AdSpecialtyItem.com

21st Century Marketing for your 21st Century Company

Secret to Increasing Auto Dealer Profits

Feb 19

Posted by admin in Promotional Uses | 4 Comments

2007 Toyota Tundra photographed in USA.
Image via Wikipedia

The auto industry is in tough shape these days, with the difficulties of car makers like GM and the PR nightmares experienced by Toyota. Further, the continued economic uncertainty leaves consumers hesitant to buy new cars. For auto dealers in this pressure-filled environment, the challenge continues to be to find ways to maximize profits. Luckily, there is an easy way to expand a high-margin revenue stream that’s already in place.

Car sales are typically a low-margin activity, when you factor in all the costs and the hassles of haggling with customers. Plus, car sales rely on customer willingness to consider buying the type of car that dealer sells. On the other hand, the maintenance department is traditionally a high-margin service center. Improving the profitability of an auto dealership, then, relies on increasing the traffic (pardon the pun) to the dealer’s service center.

Great, so how does a dealer accomplish that goal? Here’s the plan:

  1. Secure a graphic designer — If you don’t already have one on staff, find a freelancer or use your advertising contacts.
  2. Design an ad piece — This will be for promoting your service center (your high-margin service center) so don’t go cheap on this. It should be for 3.5″ x 6.5″ card stock, so make sure your designer uses the appropriate graphics resolution. Also design a separate 1″ x 2″ image with your name/logo/phone number to be placed on the card.
  3. Get a supply of egrips — Your designs will be used to create your egrips and custom card. Again, this is for your high-margin service center so be sure to get the right quantity. (You can get a free price quote here.)
  4. Promote your service center with egrips — Now that you have these promotional products, use them to promote the use of your service center:
  • New car customers — When you sell a car, ask the customer for their cell phone and place the egrips sticker on their phone. Give them the card too, along with another for their spouse or significant other. Now, your phone number is on their phone reminding them who they should call to get their car serviced.
  • Service Center patrons — When a customer brings in their car for service, give them a card when you take their keys. (It gives them something to look at while they wait.) If they ask for another, act like you really shouldn’t but do it anyway. (In fact, a sign saying “Limit one egrips per customer” can goose that along.) Again, the egrips sticker will remind them who they should call to get their car serviced.
  • General advertising and networking — Add these egrips to neighborhood welcome baskets, give them out as networking freebies, use them to brand your business. Remember, your mechanics fix “cars” not just “your cars” so use these to cast a wider net for service center business.

It’s alot easier to get repeat customers than new ones, and these promotional products can help you do just that. Plus, they’ll help drive current and new customers towards your most profitable services. Get your free price quote here, how can you lose?

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A 21st Century Ad Specialty Item

Sep 8

Posted by admin in Marketing Mix | No Comments

My friend Fred has an office right next to ours. He was driving his sports car one beautiful spring day a few years ago. He had the top down, the windows down, and the radio up. He had his new cell phone on the dash of his car so he could reach it if he needed it. Can you see this coming? He made a turn, but the phone kept going – right out the window. Something about Newton’s law or inertia – I don’t know. Fred was not happy. At this point I think he reverted to Italian, complete with hand gestures and high volume. When he calmed down he resolved to find a solution. He worked with lots of existing materials and decided it was going to take a new material that would grip but not be sticky. He came up with a way to make it, and patented it. He calls them egrips® and sells them in various sizes and colors. It turns out you can print on them: color, graphics, text, bar-codes, anything. Now he gets emails from people who were given one at a trade show telling him how his product saved their phone. In December a lady sat her phone on top of her car while she loaded packages in the back seat. Two miles later she realized what she had done and stopped. There it was on top of the car. She tracked him down to say “thanks.”

When I was a kid we had one phone in the house. It was in the kitchen. We had refrigerator magnets with phone numbers for plumbers and insurance agents and that way had their phone numbers handy – since the phone and the refrigerator were in the same room of the house. These days, phones are everywhere. I have a phone in my pocket. I do not have a refrigerator there. I take out the phone several times a day. People see me talk on my phone. With an egrips® ad specialty item you can brand folk’s cell phone to advertise for you. Does the pizza place near a college campus need to give out egrips® with the number to order pizza? I think so. Do you know somebody at that pizza shop? Send them to me.

Do your customers use cell phones? Can you justify spending money on branding? Maybe you need to be giving out egrips® with your message on them. You can get your custom egrips® on a postcard size handout with your message on it or on a pre-printed generic card as an easy way to hand out egrips® when you are there to deliver your message personally. These are very popular items at trade shows – they draw a lot of attention and increase traffic at the booth. That is, by the way, usually a goal at trade shows.

I will say a little about direct mail here, but it will get an article of its own soon. I like direct mail for “high dollar” products/services, but not for small ticket items because it takes too many sales to break even. I have done letters and postcards and I like the postcards best because I got a better response and they were cheaper. I think people didn’t open the envelopes, but they at least glance at the postcards on the way to the trash.

If you can include an ad specialty item that will stay in front of them, that is a good thing to do in the middle of the campaign, not at the beginning. If you make cold calls in your business, the middle of the campaign is a great time to just show up at a prospect, with an ad specialty item to give to them. If getting out to 1,000 locations is a problem, you can include it with your 4th mailing. If you put it in an envelope or small box, be sure the outside screams something about the free gift inside so they won’t throw it away unopened. Better yet, if your ad specialty item is egrips®, it can be delivered ON the postcard. Just point out what it is and how useful it is along with your central message – an action item for the prospect to take.

Here is my call to action. When you visit http://www.AdSpecialtyItem.com get a 5% Web discount to use an egrips® ad specialty item to make your message stick.

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Ad Specialty Items — What Works and What Doesn’t

Sep 7

Posted by admin in Marketing Mix | No Comments

One of the ways to make your message stick is through the use of the ad specialty item, also known as the promotional product. In order to be most effective at promoting your business, your ad specialty item or promotional product needs to be:

  • Useful – if it isn’t useful, what happens to your item? It goes in the trash.
  • Durable - so it won’t wear out the first time it gets used and end up where? In the trash.
  • Visible - if you are going to spend good money on a useful, durable item, you want folks to see your message.

I used to work at a company that got all the employees shirts embroidered with the company name and logo. The shirts were black. So was the embroidery. What was the point?

There are thousands of ad specialty advertising items with everything from matchbooks, mugs, mouse pads, jump drives, key chains, sunscreen, and note pads. You add your logo and as much message as will fit or is reasonable. Spend a little or spend a lot.

I have dozens of t-shirts from Carter Blood Care and ball caps from 20 companies, but I don’t really wear them much, except to work in my yard. They last a long time, but nobody sees them but me.

I have a branded umbrella from a truck line that I put in my wife’s car years ago, in a pocket in the door. It is an extra, just in case. If it is raining when she starts, she has another umbrella she takes because she would rather use it. But if she gets caught in a surprise shower or we have a full car, it gets used. Maybe three times a year. The brand is printed on the outside of the top of the umbrella, so if somebody is watching us run in from the rain, maybe they see the logo before we fold up the umbrella, but I couldn’t tell you they are candidates for shipping freight.

I have a calendar personal planner that I use all year long. And I do use it, sometimes more than once a day, and for a whole year. Maybe even 13 months. Desk calendars are similar, but nobody sees mine but me. It is not a bad program, but they do have a shelf life. Don’t order a five-year supply of gimme’ calendars all for the same year – and be sure to give them out close to the end/first of the year. They don’t make for an ongoing marketing program throughout the year, but they do have their place.

Pens are good. They can be cheap or really nice. They are useful, and sometimes take on a life of their own going from person to person until they get stored in a drawer and forgotten for months or years or trashed when they run out of ink or quit retracting right.

I grew up in east Tennessee. My dad ran a truck line. The company logo was red, white and blue. For nearly thirty years my dad gave out orange and white pens with his company name and slogan but not his logo. What they did have was the Tennessee football schedule printed on them. He combined the short shelf-life of a calendar with a fairly durable pen. There was a seriously limited geographic audience since folks in Georgia and Kentucky weren’t interested in UT football. And he ignored his logo. I told my dad he was doing it all wrong, but his customers in Tennessee asked for the new pens every year, starting in the spring. He started giving them out way ahead of football season and folks kept up with them till the season was over. He asked what was wrong was that? Go Vols.

The next article in this series will be about using a 21st century ad specialty item to make your message stick.

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Promoting Your Business — The 4th P

Sep 6

Posted by admin in Marketing Mix | No Comments

If you saw the movie “Field of Dreams” you remember the recurring theme “if you build it they will come.” In the real world, if you build it, they (your customers) don’t care. You have to help them care — develop your message, deliver your message, and make your message stick. This is what marketing is all about.

In marketing there are four areas that you can control: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion – “the 4 Ps.” The mix of these 4 Ps is how you position your product and your business in the marketplace. This article covers the 4th “P” – promoting your business. You do that with branding that conveys the message of your position.

Your brand needs to have a consistent look and feel in everything you put out. This is how you develop brand awareness. You can use a combination of logo, brand colors, font choices, graphic designs, trademarks and taglines. These are all designed with your target market in mind. When preschoolers are shown pictures, more can correctly identify Ronald McDonald than Santa Claus. That is brand awareness.

Position includes quality, pricing, and the image you convey to your target market. McDonald’s shows fun toys, families enjoying meals together, and clean restaurants with an ethnically diverse clientèle. They stress their value menu and have special pricing promotions to convey the idea of not being expensive. They are not trying to compete with Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

You have several audiences and your message is different for each one. For each audience you need a call to action. Clearly express what you want them to do. You might be surprised how receptive people are to being asked.

  • Your first audience is your existing customers. If you already have some customers you can reinforce their experience with every interaction you have with them. You may also know who they are and how to get in touch with them apart from when they are buying something. Customers can be your best source of referrals for new customers, additional sales of new products, and repeat business. I have heard folks say “We don’t do any marketing. We get all our business from referrals.” That is marketing – maybe very effective marketing. It just isn’t advertising. There is big difference in not advertising and not marketing.
  • Your second audience is your family and friends. These are people who care about you, and are interested in you and what you are doing. They are probably going to ask you how things are going. Develop your message for them. Is there some way they can help you get the word out or identify leads for you? Maybe they are prospective customers, too or know folks who are. Work the six degrees of separation. They know people who know people….
  • You know people who will listen to what you have to say even if they aren’t as interested in your well being. Develop your message for them and come up with a reason for them to help get your word out. Sometimes you just have a moment, so have your elevator pitch refined to your story with your basic message. Or you may have more time. You can develop a presentation related to your product or service and find or make opportunities to present that can lead to sales later.
  • Then there is the rest of the world. How to get the word out? There are hundreds of ways: blogs, website SEO, press releases, direct mail, advertising, trade shows and the list goes on. Future articles will cover some ways to make your message stick.
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Generating Trade Show Buzz with egrips Promotional Products

Sep 4

Posted by admin in Promotional Uses | 1 Comment

Want to get the most out of your trade show appearance?

Using egrip® appliqués with a custom card creates buzz around your booth. Trade shows are all about generating traffic, and egrips® promotional products have drawn crowds at trade shows all over the world.

Get plenty of extra egrip® appliqués with custom cards to hand out at your trade show, and you’ll get flooded with contacts from customers you’ve never even met!

Generating Trade Show Buzz with egrips Promotional Products

Generating Trade Show Buzz with egrips Promotional Products

(AGS/AECOM is consulting and contracting company working with government agencies and other contractors and subcontractors.)

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