Pub. 1 Issue 4

11 idea is to hit the balance between too much contact and too little. Nobody wants a constant barrage of texts and emails, but you also don’t want to limit yourself to contacting people once a year. Again, you are going to have to do some homework. When do your customers and potential customers want to hear from you? The best people to ask are the ones who are in your target mar- ket. If you want people to respond to questions, keep it brief and easy, and think about ways to reward participation. Many people do not want to answer surveys if it takes much time or effort, especially if they are busy and want to move on to something more important to them than your brand. Offer something people want, however, and they might be willing to go to a little extra effort. Think about using cross-promotion to build your brand. Cross-promotion builds on the idea that customers and potential customers interact with brands at more than one level and at multiple times. These interactions create useful customer touch- points. Look at any products you offer that are related to other products, and see what you can do. For example, suppose you are trying to get back survey responses, and your dealership happens to rent cars to customers. Credit toward a car rental when you know someone has rented cars from you before might be valuable to them. If you have an existing customer, you could offer money toward parts, accessories or service. Perhaps you are doing emissions testing or an oil change for a customer; that’s an opportunity for building the relationship and rewarding them for giving you their business, even if that business is much less valuable than buying a car. Put information about cross-promotions online so people will know about them. Cross-promotion isn’t limited to your product line. Look at the business around your business. Almost all businesses have web- sites and a social media presence. You might be able to promote business interests for each other in a mutually beneficial way. You could offer a car wash to their customers; they could offer a sandwich to yours. Preparing potential customers so they will be more likely to make a big purchase from you later involves show and tell. Show and tell is a basic form of storytelling that we tend to associate with young children. It can be as simple as grabbing a favorite object and telling other people about it. Show and tell works with selling automobiles because there’s no better way to convince a potential customer that they want the car you want to sell them than by letting them see just how great a car it is. The best way of all to show them that is with a test drive, of course, but new owners may not test drive their new car until very late in the process. Increasingly, they might not drive it at all until after they’ve bought it. For dealerships, an online version of show and tell means you need to show customers pictures and videos of the car, and make it easy to design their dream version. New cars generally put this tool to work already, but as the used-car market continues to become more important, you could expand it to used cars as well. Many listings for used cars either have just one low-quali- ty picture, or they don’t have a picture at all. The description is usually basic and is limited to the must-have technical details. The disparity between online information for new cars and used cars is striking. From a practical perspective, of course, it can seem like the most cost-effective approach to selling used cars is the one that doesn’t require investing much time or effort into presenting them. That might not be the right approach in the future. At a time when the automotive industry is moving toward autono- mous cars and hybrid or electric cars, the market is starting to see interesting developments: • Many people cannot afford the current high prices for hy- brid and electric cars. Do they want them? Yes. The tech- nology is attractive. But sensible people don’t buy what they can’t afford. • Manufacturers are continuing their push to bring new choic- es to the marketplace. Many customers are waiting for that, along with a drop in prices as those new choices become more widely available. It’s a slow process because of the asso- ciated expenses involved, but someday the transition will be over. Expect a surge in used cars when people can finally get the cars they really want. • Car ownership trends are changing. The dealership cus- tomer base may end up being very different from now if people generally embrace the opportunity to move around conveniently even if they own no cars or fewer cars than they did before. As a result of all these developments, the U.S. may soon see a huge increase in the number of used cars that are for sale, and used-car presentation online may become more important than it has been in the past. That means your social media efforts will need to include used cars as well as new ones. The best people to ask are the ones who are in your target market. If you want people to respond to questions, keep it brief and easy, and think about ways to reward participation.