Car Dealership Marketing Secrets: Doubling Sales & Maximizing Co-Op Funds

Overview here. Owner of. It's two number one independent dealerships. Is it?

Well, it's. It's the number one in El Paso. Well, actually too, because in Muncie, Indiana, we have our other dealership and they're number one independent. Yeah. In the market. So. Yeah. Two. Two. Number one. And in the respective cities.

Yeah. How many dealerships do you have total, brother?

Now it's six.

Six.

Nice.

Okay, cool. So, you know, and this, this will play into your credibility. Like sometimes you'll. You'll jot things down in a note form and this doc will be just kind of like a catch all for everything. Hey, I want to try this. I want to put that. But then as you go through and refine, it starts getting better. So you mentioned on our one on one, you're getting crazy results with VLAs. Is that something that you would want to blend into your offer and speak on or is that something that's a little bit more behind the scenes?

You know what? I think it is something I would want to offer because from what we've found, just by doing demos with other companies or like dealer.com, shit like that, they're not really doing VLAS at the level that the strategy Chris puts behind the way we do things. I think we'll get better results than just anyone who sets it up and sets it and forgets it or however they're doing it with performance. Max. Okay, perfect.

Yeah. And then you mentioned the. That you doubled Midland Ford's sales, I think it was.

Yeah, yeah. Year over year, huh? We doubled their sales. We what, like 5x their website traffic? Yep. Tripled their leads in a month. Just by setting up the right vendors. Setting up a couple different ads. Yeah. Just wasn't anything. It's just kind of what we do. You know, we looked at all their vendors. We saw that, you know, Auto trader they're spending three grand with. They only got like ten leads. We. We switched it to Edmunds and to CrewCarcars.com and for the same price. And you know, that brought in like an extra 40, 50 leads just like that, you know, and then on top of that, then we just started doing the Google Ads, a little bit of Facebook ads as well. And they're seeing pretty good results.

How much did they spend? Any additional money on marketing? Increase their budget or would you say that they just consolidated their existing.

They increased a little bit, but the problem is last year they had like what, 28 grand and wasted Co op. You went through and saw how much they wasted. They weren't Even using all their co op. So the way we do is we'll go in there and we'll say, okay, what's your target cost per vehicle sold? You know, advertising costs. We, we recommend, you know, at least $350 for a new car franchise. And the owner told us, hey, as long as you're under $500, I'm willing to spend that. So we look at that, we look at what co op they have and you know, on a monthly basis, how much co op are they getting right now? Probably between like five, six grand.

Yeah.

Just for like their digital marketing and stuff. So we'll go up to maybe like 21, $22,000 based off their sales right now. But then they're getting 6, 7 back in CO op and that's something they weren't doing last year. So that's kind of the way we look at it. And then if we can come in, you know, which, like this last month we came in at about $350 cost per vehicle sold. And that's including our fee too. That's like, that's not even. That's with our feet wrap. Because at first I tried to, when I was talking to the owner, I tried to kind of separate it so the numbers even look better, but he's like, nah, throw in your feet. Because I was like, all right, that's fine, we'll still hit the numbers. And you know, they're, they're still making good headway and using. And then see, that's another thing we're doing. Chris is going in there and applying for their co op and getting all the money. So just that co op service alone is worth, I think our fee alone, you know.

Oh yeah, that's a crazy service. And just for you guys that are on this call too, like Connor, are you familiar with co op and how.

That works is that when the brands are giving you money, it's cool.

Marketing.

Yeah.

For advertising. Yeah. So it's, it's super crazy. And if you can as an agency manage co op, like it's actually fairly simple from what I understand. Like you submit a path, you know, with and, and, but you can't do. Not all ad creative styles are co op approved. Right. So it's like pretty much.

And they'll give you different segments.

Right.

So they'll give you X amount for traditional X amount for digital. But like sometimes they'll even give you money for like cultural ads, which means like Spanish or some like that. Yeah, anything non English. So there's different. And then Every manufacturer has a different kind of way of doing it, but it just depends.

Yeah, yeah, I'm working with some of the Chinese brands and they give 50% just of what you spend for as.

Much as you go. Mitsubishi, a lot of those guys will do stuff like that and that it's solid, man, that makes us want to bend.

I mean to do that's such a, that's such a benefit. If you can come in and tell somebody, hey, you're, you know, I'm gonna cover my own fees and what you pay me. Consolidate your marketing budget over, you know, cut off the excess and 10x your results. Like who's gonna say no to that? Based on my experience of my six dealerships and you know, running a number one building two number one stores in the El Paso market. You know, so this is what we do and you know, so you kind of like start putting this stuff out there. Like what do we actually do? You know, because on a, on a snapshot level it's like, well, we help dealerships grow. But you know, anybody could say that, right? Dealer car search could say that.

Anybody.

But this is like now you're starting to do this, have this unique thing and whenever I see that you have something that's very different, it's a program that has a clear, you know, process, then you want to brand it as a program. One recommendation just for your high level marketing as you start building this. Because it's going to be, your marketing is going to bring you booked calls with GMs for sure and owners and principals. Like you're going to be able to do a vsl and that's just a video sales letter where you record a slideshow and you go over all these key points and people book with you from that and then you get your closer or you get on a sales call at first and, and you go through and you show them what's all in the program. Yes. No, here's the contract. Sign up off to onboarding and you know, the marketing when, when you have an offer this good, you can pretty much like I could bet I, I bet the whole farm that you can Launch and spend 5 to 10k B2B in the US market and you're going to, you're going to get clients, you know, and if not clients are going to get at bats and then you know, we might have to look at like, well there's something wrong with the offer price point, you know, so that's why I don't always like to start with paid ads to launch an offer I like to launch, like build the offer out and then hit up everybody I know, email list, text message, and just even people that I'm close with. Offer them a pro bono deal for a case study and a testimonial and then I'll, I'll get the video testimonial from them and, and that'll help me start selling. So for you to be able to get 10 clients, you know, and find clients that are chill and easy to work with, you know, you're going to want to put some time into the material that they consume before they book that call with you. So you put more friction in the process. You know, if you guys are getting really unqualified leads, you just need more friction in the process a lot of times. And sometimes it's not that your leads are unqualified, it's just that you need to ask them more questions. So we'll keep jamming through this a little bit. So the niche car dealerships, independent franchise, multi location preference.

Right.

And how many car sales should they be? Like you don't want to talk to a guy that's doing 20 car sales a month. Right. That's just Right, right.

I mean probably 50 on the independent side would be ideal. Anyone that's 50 trying to scale to you know, 100 or a little bit more and then, and then if they're franchise, I mean even if they're in the 30s, 30, I mean even if they can go a little bit lower, honestly, because they should have more backing. Like these guys in Midland, they, they were actually, they were actually like at 20 car sales but now they're already doing like 45 to 50. So yeah, about that works for me. And then obviously bigger group, the problem with bigger groups though I think is a lot of them already have like a digital marketing director. A lot of, you know what I mean? They, unless they're really dropping the ball for whatever reason, they might just, you know, get me in for a month or two just to kind of help out and then, you know, kick me to the door. I, I, I would prefer to keep clients on at least a yearly basis, you know.

Yeah, I don't like having too many cooks in the kitchen. Anytime there's that guy, he's just trying to learn what you do and then cut you most of the time, you know, sometimes they're cool. Maybe if you have a very different skill set, like the VLAS is one thing you could lean on cuz you guys just protect that process. Like your guy over there, he's Got his little secret sauce. And car dealers ask how we do everything. I'm like, this is kind of like our secret sauce. I'm pretty transparent. I share everything. But I'm like, dude, sure it's gonna work. Like, I, I just got this, you know, I, I just showed you. Garden city, they sold 165 cars this year from us.

Exactly.

For like 20 grand announcements.

So that's sick. Yeah. And like I've gotten lucky like with a big GMC dealer here. And they, their marketing guy was just some older old school guy who knew traditional pretty well. But with digital, he's like, here you go man, help me out. And we worked very well together, so stuff like that works. But then like I picked pitched a big San Antonio dealer. What was it? Red McCombs. And it looked pretty good, but I think the lady got kind of threatened because she just kind of thought that, hey, do you really need to consult either. GM wanted it, the marketing lady didn't because I think she figured, oh, maybe my job's on the lines. I don't know. So it's a weird line we, we have to cross.

You know, you got to come in with that person and like show them how they can excel in their role under the stuff that you teach them without. Like, you kind of gotta make a real, real ally there.

Yeah, yeah.

Even like working over there. Like, tell me, like, how is it? I think these guys are pretty cool and just like get a little outside so then they look at you like that. But yeah, I mean, some people, it's just always going to be like that. You know, these dealerships, they got old money, they got family does stuff. They change. Sometimes they change decisions at the change of the wind. You know, it's just. Yeah.

100. Right.

But a lot of them don't like shoot. Our retention this year has been like insane, you know, so it's been really cool. Yeah. Especially with everything considered with the way sales have been so.

Right.

So for the avatar, you know, we were talking about kind of like they got the old school marketing person smaller, independent. They don't have a marketing person. Their niece does their social media. Like the people that clearly know they're not doing what they should be, that's like your avatar. So we, we wrote that in there. Primary goals, sell more cars, increase revenue, plus profit prospects walking in the showroom. So your primary goals are going to be anything that's like a major. It usually either makes them money, saves them money, saves them time, creates efficiency. And those are kind of like the primary goals, generally the secondary goals are a lot of times vanity. So it's like making them look good. And the funny thing is you have to know who you're speaking to, because a lot of people's secondary goals, well, what you think would be secondary to the business is a lot of people's primary goals. So you can sell vanity and ego and things that make people look good. And anywhere in your business, you should make sure to have this. Like you. If I'm working with local, I'm definitely posting and tagging people that come into my local business and trying to get them to share it and look really good. This is. This is good stuff. Primary complaints, low quality leads, don't answer the phone, bad number. I mean, you know, for you, primary complaints is like.

Is it working? You know, a lot of guys don't even know what's working, what's not.

Yeah. Yeah. And can't track. Yeah. So one thing that one of. One of the guys I work with, he said is 50 of what I'm doing is working and 50 of what I'm doing is not working. If I knew which 50 was which 50, I'd be a whole lot richer.

Oh, yeah.

And all those guys feel like that, you know, so lack of. Pretty complaint. Yeah. Lack of clarity in attribution. That's why we created a third party attribution tracking system. We feed the matchback report and it's all pixeled. So we've got the clients.

That's solid.

So, yeah. Tagged onto their website and the lead forms and any offline conversions we upload. And guys will be like, hey, we sold one car from you last month. We'll pull the report, it'll be like nine. The biggest one we had one time was it was 25 sales. And the guy's like, well, I called those customers and they said that they didn't come from Facebook. I'm like, bro, you called 25 people and they all were like, nope, I didn't come up. You called one guy, he's like, I don't know where I came from.

Right.

It's not 100% attribution either, because the platform.

Right. It's influence. Right? Influence, Exactly. Yeah.

A lot of it was direct, though. Not in their CRM. No. No cookies. So secondary complaints. You want to make sure you go deep on this. These are little pain points. Hard to get support with traditional agencies, high advertising costs, hard to track roi, Lack of innovative strategies, lack of specialists that have actually done it for themselves. Yeah. And that plays into where you Guys are at ultimate fear, losing market share to competitors, income stagnation or decline paying for marketing. That doesn't work.

That makes sense.

You know, false solutions. Short term, short term high costing advertising tactics like events, super sales, mailers. You've seen those. Like, you know, I mean, not only are they somewhat unethical, but they're just like, it's not a good way to show up in your market. Like wouldn't you rather show up in a highly produced video? Right. So a lot of this stuff is already done. You know, we put in, we put in the Midland dealership case study and so now I'm going to show you guys. We put in some, you know, some activation points. So some of these things you want to adjust. Like I don't know, maybe the SMS isn't as big of a focus for you, maybe other things are. And then you write out all your frequently asked questions. These are really, really good to put what people are always asking about your service, what things everybody wants to know first. So then you can put your logo, description, fonts, colors, high quality, trustworthy, approachable, warm, friendly, modern, luxurious. We don't use lowquality advertising inspirations. Okay, definitely, probably we have Andy on there, Grant Cardone. What about that guy, Glenn Lundy?

Yeah, he's not bad, huh? Yeah, he's not bad. Brian Pash is pretty good too. He's a little bit, he, he's, he's pretty good.

Is that this?

Yeah, Yep, yep. Yeah, that works.

Yeah. So kind of like competitors, inspirations, content pillars, these will be things that you can, you know, really break down, like mechanisms and stuff. And so this is like, and then these are, these are the shift ones. So once you get your pages, you start linking those as well and then that creates an index for your team, you know, so if you have different products, different landing pages, different offers and all here, all your social medias are here too and you can continue to add to this. Like for some of our clients, we have all their ads linked here. We've got like their funnels. We start linking different documents together and this becomes a living, breathing document. So if you guys want to help in that at all, you know, you're welcome and I'll make sure to take care of people even if I got to fly out there and build the ads myself.