Articles

Have you heard about our new Bullseye program?  

Most marketing is ‘spray and pray’ that’s designed to get your name out there and build your brand, and targets everyone. Instead, our Bullseye program only goes after the people who are most likely to buy from you. After all, only 5 to 6% of the population are powersports enthusiasts. That’s it. So, the best way to grow your dealership is to target enthusiasts who ride what you sell, buy the stuff you sell and who live in your backyard. 

The Bullseye program goes after 3 groups of people… 1) Active Customers – These are the guys that have spent money with your store in the last 12 months. They’re already active, so our job is to keep them engaged with your dealership because let’s face it, your competitors are trying to steal them from you.  2) Inactive Past Customers – While these ARE past customers, they haven’t spent money with you the last 12 months. They’re lost, and our job is to reactivate them.  3) Conquest Prospects – These are the people who ride what you sell, live in your top-performing zip codes but have never spent money in your store. Our job is to grow new customers for your dealership by getting them to give you a try.  Between these three groups, this is where the vast majority of your sales are going to come from over the next 12-months. 

So, we have the right list of people to go after, now let’s look at how we reach them. We start by targeting folks on Google and social media. We’re able to show ads specifically to the customers and prospects in the 3 groups mentioned above, so as they’re browsing the web, searching on Google and checking out social media they’ll see your ad. 

We also send out 3 Programmatic Emails during the campaign to increase results and drive additional traffic to your website. Programmatic email means that once a customer has opened or clicked in the email, we can track every page of your website they visit, forever. With this technology we’re able to create more leads by monitoring who views inventory pages on your website.  Then, our system automatically sends them a 1-to-1 email with a buy back offer from your Sales Manager. 

In addition, we add a web banner to your website, activate our lead generation pop-up, and provide you with signage and fliers for promotion in the dealership.   

Our in-house call center will make live calls to the leads we generate, and we also call the prospects who view inventory pages from all the additional traffic we drive to your website. We set appointments for your sales team to knock down, and generate Hot Leads, which are prospects interested in buying, but for whatever reason they can’t commit to a specific appointment time. 

So, to recap, the Bullseye program puts your dealership in-front of thousands of your most viable prospects by utilizing several online and offline strategies.  We boost traffic to your website. We get prospects to self-identify if they’re interested in buying something from you right now. We automatically send your website inventory visitors a buy-back email. Then our internal call center picks up the phone and sets appointments and generates Hot Leads for your team. 

- Tory 

Some experts are saying we’re currently in an economic boom like no other in American history. Unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 50 years, the stock market is strong, and we’re not experiencing the high inflation of previous era’s growing economies. I’ve been spending most of my weekends at the motocross track with family, and the races have been absolutely packed. And this is a different crowd than I experienced back in the 80’s and 90’s. Back then you had dirt bikes in the back of pick-up trucks and the occasional 3-railed trailers. The modern-day races are full of campers, RV’s, Totorhomes (yes, that is a real thing), enclosed trailers, plus UTV’s and golf carts because you have to navigate the pits in style. And, all the racers have multiple bikes instead of just one. It’s all remarkable to me, considering that land scarcity, liability and exposure, and other factors make the barrier to entry for off-road riding seemingly more difficult.

According to the most recent Powersports Business, major unit sales are up 8.3% from January to April of 2019 compared to the same period last year. It’s obvious to me that business is good and consumers are spending money right now. In particular, I notice the blue-collar crowd really has that expendable income from the economy being in a good place.  Builders, welders, oil rig workers, plumbers, HVAC guys, etc. They have the money and are spending it.

It is reminiscent of an era from 1994 through 2006 when our industry experienced 14 years of consecutive growth, 13 of which were double-digit. That’s nearly the exact window I was a dealer of multiple stores in the Atlanta area. 

At Dealership University™ our target audience was obviously powersports dealerships and at that time there were roughly 7,500 franchised dealers that we felt were qualified prospects. Well… as old Murphy would have it, within a handful of years the dealer network shrunk down to nearly half of that number. Dealers were disappearing left and right as the market was correcting itself. 

We were fortunate that we developed several OEM clients that were key in our ability to navigate through these troubled waters. But something else was happening. The internet had busted onto the scene and was totally disrupting all previously held beliefs on what effective marketing was for a motorcycle dealer.  We immediately went ‘all in’ with our studies of internet marketing and how best practices could be applied to our clients so that we could build the best training possible. 

With only 3% to 6% of the population being motorcycle enthusiast and therefore a viable target audience for our clients, trying to create effective marketing programs that don’t include paying for a lot of waste can be tricky. But we did it, and our clients liked the best practices we developed so much that they asked us to do it for them. Hence, the birth of Powersports Marketing™. 

One of my big takeaways from the great recession was that in good times it’s easy to get sloppy and have “good business” hide a plethora of operating and marketing sins. In some ways we were fortunate that the thinning of the herd that occurred left us with a smaller group of dealers to work with, but they were, and many still are, the gritty operators who changed with the times. 

What has made us different than industry outsiders all these years, is we stand for zero-waste marketing. We don’t believe in ‘spray and pray’, branding type advertising; we focus on the most targeted viable prospects in your back yard that are most likely to do business with you. And if I wouldn’t spend my own money on it, we don’t sell it.

My spidey senses are tingling a little as I’m once again starting to see many dealers doing some really sloppy and wasteful advertising. With the election talk already heating up I can’t help but to get paranoid that we’re going to see a dip in consumer confidence in the near future and all be forced to tighten our belts.

OBJECTIVE 

As part of their commitment to providing their local customers the best in all things outdoor fun, they make sure their marketing efforts mirror the kind of quality, inventory and service customers can expect.

SOLUTION

JR Liverman, the Chief Operating Officer and Carey Brown, the Marketing Manager worked closely with the Firestorm Website support team to build and launch their custom website at the beginning of the year.  After seeing about a 25% boost in leads each month with their new Firestorm Website, they wanted to take advantage of the Marketing Automation element of their Digital Marketing program as well.

By combining Firestorm Email to their Firestorm Website, they are able to have emails automatically sent to their customer list every week showcasing their Featured inventory for the week. This feature is set up to run automatically and drive major traffic to their site each week, all without lifting a finger.

RESULTS 

By activating the Automated Inventory emails through Firestorm Email, the Campers RV Center website has seen a boost of an addition 250+ website visitors in just 2 weeks! That’s an extra 250 people on the Inventory pages of their website browsing featured units that are being prompted by an email that is chalked-full of featured inventory images and single, clear call to action driving traffic to the site.  

Email continues to be one of the highest ROI’s in direct-marketing channels, and it’s even more powerful when it is done-for-you on a consistent basis and increases website traffic to drive more leads.

Dealership: 

Fort Fremont Marine was established in 1969 by Dave & John Thomson, and the Thomson Family along with the help of their tenured staff is still taking care of business. Located right on the Wolf River, allows their customers every opportunity to test just about anything they sell on the water. Initially concentrating on waterskiing, high-performance boats and Crest Pontoon Boats (one of the oldest Crest Dealers in WI), they have since grown to add Polaris, FLOE, Hewitt, Mercury, Moomba, Supra & Tuffy Boats.

Solution: 

Fort Fremont has been experiencing the benefits of our Firestorm Website and Local Web Dominator Solutions for some time, but had not tried a Sharp Shooter Event yet. For their 50th Anniversary in business, they wanted to go all out with a campaign to make sure their party went off with a bang! For this event, they decided to market to 2,000 past customers and 2,000 conquest prospects who own what they sell, live in their backyard but hadn’t bought from them. Using a nice mix of active, inactive and conquest prospects, they knew they could reactivate customers who hadn’t spent money with them in the previous year and drive some new blood through the door. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of customers spending money with them over the next year and increase how much the spend, by getting them all to walk through the door more often. 

The Sharp Shooter Program uses up to 12 direct marketing touches to guarantee the marketing isn’t getting delivered just once, but multiple times. By giving customers more opportunities to respond to the marketing, we increase the amount of traffic on event day and the number of leads being generated. Bigger picture, we’ve learned Powersports Dealers need to touch their Buying Base a minimum of 52-104 times per year to increase retention and grow market share. The more you touch your customer base, the more responsive they become and over the course of the year, more of them walk through the dealership’s doors more often and the business grows.

Many marketers believe in order to sell something, you have to have ‘A Sale’. We don’t buy into that. The message we utilize is focused on inviting customers to a party. By focusing on what the customer wants (things like food, drinks, door prizes and demos), the dealership gets more of what they want (more P&A, service and gear sales and a few more units out the door). The reverse is also true; focus on the sale and you will alienate the 99.99% of customers who don’t have ‘buy a unit’ on their list of things to do this weekend. Long-term, customers never get tired of being invited to a party so they end up walking through the doors more often and when they’re there, they’re like kids in a candy store…they can’t help themselves but to spend more money. 

Timing is critical with so much marketing going out the doors, so it’s extremely important to have it hit customers at just the right time to maximize the response from each media. Our marketing begins hitting customers roughly 10 days before the event and gives them a different opportunity to respond to the Custom URL (to generate leads for every department) almost every day leading up to event day.

Results:

Executing on all four pillars of the Sharp Shooter Program - Right Audience, Right Media, Right Message & Right Timing, really paid off. The program generated 228 responses including 208 sales opportunities in Clothing, P&A and Service, PLUS 63 responses for a new or used unit! 

Looking Forward:

The arrival of June means the arrival of Summer and the prime riding season! For most dealers, they have a few short months to sell 80%+ of units they need to in order to hit their goal. June means the kickoff of summer - one of the best reasons all year to market to your buying base. Don’t miss out on this chance to drive traffic through your doors, generate hundreds of leads and sell more units and make more money this summer! Check out the inserts for some killer campaign options and for more information on how the Sharp Shooter Program can help you achieve your growth goals in 2019, call me on my direct line 877-242-4472 ext: 112.

Happy selling.

I think at this point, everyone on the planet has either heard of, or experienced the Microsoft Blue Screen of Death. It’s the one where Windows (pick your version) crashes, and all you have is this blue error screen that means you have to reboot and have likely lost whatever you were working on. It’ll drive you nuts.

There’s another screen of death though that is frustrating, and difficult to deal with. I‘m calling it the White Screen of Death. 

This occurs when you need to write an email to your customers, so you sit down in front of your computer and are faced with a blank, white screen. More often than not, it’s an accurate representation of what is in your head as far as the content of that email you need to write.

So what happens? Often times, we fall back to the kinds of emails we’ve seen others send. Most of the time, that’s not a good idea. What often ends up happening, is that an email gets composed that screams some kind of awful sales only message – many times in all caps, offering “Low, Low” interest rates or rebates. Basically, a message that will appeal to maybe 2% of your list who are looking to buy today. Not to mention the fact that a headline like that shouts an invitation to the least attractive part of the entire buying experience… financing and negotiation. Good times.

Another worst practice that we engage in is taking the lazy way out. After all, we’re in a hurry, got lot’s to do, and need to get something thrown together quickly. So we take a bunch of OEM banner ads and string them together – and call it done. We may (or may not) actually go the extra mile to link those images to a page somewhere, but it’s still a worst practice.

The problem with composing emails like these is that almost nobody wants to see them. They ALWAYS look “spammy” and if they get more than a passing glance it’s a miracle.

It’s a major reason why we created the Firestorm Email platform. It’s a powersports-specific platform, designed by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts, who hate starting off with a blank, white screen.

Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, and other platforms are designed for anyone to use them, so they have pre-designed templates that are generic, and more work has to be done to try and make them relevant to our industry than it’s worth.

Firestorm has HUNDREDS of templates that are pre-designed for every relevant, fun message imaginable – and they are powersports specific. You can’t beat that.

Unless, of course, you want to take into account that it can be integrated directly with your inventory if you are also a Firestorm Website client. 

If you want to have an actively engaged customer base, there are a lot of pieces that need to work together, but it all has to start with a foundation that gives you everything you need to build on. Firestorm Email does that by handling 95% of the look and feel for you. 

Firestorm Email has graphics designed so that you can feature every department in the dealership in a single email, and by doing so, engage the broadest number of your customers – not just the guy who is in the final stages of shopping for a unit. Every department in the dealership is (or should be) a profit center. They need to get promotional attention as well.

There are also ways to add content like “5 tips for winter storage” or “Top 5 safety checks before you hit the road” – which would also make WAY more compelling subject lines for the email and position you as the experts that you are.

If you haven’t seen Firestorm Email, reach out and let us show you how crazy simple it is to use. We’ve got folks here who can walk you through the email creation process.

Have you heard the news?  PSM Marketing is now a Certified Vendor for Harley-Davidson!  We’re excited to partner with even more H-D dealers across the country providing high-performing websites and supplying the highest-rated dealer support in the powersports industry. If you’re not a Harley dealer, we’re happy to earn your business as well, and I highly recommend you reach out to your OEM rep and request that Firestorm Websites be added as an option for them as well.

But Tory, what’s the big deal? Aren’t we at a time where website options are all pretty close to the same thing?  Not even close. Not only are there often technological differences and support issues, but there are also big differences in each provider’s purpose. Below are a few reasons that dealers take advantage of a Firestorm Website, starting with our purpose.

It’s our responsibility to build a website that better matches your dealership’s culture, geography, branding and OEM(s), while utilizing high-performing marketing strategies to increase web leads. The metric that demonstrates when a website is performing better is increased leads. We concentrate on lead generation, which is why Firestorm Website clients experience an increase of 30% to over 1,000%! You read that right… we see lead gains of over 1,000% when compared to a previous provider. Contact us to see some dealership case studies.

These days, SEO is a real issue, but it’s often misunderstood. Firestorm Websites contain an enhanced SEO foundation that includes an upgraded URL structure on inventory pages. This upgrade better matches your website to your dealership’s location and the units you sell, meaning you’re more likely to appear in the results when a local prospect does a Google search. On top of this, we offer monthly and bi-weekly SEO management services to further increase ranking/results.  

Firestorm Websites also offer full, open access to our back office CMS (Content Management System). This is a client-favorite feature that enables dealers to control and adjust your website without having to contact us. Dealers have become accustomed to waiting days, or even weeks for a simple request. However, if you’d rather reach out and have us help, we have an incredible support team. In fact, compare PSM Marketing’s Google reviews with other website providers. 

In addition, our mobile app enables dealers to manage their inventory on the fly. You can adjust price, change inventory from private to public, adjust featured inventory, and even add pictures of inventory right from the showroom floor, a service bay, or out in the parking lot. 

Speaking of inventory, Firestorm Websites offer VIN Vehicle Decoding. This industry-leading feature works seamlessly and automatically to add vehicle specifications, stock images, and SEO-enhancing marketing descriptions to most valid 17-digit VINs. Or, you can have a person at the dealership manage your inventory manually if you prefer. 

We also update your OEM Promotions automatically as they change, so you’re always up to date with the newest specials. 

Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, our Support Team is the Highest-Rated in the industry. They’re ready to tackle your questions and help with anything your website needs. But don’t just take my word for it, check out what our clients have to say about us on Google or at PSMMarketingReviews.com.

The Firestorm Website platform is the only one that’s purpose-built to seamlessly integrate with Email Marketing Automation to drive even more traffic to your site, as well as Reputation Management to grow and showcase reviews for your dealership. When combined with the marketing automation features of the Firestorm Onboarding system, our website platform can identify and market to anonymous website visitors as well. We’ll send your team a daily report of the customers who viewed inventory and you can see which vehicles they were looking at. Then, our Firestorm Email system will automatically email customers a related offer and invite them to stop by the dealership, leading to a quantifiable increase in unit sales – guaranteed!

As you can see, all websites are NOT created equal.

- Tory 

How many website visitors did you have last month versus same month last year? How many website leads did you have last month versus same month last year? Who was the number one referrer of website traffic to your website last month?

How many door swings did you have last month versus same month last year? How many logs in your CRM did you have last month versus same month last year?

How much do you REALLY know about your business? Reality, data, and hard facts trump perception, emotion, and gut feeling. Whether your net is up or down, it’s important to understand the key performance indicators that drive those bottom-line results. 

OBJECTIVE:

Harsh Outdoors is committed to the prospect that your work is FUN and your FUN is OUTSTANDING. Their football-field sized showroom is built to house all the accessories for the huge variety of vehicles, equipment and gear to have fun and get the job done.

One unique point about the team at Harsh is that they customize the buying experience and the product recommendations to best fit the unique needs of each customer. They foster a relationship with their customers to help ensure whatever they buy fits all their needs.

SOLUTION:

Jim Brown, the Dealer Principal, wanted to take his generic website and create something that – like his team – would wow their customers. So, he chose Firestorm Websites by PSM Marketing that enabled him to have a totally custom web design, not something bland and cookie-cutter, while using a format that was proven to generate leads.

Harsh Outdoors has huge and eclectic selection of products and brands that they offer for all outdoor enthusiasts. It was important to the team that those were all clearly displayed on the new website, while maintaining a clear, easy-to-navigate, experience for his customers.

RESULTS:

Nope. That’s not a type-o. That’s a One Thousand Percent increase in leads on the Firestorm Website platform….on average (that means some months saw an even larger increase).

The transition to Firestorm Websites by PSM Marketing allowed Jim and his team to show their Huge selection of product types, while keeping their site clean and easy to navigate. They also get to have a fully customized design that illustrates the culture of their dealership and, best of all, keeps the sales team busy following up on leads and generating sales for the dealership.

Honda of Covington Powersports is a Honda Powerhouse Dealer located on the Northshore in Louisiana. They are a three-time proud recipient of the prestigious Council of Excellence Award. Managing Partner and General Manager Laurie McCants showcases their commitment to their customers by stating, “At Honda, our philosophy has always been centered on strong customer focus and we look forward to working with all the outdoor enthusiasts.” She leads a team of Powersports specialists with many years of expertise and knowledge, ready to assist any type of rider.

Breaking up is always tough. But sometimes you have to do it for your own best interest. Take email, for example. Sometimes you just have to let folks go. It’s for your own best interest.

There’s been a common mindset over the years that email is basically free, and all you need to do is grow your list, send them emails forever, and you’re good to go.

But your list is like an apple tree. And you have to treat it like one.

As an apple tree grows, it begins to produce fruit. Kind of a no-brainer, right? But as the tree matures, and the branches get bigger, longer, and new branches grow, something happens. The new branches grow in every direction. They point up, down, back towards the trunk, away from the trunk – it’s very organic and chaotic. 

And you’d be wrong.

The apple farmer steps in and as the tree grows, manages the growth by thinning the branches, cutting off the ones that point in crazy directions that could never bear fruit and may actually harm the tree by rubbing against other, good fruit bearing branches and damaging them - ruining the harvest. He makes sure only branches that point away from the trunk and are healthy remain on the tree. Doing so insures that each tree bears the most fruit possible.

Your email list is the same. Most lists are grown organically, from newsletter sign up forms, marketing initiatives, counter sales, quote requests, and a hundred other ways. That’s great, and how it needs to happen. But just as in the case of the apple tree, that list needs to be pruned occasionally to maximize it’s potential. Your list needs to be pruned.

Over the past decade, email SPAM has become a very expensive problem in the internet community that service providers have been forced to deal with. According to M3AAWG (Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Work Group – the ultimate email regulatory authority recognized by service providers) in 2014 90% of all email traffic was SPAM, with an estimated actual cost of over $20.5 BILLION dollars worldwide. The estimate at that time was that if allowed to grow at the same rate, within four years the cost would balloon to $198 BILLION annually.

Needless to say, over the past five years, service providers have been significantly tightening down on email senders and traffic in an effort to combat the astronomical rise in the cost of SPAM by implementing a litany of new checks and balances to make sure that senders are legitimate, and recipients actually wish to receive emails sent.

So how do you ‘prune’ your list?

The first thing you can do is remove people who haven’t opened an email from you in a long time, and clearly won’t be any time soon. If you send weekly emails, and someone hasn’t opened and/or clicked one in a year, it’s time to make a decision on what to do with them. The first step is to send them an email asking if they still want to receive your emails. Ask them to click a link in the email if the answer is yes, or click an opt out link (or do nothing) if not. Clicking the yes option is engagement, clicking no or doing nothing tells you what you need to know as well to make a good decision.

The second thing you can do is send messages that appeal to your whole list and make them want to open them. I wrote about that last month, and you can see that article on www. powersportsmarketing.com in the articles drop down on the marketing best practices tab. I’ve still got a lot more to say on that subject though, so stay tuned.

Need help? Give us a call: 877-242-4472.