Gamelan LLC

Creative Solutions for Business and Marketing

  • Who We Are
  • What We Do
    • Marketing Strategy
    • Branding
    • Website Design
    • Social Media
      • Twitter Marketing Strategy
    • Blogging
    • Search Marketing
      • SEO
  • Contact
  • Gamma Notes
    • Small Business Tips
    • Digital Marketing
      • Social Media Strategy
      • SEO Tips
    • Branding Strategy
    • Entrepreneurship

5 Inbound Marketing DO’s and DON’Ts Inspired By Car Shopping

October 20, 2015 By Matthew White

Had the pleasure of buying a new car lately? It’s not much more fun that it was twenty years ago. The cars have a lot more bells and whistles. The dealerships have some new toys at their disposal, including 84-month financing.

In short, the process is still very painful. However, there are lots of marketing lessons – based on what not to do – for small businesses and organizations everywhere.

The 1960 Corvair - Is your inboud marketing stuck in 1960?
The 1960 Corvair. For many car dealerships, it might as well still be 1960. Don’t make these same mistakes with your inbound marketing.

Inbound Marketing

The advent of inbound marketing changed the way organizations attract, convert, and nurture customers. Past marketing efforts relied on a “spray and pray” approach – advertise or send direct mail and hope for leads to come in.

Attract and Convert

Inbound marketing’s focus is on generating useful content that attracts customers and then utilize tools as simple as calls-to-action, forms, or chat to convert those customers. This approach wouldn’t have been as effective before the Internet or social media eras, and the outbound approach was really the only marketing approach available in one-way communication environments like snail mail, radio, and the newspaper.

Close and Cultivate

After the attract and convert stages, you have two final stages we’ll call close and cultivate. Once you convert a prospect to a lead that you close, you want to continue to cultivate that relationship. Why is cultivate the last stage? In most businesses, and especially the car business, the goal is to cultivate a long-term relationship where customers trust you and actually want to return to you for ongoing needs in your area of specialty.

Needless to say, beating up the customer “in the box” over a $1000 “Fabric Protection Package” doesn’t bode well for future business.

The Human Part: Going Beyond Inbound Marketing

Text from an inbound marketing email confirmation
Here’s a sample follow up email I received from one sales manager. The grammar teachers among this dealership’s prospects won’t be thrilled.

The problem with car dealerships is that for the most part, they have some of the tools of the Internet and social media eras but still do business like they’re selling the Corvair.

In our four stage process of effective inbound marketing (attract > convert > close > cultivate) dealerships have some of the tools necessary for attracting and converting, but they’re generally lousy at closing and cultivating.

That’s where the human part comes in.

Based on my recent experience with car dealerships, the follow-through via conversion tools like chat or web forms is problematic in two ways: Follow up isn’t a) timely or b) tailored to my needs as the customer.

Timely Follow Up

What does this mean exactly? On several occasions, submitting a web form did not result in follow up from a human being that knew what to do with my needs. On at least one occasion, I received no follow up whatsoever beyond the automated response email (at the time of writing, it’s over 63 hours and counting).

Tailored Follow Up

To add insult to injury, any resulting email thread so far has resulted in a scripted path, despite my questions. It’s as if my questions are secondary and putting me on the path is the most important objective. This is also true with any web chat thus far: The goal it would appear has usually been to follow a script or convert to an appointment on-site instead of sell me a car.

5 DO’s and DON’Ts

So, what can be learned from car dealerships on how not to use inbound marketing effectively? It’s almost difficult to know where to begin. But, here are five do’s and don’ts to take away:

  1. Don’t Forget the Human Element
    Just because you have decent tools for converting, don’t forget the human element. Try being a secret shopper and see how effective your tools really are.
  2. Don’t Let Following Scripts Become The Goal
    Scripts can be effective when working in conjunction with conversion tools . . . but only when they serve as roadmaps for converting and closing a customer. Scripts work better in some business models than others, and all business models require various levels of “scriptedness.” Don’t let following the script be the end goal.
  3. Do Follow Up in a Timely Manner
    A confirmation email is good for exactly that: confirmation. It doesn’t count as follow-up or response. Anything over 24 business hours for real human response to a direct inquiry is absolutely ridiculous.
  4. Don’t Think That You’re Done When You Close
    It’s many times easier to sell to an existing customer than convert and close a new prospect. Once you attract and convert, treat your customer with honesty and respect through the close and you might just have a customer for life.
  5. Do Continue to Cultivate Your New Customer
    It’s easy to focus on attracting and converting prospects, but what are you doing to enrich the ongoing experience for your existing and future customers? Cultivate new customers to become customers for life by being useful, helpful, and available.

And no, I still do not have the new car I want.

Got an experience with inbound marketing that drove you nuts? Need help with your organization’s inbound marketing? We want to hear from you.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Filed Under: Digital Marketing Tagged With: inbound marketing, marketing online, web marketing, websites

Trackbacks

  1. Knowing Your Audience: Do You Have A Customer Profile? | Gamma Notes says:
    December 10, 2015 at 4:58 pm

    […] I certainly would rather type than talk for most tasks and problem solving – ordering a book, researching a new car, arranging grocery delivery, solving a tech support issue . . […]

Gamma Notes: A Small Business and Startup Marketing Blog

Creativity and the nitty-gritty details don't have to be mutually exclusive. Gamma Notes is a small business and startup marketing blog designed to share tested marketing ideas and tips to businesses and nonprofits alike.

About Matthew White

Matthew White enjoys thinking about business problems differently. And he's actually had 20+ years of active, hands-on startup and marketing experience.

  • RSS
  • Twitter

Posts From the Gamma Notes Blog:

  • Behind The Mask: Post-Covid Marketing Strategy
  • What Is a Branding Guide & Why Do You Need It?
  • The Pros and Cons of In House Marketing

Reach Out Now

We want to hear about your specific marketing needs or business pains.

It costs nothing to discuss and share ideas.

Reach Out

Reach out by email or phone us at 404-890-8196.

Copyright © 2013–2023 Gamelan, LLC. All rights reserved.

XML Sitemap Index