Many dealers hear the term marketing and assume websites. If I were to say, “Yeah, we do marketing for dealers,” they would say, “Ooh, you build websites.”
Websites are part of the marketing process, but advertising is part of the marketing process for system. Sometimes I’ve used the terms marketing and advertising synonymously simply because that’s what other people think. I don’t want to use marketing and have people think that what we are talking about is website because that’s not the case. Let me explain.
Advertising is paying to run an ad on a specific type of media whether it’s magazine, newspaper, yellow pages or a television or radio ad. All that is advertising. Add to that follow-up, website, online applications and follow up phone calls — a lot of people call that marketing. Now here’s the way that I see it:
All of that is marketing. All advertising is part of the marketing process. But in the mind of a dealer, not all marketing is advertising.
For example: Someone sees a television ad and comes into the dealership. Your salesperson speaks with them but they didn’t buy on the spot. A week later, your salesperson calls them to follow up. You might not call that advertising, but you would call it marketing as part of the follow-up, which might fit in your marketing.
Here’s the best explanation I can give: Champagne and sparkling wine. All champagne is sparkling wine. But not all sparkling wine is champagne. Champagne can only come from Champagne, France — a specific region. But sparkling wine can come from California or different parts of America.
Think of marketing and advertising as the same. Marketing is the entire process. Advertising is a part of it. In addition with social media and the ease to write online reviews and spread messages via email, customer service has become part of the marketing process. The way you treat customers directly affects whether or not they talk about your business. Give great, outstanding, over-the-top customer service and do surprise unannounced things for your customers. They will spread the word for you.
Add customer service to the marketing picture. I took a tour of the Zappos facility and learned about their business model. This is a company that was bought for $1.2 billion by Amazon. Zappos considers customer service part of marketing expenses. Some dealers should probably do the same thing.