Residents of Traverse City, MI and the surrounding communities know first-hand that the Bill Marsh Auto Group creates a positive experience for every customer, every day. After owner, Bill Marsh Sr., acquired his first dealership in 1982, he threw himself into assembling a band of exceptional employees who exemplify his philosophy of sound leadership and a true commitment to honesty, integrity and community service. He found such attributes in Dana Pratt. Pratt, e-business director, works to establish the dealer group’s continued success through Internet marketing that modernizes the vehicle purchasing experience and surpasses customer expectations. Dana uses innovative technologies and a well-rounded mentoring program that includes personalized training for floor showroom salesperson and customer advocate. Prior to his arrival in November of 2006, the entire automotive group generated 120 leads per month selling 23 cars via the Internet. In his first month at the helm, Bill Marsh Auto Group increased their online sales to 90 through Pratt’s ingenious design and skillful management of search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) initiatives. Such phenomenal success can be attributed to Pratt’s passion for the Internet, followed by a creative and comprehensive marketing approach that includes lead enhancements through monthly e-newsletters, blogs, an in-house photography studio for personalized online inventory postings, a strong relationship with local TV stations, and a solid belief in recruiting team members with no prior automotive experience. Read on to discover how the “explore and discover” marketing approach embraced by Bill Marsh Auto Group has led to greater leads, sales and many loyal customers.
You were one of the top car salesmen in Michigan from 2002 to 2005. How did you get to that point in your career?
I started my working life in the corporate telecommunications world at Southwest Bell Telephone and worked there for nine years. During that time, I obtained my Master’s Degree in telecommunications for international business. I eventually moved to Michigan and went from being a manager in the corporate world into sales for web site sales, a cellular company, TV advertising, etc. Eventually I decided that I wanted to sell something more concrete. I researched the Internet and noticed a sales position open at Bill Marsh Saturn. I have been with the dealership since March of 2001. I started out in sales and worked the dealership sales systems for about eight months. I eventually developed my own sales system and earned the honor of became the number one car salesman at Bill Marsh and the title of e-business director.
How many people work in your department?
I have seven associates working in my department, including myself.
What percentage of your dealership's overall sales is generated from the Internet?
The dealership’s overall sales generated via the Internet are approximately 17 to 19 percent per month.
What tools or lead generators have really worked on your site to pull in leads?
The tool that works the best is our main web site at www.billmarsh.com. Those leads consistently have the highest closing ratio. Last month, we received 260 leads from www.billmarsh.com, and we will consistently close somewhere between 16 to 18 percent. Not only do we have our main web site, but also we have a Saturn, GM Chrysler, and Hyundai web site, including a price point used cars web site. We also work with 10 or 15 micro-sites that we can turn on and off for different purposes. For instance, if we have a certain sale at price point, we might create a URL called www.pricepointsale.com and market that over the mass media and post a special Internet coupon. If someone visits the micro-site and views the coupon, they can print it and bring it into the dealership for an extra $250 off a vehicle.
We send our inventory to AutoTrader.com and Cars.com and they submit our inventory to a multitude of web sites. Every time that I search the Internet, I find my inventory on web sites that I’ve never heard of before. Those two tools work well to pull in leads.
Another tool that works well for us is our e-newsletter, which is created internally utilizing iMakeNews (IMN). We distribute the newsletter to roughly 23,000 e-mail addresses. When I started out with the e-newsletter, we only had about 3,500 e-mail addresses. The question became, how did I accrue 23,000 e-mail addresses within a year-and-a-half? The sheer number of e-leads is the best source followed by a series of e-mail appends with vendors such as Melissa DATA. It’s very much a two steps forward and one step back approach. You have to perform an append and then you must manage the process because of unsubscribes and incorrect e-mail addresses.
The other tool that’s as expensive as all of those combined, but we manage it very well, are third-party lead generators. The company that we get the most new car leads from is Dealix.com. We’ve also had some luck with Cars.com as a new car lead program. In any given month, we receive 700 to 1,100 leads from our web sites, factory web site leads, third-party lead generators, and the e-newsletter.
Do you advertise in traditional media, i.e., TV and radio, and if so, how does that work to generate leads?
We work with traditional local media and spend about $30,000 per month with them. I am using that relationship to our advantage on the Internet. For instance, I invited a TV station, located just outside of our main geographical market, to our dealership because they had a stellar web site. Their webmaster and I worked together to list our inventory on their web site. This particular TV station (www.9and10News.com ) is the number one rated station in our area. I work with a representative that was able to figure out the technology and place our inventory onto their web site. I receive a lot of referral traffic to our web site because of that simplicity. I have dominated their automotive listing section because we are listing somewhere in the area of 600 to 700 cars on their web site.
I use local papers, The Traverse City Record Eagle and The Petoskey News Review to increase our visibility on the Internet. They resell a product from Izmo Media and are able to list inventory prominently on the web and in their publications’ special print sections. With those two newspaper outlets, it’s comparable to setting-up AutoTrader.com, or Cars.com, or another web site. In the end, roughly 18 to 20 FTP feeds are sent out to all of these different vendors.
I have noticed that other local papers are starting to get into the game, too. I can contact them directly and sign up. I’ll tell them to go to our data polling company and just set up a feed and get the pictures. Now, all I have to do is some customization, including our logos, cross-links, etc. We aren’t a car dealership that runs full-page ads. We have never done very much print. However, the business of being able to place our entire inventory onto their newspaper sites, coupled with the added benefit of having a little blurb in their paper, makes it well worth it.
What interactive media resources do you utilize? And, please tell me what services they provide and why you decided to go with them.
It’s my opinion that nobody can conduct a SEM campaign for you like you can. You are the one that knows your local market, your local search terms, your URLs, etc. You can hire somebody to perform these duties effectively and cheaper than you would have to pay outside companies. I started my own SEM campaigns with Google and I built them up. Through entering initial keywords and using a keyword tool, you can let it “cook” for 15 to 30 days, adding more terms from ‘suggestions’ and you’ll start noticing impressions and clicks. By the time you’re at the end of the year, you have a fully developed, well-performing SEM campaign. In my opinion, it’s much better than what you can get from companies that will impose monthly fees.
Do you help design/update your dealership site? For example, update inventory, create specials, add photos, etc.
Yes, I do. I collaborate with the owners on the front page and the entire design of the web site. As for the rest of the site, I continue to add and change content based on the owners’ requests. I have also developed the way we incorporate our pictures onto the Internet. We have a studio fully equipped with the proper photo tools, lighting, wireless camera, etc. We’ll take the professionally developed pictures and upload them to the net.
How do you use e-mail campaigns to generate leads?
One way is through our e-newsletter. We distribute the e-newsletter on the third Tuesday of every month. Through its distribution, I see as high as 25 leads come in over a 16-hour timeframe. It’s proven time and again to be a true ROI for our dealership. The second way is through www.icontent.com. Each month, I’m responsible for all of the direct mail, including all of the letters, postcards, and flyers that are sent out from our dealership. For instance, when I want to send a message to all of our GMC Sierra owners that haven’t purchased a vehicle within the past two years, I will send a direct mail to them saying, “You can get an additional $1,500 off of your next vehicle purchase if you come in and see us during the sales period.” I follow up by taking that same targeted group that we sent a postcard to and for those folks that we have their e-mail addresses, I will also take that same message and reinforce it by sending them an HTML message with the same information. They get a one-two punch.
Can you give me an example of a successful e-mail campaign that pulled in a good number of leads?
I used to do queries with the support of our customer relationship management (CRM) vendor and I would ask, “How many people bought a car after we sent them an e-newsletter?” Now, the numbers in our CRM are so large that I can’t to continue to ask for queries because the process would slow the system down. I had a computer tech at our CRM run a query for me for 2007 and what she found was out of 198,000 e-newsletters sent, 784 deals were made. It’s pretty obvious that we’re more than thrilled with the investment in our e-newsletters.
If you could keep one tool from your current interactive arsenal to generate leads, what would it be?
Our dealership web site because it provides us with a central gateway to for the entire auto group. When I took over the Internet department in late 2006, our previous web site was generating approximately 50 leads per month. Now, with our current web site, we’re obtaining roughly 250 leads per month. These leads provide our dealership with a significantly better closing ratio than any other marketing initiative executed on the Internet.
Please take me through the process from when an Internet lead is received, to how it is eventually closed (via a sale or a long-term prospect).
When a customer submits an Internet lead, that lead comes into our Lead Manager Customer Central (LMCC), a lead management tool. I have four people, called customer advocates, whose sole responsibility is to manage and respond to these Internet leads. I require these four customer advocates to communicate to their leads, usually via phone, that they don’t specialize in sales but are there to provide any and all information they want, whether that be pricing, product, etc. Their role is to better prepare the customers for when they do visit the dealership. Our customer advocates are paid if the customer comes in and has an appointment. They do get paid a commission if their customer comes into the dealership. The customer isn’t required to purchase a vehicle; they just have to show up for the appointment.
Last month, Krista, one of our customer advocates, made thousands of phone calls and sent out thousands of e-mails. With that she was able to secure 58 appointments and 36 of those people bought cars. That is a 60 percent conversion rate, which is phenomenal. Bob, another customer advocate, secured 71 appointments and 32 of those customers converted to car sales. I let Bob have the responsibility of being the gatekeeper of the leads. We decided amongst ourselves that he is the person that controls the Internet leads. Besides his skill at being able to manage that process, coupled with being able to call customers and set appointments, he is also in charge of arranging for credits of duplicate leads from third-party vendors.
Our customer advocates are instrumental to the entire process. When we actually get a hold of the person on the phone and they set up an appointment, they may ask for the customer advocate (Krista or Bob), or they may ask for a floor showroom salesperson. Sometimes the customer advocate will request the presence of a floor showroom salesperson because the customer begins asking very pointed questions, such as pricing or a product that the customer advocates may not have the knowledge to answer specifically. If the salesperson becomes involved, the Internet lead may come in and ask for that salesperson directly.
Because the customer advocate receives pay for a secured appointment, he or she has to continually ask if that customer that was scheduled to come in for the appointment actually followed through and came in. If they didn’t come in, then it becomes peer management to where the salesperson will say, “My customer didn’t show up for their appointment. Can you give them a call?” This process ensures we have constant follow-up that obviously is a boon for our dealership.
Customer advocates do add additional costs to our dealership, but they are so valuable. Although many dealerships may say the sales team can take care of leads themselves, I know that not to be true. When I tried doing that, the floor showroom salespeople would respond to me by saying, “Dana, where are you getting these questionable Internet leads?” I’ve learned that with customer advocates we’re catching customers earlier in the buying cycle. It takes more follow-up, which many floor showroom salespeople are not used to doing.
The customer advocate concept is still not perfect. We are still working our way through this new Internet channel. Sometimes I become dismayed at hearing people say it’s a new concept, but to the car business and to most car dealerships, it’s not an integrated channel yet. Most sales managers treat the Internet as, “Geez! That’s the Internet department over there.” The challenge is to take that new channel and integrate it into our dealership, so sales managers embrace it and not view it as a separate channel.
How important is follow-up in closing Internet leads?
Follow-up is not only the key to Internet leads, it’s the key to car sales period. Specific to Internet leads, we have follow-up that should make common sense; you get in touch with the customer, they have questions, you get back to them. Auto responder is not good enough. The customers need to have a phone call and an e-mail sent to them that says there’s somebody there they can talk with. Then, we rely on our CRM system. I wish I could say that I had a structured method of follow-up for the customer advocates, but I don’t. I give them probably too much freedom. I have noticed that it depends on the lead traffic. If we have a lot of lead traffic, our customer advocates are doing everything they can to handle the leads that are coming. If our lead traffic slows down a month, then I cut back on some of the vendors for couple of different reasons. Leads that are a little further down the follow-up process begin to be taken care of more. We have what we call a “lead bucket.” Bob, one of our sales advocates, always keeps about 100 leads in his lead bucket. If Bob hasn’t heard from a customer, then he or she may receive one call from him the next month, but then again not, if we have high lead traffic. Sometimes customers leave the lead bucket and sometimes they enter the lead bucket. Krista, another sales advocate, is the same way. They always have a group of leads that they are focusing on. I would like to say that we are still in phone contact with customers, two, three and four months out, but I know that isn’t reality just because of the amount of leads that we have coming in. Some people argue that we have too many leads coming, but I think we are doing just fine. I like the way that the customer advocates have a real shot at getting a hold of these people, setting appointments, making money for themselves. Quite frankly, those that are two, three and four months out are getting our e-newsletter. They’re in our database and receiving service mail too. So, it’s not like they don’t know that we are there.
There are a lot of new tools in the space getting attention – blogs, social networks, SEO and SEM – do you use any of them? If so, how have they worked? If not, do you have plans to?
We actually started a Bill Marsh blog and received good web site traffic for our area, but we didn’t receive a lot of response to where people were posting things. We even got creative and prompted people to give us a story about their first car, or their best car experience. We had five or six questions to prompt people, but again, we didn’t receive much response. So we’re hanging off of other people’s blogs. We provide manufacturer and local newspaper blog links. We know that blog activity is happening and thank goodness it’s all positive. As I test different search terms and craft our SEO and SEM initiatives, I’ve noticed blogs from people five and six years ago. It’s evident that blogs hang out there for quite some time. It’s all about adding content to the web.
We post all of our video that’s viewed on TV onto the dealer web site, on Google.com and on YouTube.com. As far as FaceBook.com and MySpace.com, we do have a Bill Marsh MySpace.com information page. My feeling is that I really need to hire a Generation Y person to make that work for me. I would rather do something like that right, than just throw a bunch of stuff up there. You can’t just place a billboard on a social network and have it sell cars. It obviously has to entail a lot more than that, so I will have somebody run that for me. I-Contact has ICommunity, which is something that passed by and caught my eye to where I thought, “Hey! That’s how I can make that work.” Maybe somebody can tell me an easier way to do it. When I see FaceBook.com and MySpace.com, it’s something you have to be into and feel comfortable running with. I’m sure I’ll come upon that person that’s as excited about that as I am about doing the things that I do and run with it. Let’s ‘guesstimate’ a year or two from now.
Sharing Bill Marsh Auto Group’s resolve in creating positive experiences, it’s clear that Dana Pratt is indeed the right “front person” for growing Bill Marsh Auto Group. His passion for exploring and discovering ways of pushing the envelope in Internet marketing have resulted in more leads, sales, and loyal customers. His mission, his goal and his talent have helped Bill Marsh Auto Group move from a small player, into a leading dealership in the auto industry.
dpratt@DigitalDealer-magazine.com
