Boost Dealership Sales with Conquest Marketing: Target Prime Car Buyers

Joe Fost, what's going on, sir? How are you today?

Well, how about you?

I'm doing excellent, sir. What you guys are franchise store?

We are, yep. Chevy and Subaru.

Chevy and Subaru. Nice. And is there a store in particular that you're looking at this for growing or is more priority right now? Well, I, I think a little bit.

Of, a little bit of both. I mean we, you know, Chevy obviously probably a little bit more than, than Subaru, but we, you know, there's a lot of competition in our area. We're outside of the Philadelphia market. We're not really Philly, we're not really Allentown. So like as far as radio and tv, it's kind of hard. You know, we have a, you know, two Chevy stores, two larger Chevy stores, one that's like six miles south and one that's five miles north. Subaru, we got a little bit farther distance between some of our stores. You know, one's like 18 miles, the other's like I think 11 miles and the, and the third one is probably eight or nine miles, something like that. So. And they're not really a big competitor.

As far as it goes though, you guys, it looks like your main focus is more, more on the new side and then the prime cars or prime customers because you have higher end cars, right?

Yeah, we're definitely more of a prime store. We don't have a, not that we don't have special fi, but we don't necessarily market or advertise for it. And you know, the majority of our customers are, are good, you know, solid people.

Yep, yep. Good profiles and everything. A little longer of a buying cycle with those. And also it's a different strategy altogether. You know, if I'm, if I'm a guy looking for a 2023 Solterra and you know, I know that I wanted to have like low miles under 10,000 and I know I want it to be under 35,000. You know, I'm going to be looking for this car specifically more than I'm going to be just clicking on some random dealership ad on Facebook. So one thing that we've found over the years of doing this is that you can't just use any cookie cutter strategy to move these kind of vehicles and newer cars. Especially when you're, you're dealing with more prime customers. You, yes, you can just throw Facebook ads out there and you will attract some prime, but you'll attract 70% just people that aren't really the right profile. And so we did is we've Actually got a licensing deal with Polk where we do Conquest marketing data. And what we can do is we can actually use our purchase predictor technology to, to find people that are in market for a Subaru and show them ads specifically. So the way that that works is, you know, we find out how many records are in your area. I'm sure there's a lot just because of your primary market area. And then we basically choose the demographic that we want to onboard the data with. So let's just talk Subaru. Average household income we can target, you know, in market for a Subaru, like maybe they bought a Subaru three years ago in. It's all tied with the DMV data, postal records, you know, we have everything like that. What we do for this Conquest program, Joe, is we actually take that data and we put that into Facebook, Google display. We send a postcard to their house or mailer that's fully tracked. And then we also do email. And with this combination, we've got dealerships that are able to sell 20 to 25 new cars consistently new and like more prime end cars consistently with this system. And it's very much different than what a lot of people are doing. Okay, yep, we use Conquest data and then it's also co op approved. Do you guys do co op? I'm sure we do.

Yep.

Yep. So we send the co op packet, we track everything on the back end. And that is really, I mean, I wouldn't even waste your time. I'd love to tell you about all the different kinds of ads we do on the scaling side, but mainly the ads that we do, you know, and some of the marketing materials you may have seen is more related to that general car shop or that dealership that's got $12,000 and under units. They got a strong specialified department, they got a strong Spanish department, and they have the prime stuff. But they're okay working those small deals. That's more where, you know, you'll see your more generic ads working. But with you guys, a lot of those strategies, you know, just going to spend a lot of money on. You'll get a lot of leads, but it'll be hard to convert sales. Whereas with this targeted approach, it's a lot more precise in who you're going to be targeting. And then you can add in other layers for more brand awareness and things like that. So that's what I'd recommend to you.

Gotcha. And now what, what kind of, what kind of package price does that run?

Well, you know, the way it actually Works is it's based off the records, the amount of records that there is. And so we go to our provider and we ask, you know, we put in criteria for your market area maybe what would you say you could send me zip codes or we could do 20 mile, 15 miles around this address. You know, like where would you say is. Say that you.

That's usually what we do is like 15 mile radius. I mean, yeah, there is. You start to break it down. There's a couple zip codes that are a little farther away that we could probably go after too. But 15 miles is usually what we do.

Got it.

As far as our marketing area.

Got it. 15 miles of each store. Chevy we can conquest really any in market that's for GMC Jeep, you know, Chevy is more, you know, we go more general whereas Subaru, we want to really get that Subaru shopper, you know because those are. It's such a brand loyalty, you know, brand. Right. Y Y so and we can target like you could tell me hey we've seen a lot of people that switch over to Subaru from Kias. I mean we could add that into our data mix.

Yeah.

So as far as price goes, just to answer your question, depending on the criteria we run the amount of active records in your area, we get a report back and then based on that I get a per record, you know, rate essentially. And so I'll pay, you know, between average 15 to 25 cents per record depending on what we're getting. And then through that that also uncovers your media spend, your Google display, the postcard and the co op packet being sent. So the minimum order level is 2500 and that's monthly and the minimum commitment with this program. So 4 month. And even if we don't take on the whole market and get all the records available, you can still start with that 2500amonth minimum budget order because that's the minimum order they'll let us process and we can conquest to that data and you're still going to get results and you're going to get an roi. It'll just be slower. You know, these are some examples that we've seen with the Conquest program, you know, so Mercedes Benz of Linwood, $2300 spent. And this is kind of some of the, the marketing material like this is kind of like in the email sent, you know, we build the email real nice and they were able to sell 21 cars over four months, you know, so. And this is 23.73amonth for four months.

Gotcha.

This is the type of creative that we're, we're doing a lot of, you know, and the reason, Joe, you might look at this and say, wow, this is very really vanilla, really basic. It is. And that's because it has to be approved by the co op and we run OEM incentives only on this stuff. There's not a lot of creative flexibility here because of the restrictions that we have through the o. The co op. However, on our other programs, I'll show you some of the ads we do over there and you know, if we're doing one thing for you, it's easy for us to do another. And we've got really cool ads that we can build and run in your area for those higher funnel people, the lower credit people and just to get your name out there and, and that'll be more where we get to put in that creativity, show some color and show some engaging stuff on social media. This strategy, I wish that it, I wish it was more complicated but actually, you know, the simple sells. You get this in front of the right customer. Guys looking for a BMW show him this. He's, he's a customer. I mean it's just, you know, it's just a sales cycle. You're hitting them perfectly where they're at. These guys, 66 total sales matches $7,800 they put into ads over four months. 17 sales a month. You know, and, and this is like, you know we've got so many case studies like this. I mean it's just like the, the Polk data. We're IHS Market Kit partner and Polk data. I mean it's just, and you could go through and get your own Polk but the licensing agreement that we have, it's like a $250,000 application fee and that's where they give us access to some exclusive tools and also some other data and we get a better rate. So that's, you know, the model of what we're existing under.

Got it?

Yeah man. Lithia use this exact system, you know, so. Yeah man.

And you again, you said you are co op approved too so like whatever do there would be Y co.

Okay, exactly. Yep. 100 geofence co opt approved. You know so we, so for as far as this goes, I'll just get access to, let me the addresses on the website. I'll just use those, I'll pull the market data and I'll see what kind of potential we have. I think we're going to have a ton of records available so I mean we can start more on that like minimum level threshold and then we can work from there and just, you know, you know, really see and there's not a ton of margin. I'll just be super transparent with you. There's not a ton of margin for us on this, but we provide it because we worked with a lot of franchise stores that needed this solution and it's just not there without paying a bunch of money. So instead of making a huge margin and doing something that you know isn't going to work long term, I'd rather make less and give you something that's going to be really, really effective long term. So a lot of the cost is wrapped up in the data with that. But it's like we're in an agreement that, hey, you know, we're going to track everything for you, the whole system you're going to have. So yeah man, I mean I, I'll get you the data on that and then I'll send you over an email for both of the, the stores and tell you what kind of audiences that we have available. Does that sound good?

Yeah, perfect.

Cool, man. Have you ever tried anything like that.

AI tool? And you know, it does seem same kind of thing, geofencing and, and they send mailers. I mean, I, I don't know. It, honestly, it's just not the return on investment that I'd like to see. It's just not. I thought the AI was going to be much more impressive and I don't know.

Oh no man, it's not. It hasn't been impressive for us either.

We've, I think if you're the only one on there, it's great, right? But like once there's more than one or two on now everybody has the same data and you're like, okay, well this is dumb.

Yeah, yeah. I mean a lot of the AI stuff, it's just like, you know, AI knows how to check a box, but it doesn't know how to really get something done. You know, we're, we're not huge on AI, we use it in a couple places where we can. But it's not, you know, this is, this is, you get the DMS records, you know what's in somebody's garage and then we upload the data directly to these platforms. We have their address on file, we send them everything in combination. You know, which really is where the magic happens. You know, it's, they open an email, they see a display ad, they're on Facebook, they see the Facebook, they get the postcard at their house, It's a really complete way to hit in market shoppers in your area.

You know, are you retargeting them too or.

Yep, exactly.

Yep, yep.

We just really triangulate this small audience and we just hit them from every angle.

All right, so how many, how many touches does the, the average person get then?

It'll be anywhere from 14 to 21 touch points on the total sales cycle. When you just look at the ads, it can be a lot more than that depending on, you know, what indicators they're showing. If they're clicking a lot, if they're doing a lot of different things, they're going to get more targeted at them.

Okay? Yep, gotcha. Okay.

Yes, sir. And then, yeah, if you guys are doing that, it gives you access to, you know, our full scale program. And this is where we do more of the top of funnel, you know, the fun stuff on social media. That looks really good. The thing is that your BDC will hate this. Your sales guys will hate this until you let it run for a few months and just let the leads pile up and just let people walk in the dealership saying, I saw your videos, I saw you guys. A lot of people, if they think that they're going to jump in and do ads like this and get really, really warm leads, it's just not the case. A lot of people will try to tell you it is. And you will get deals done right away from some people, but about 70%, like you'll get people that, I mean, they weren't on your website, they're on Facebook and then they see an ad and some people are confused. So I like to, a lot of people like to talk up their leads. I like to talk down our leads because I like to be more realistic. But overall, if, I mean, we've got like Garden City, this, this dealership right here. You see how simple this is? We're looking for people who want to be approved for a vehicle in the next 30 days. We're going subprime based. We've also got this great experience, we got testimonials for that. This dealership right here, they sold 18 cars last month from 2, $600 that they put into ad spend. You know, and so that's kind of like where. Oh, and, and the reason I'm telling you that is because they got 400 leads to do that at about $4 a lead. So 400 leads, you'd think they could be able to convert more than 18. Well, they probably are, but the strategy is just volume. Just get them in, get them in the Email list, get them in the text conversation. And we do pre qualify those leads as well through our own application landing page that we build for you, and then we redirect them to book appointments. So, like, this system does work super well. You have people showing up, but it is, like, still work. The leads have to be converted into deals. You know, it's not, like, ready to buy leads like our Conquest program is.

So. So our BDC would be receiving each of these leads? Yes. Yep. Okay.

Yeah, exactly.

But do you guys connect, right, to, like, VIN solutions? Yep.

We just integrate the leads directly into your VIN solutions so your BDC can work them. And what we do, since these are social media leads, they have to be warmed up a little bit. We send them automated text messages and emails from our own system. And then whenever somebody replies, we have a live human that's actually there responding to them via text and then connects them with your salesperson. We're not calling them out, we're just lining them up for you. Hey, this person wants info on this car. Hey, this customer's responsive. Make sure to give them a call. So we just sink in with your bdc. The leads are already in your system, but we've just found that a lot of times we have better success getting a hold of leads with our process than a lot of dealerships do. And so we don't like to leave that up to the dealership on just getting, you know, some responses, some. Some systems that we found really successful. But we still have you guys doing your normal calls and everything. Our system is very customer service based. Hey, have you had a chance to speak with a member of our team? Hey, we've got lots of great inventory down here. How's your day going? You know, and when somebody responds, then we're zapping those over to your team and letting them know, hey, this leads hot.

Okay, Got it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Cool, man. Yeah.

So you'll get us some data together as to.

I'll get you some data on the Conquest program, and then, you know, and then I'll. I'll throw you a little tag along on there for the scale program too. Yeah, man, I'll send you over the information and then, yeah, we'd love to earn your business. I'll work for it and I'll be in touch. Probably midweek, probably Wednesday or Thursday. You'll get an email from me, and then I'll just shoot you a text that says, I sent you an email. All right, My man. Thank you so much.

All right, sounds good. Thank you. All right.

Bye.

Bye. Bye.