marketing.

I use the word ‘guarantee’ above with confidence. In fact, while the boot camp is made for Powersports dealers, we’ve had OEMs, banks & financial institutions, manufacturing companies, gun stores, and even a casino attend, and in every instance we’ve received nothing but overwhelmingly positive responses and testimonials after each boot camp. I know you’ll be glad you came. 

If any of the bullets below are important to you, you’re an ideal candidate to attend: 

• Learning online & offline marketing that’s

  working right now

•Driving more traffic to your dealership

•Selling more units and making more money

•Creating a marketing plan / calendar

•Stopping the waste of money on archaic   marketing methods used 10-years ago that aren’t quantifiable

Here’s a sampling of what will be covered:

•Social Media – What Role Does it Have?

•Internet Marketing - Including SEO & SEM Best   Practices

•Lead Generation Advertising vs. Image    

 Advertising

•How the A.C.V. of Your Customers Can Transform  

 Your Dealership

•Marketing Case Studies That Really Work

•Your Dealership’s Unique Selling Proposition  

  – Why Customers Buy From You Instead of the   

     Competition

•Four Fundamentals That Any & All Advertising 

  Must Have

•The Four Ways to Grow Your Business

•And, much, much more...

Another great part of this boot camp is the learning opportunity and camaraderie you get from all the other dealers in the room. Imagine the difference that 2.5 full days of focusing on your dealership’s marketing plan in a room full of other like-minded dealers will make. 

Plus, October is the perfect time… the summer rush is gone and it’s no problem to be out of the dealership for a couple of days. And there’s still time to make a difference in 2015, and plan for 2016. 

Fall Harvest Marketing Boot Camp. Enroll now: www.powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp

When: Monday, October 26th – 2pm – 6pm EST 

Tuesday, October 27th – 8:30am – 6pm EST

Wednesday, October 28th – 8:30am – 3pm EST

Where: Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway 

($165/night)

Cost: $249 before August 31st (then $349) 

– Additional guests are only $149 each

If you’d like to speak with one of our friendly team members about the boot camp, call 1-877-242-4472, or chat with us at 

www.powersportsmarketing.com.

As most know, we got our start owning and operating a 4-store group of dealers in the Atlanta, GA metro area.  Those stores weren’t for sale, but we were pursued by a conglomerate of Powersports dealers and made an offer that Rod couldn’t refuse. So, we started Dealership University, the training arm of our company. We began offering training on the subject of marketing and offered our first Marketing Boot Camp in 2008. 

During a pretty intense session on Digital Marketing one of the attending Dealer Principals raised their hand and asked me, “How much for the fish sandwich?” He mentioned that he appreciated all he was learning (teaching him how to fish) and that he had plenty to implement when he got back. But, he just wanted to “buy the fish sandwich” and let us to handle some of the marketing he knew we’d be better at performing than he would.  It wasn’t long after this question that both the Sharp Shooter and Local Web Dominator programs were born. 

Over the years we have upgraded, optimized, and continued to add value to both of these programs and they answer the question, “What marketing would you guys do if you still owned a dealership today?”

The freshest, most profitable marketing that is quantifiable and has a proven track record of generating a positive R.O.I. that has been utilized by over 600 dealers across the country is found in these two programs… the Sharp Shooter, and the Local Web Dominator.

• We target the people in your market area who are most likely to respond and buy.
 

• Several media are used to reach that group of people, increasing response rates.
 

• You receive a list of responders (often hundreds of people) who tell you what they are interested     in buying right now – generating leads for every department. 
 

• Your staff calls these folks up and schedules     

  appointments. Boom goes the dynamite… and   

  your R.O.I.
 

• On top of the list of leads we’re able to generate 

 a really nice amount of floor traffic, which    

 increases sales.

We also provide staff training and word tracks to make life easier for the leadership team of the dealership. If you’re not taking advantage of this program right now, you’re wasting your Marketing Budget on something that doesn’t work as well. You can and will get better results with the Sharp Shooter program. 

• Makes you the logical choice to do business with  

  in your local market area.
 

• Targets folks who are online right now searching 

   for what you sell and are in your market. 

• Generates leads you are currently missing out 

  on from prospects who are lower in the ‘sales 

  funnel’. These leads are actively looking to buy!
 

• Grows authentic customer reviews on Google.
 

• Increase conversions on your website.
 

• Boost your SEO and Page Rank.
 

• Provides an email system that has ‘Done For You’ content pre-loaded in it.
 

• And a lot more.

The vast majority of folks go online and do research before they make a purchase. With the Local Web Dominator program your dealership will be poised to gain new market share as well as increase the purchases from past customers.

Again, the programs are the freshest marketing that your dealership can do, and they both produce quantifiable results and a positive R.O.I.  Does your current marketing?  

Also, if you’d like to join us for one of our infamous Marketing Boot Camps mark your calendar for October 26th – 28th and join us in Atlanta. For only $249 (Early Bird Special through August 31st) this is the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth. Visit www.powersportsmarketing.com/boot-camp for more info or to sign up.

If you like to speak with one of our friendly team members call 1-877-242-4472, or chat with us at www.powersportsmarketing.com.