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Strategic Dealership Branding
Strategic Dealership Branding
Strategic Dealership Branding
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Good morning, everyone. I'm Clint Lowing, Director of Marketing and Used Equipment Guide. I'm going to be running you guys through this webinar this morning. We're going to give everyone one or two more minutes who are wanting to join in or somewhere in the process of locating and logging in. While we kind of have this opportunity, I want you to notice on your screen there is the place where you can ask questions. Please ask questions. I have time at the end for questions, but if you have something pressing that you want to ask as we're going through the slides, please do. I'll make sure I get those questions answered and be able to help you guys afterwards. At the end of the slides also, there's my contact information if anyone has a shower thought later or is driving home and thinks of something. Hopefully, something from this inspires something in the back of your mind. Please ask questions. We'll get started here in a minute or two. All right, we're going to go ahead and get things rolling. I think that gave enough people time to jump in again. Again, if you weren't here before a few minutes ago, I'm going to point out again, you have the ability to ask questions. Please do. There is time for questions at the end. I hope you take advantage of that opportunity. And there's also my contact information at the end. So if you have a follow-up question later, I can always jump in later and answer those as well. So first of all, I'm Quint Lowing. I'm the Director of Marketing at Used Equipment Guide. Just a little background on me. I hold an undergrad degree in Business Administration Entrepreneurship from Marsh Hill University. It's a small college just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Played Division II football there. That's why I have bad shoulders. If you don't know where Asheville is, look up any must-go-to list, and it's typically on there. It's Beer City, USA. And now I also have a Master's in Business Administration from Western Carolina University. I'm the Director of Marketing at Used Equipment Guide. And so I'm responsible for driving traffic and overall branding. I use analytics to help drive targeted quality traffic, and driving quality traffic leads to higher margins for whoever is able to do that. My experience includes strategic development and tactical execution of DieselJobs.com. DieselJobs is actually the largest niche job board through the trucking and heavy equipment industry. It involves everything from drivers to diesel mechanics. And so that's kind of where I really dug my teeth into that world. You know, just basic terms about Used Equipment Guide, so you guys know where I'm coming from. Used Equipment Guide in basic terms is a search engine like Indeed for jobs, Kayak for flights, CarGurus for cars, etc. Used Equipment Guide is a vertical search engine to help people buy and find used heavy equipment. And so we'll kind of jump into our webinar roadmap to say what's to come. First of all, I do want to say this is not your get-rich-quick version of branding. Branding takes work and dedication. If you want to find a Letterman top 10 list on how to improve your branding today and what you can do to make a difference, there are those lists out there. But brand building takes work and dedication, and it takes time. I will provide you with actionable items, things that after today you can move forward with, be able to work with, and be able to make changes. Because this whole thing is about being able to grow your brand for the long term as opposed to a quick solution that you're not going to see results in six months, a year. So the first thing we're going to kind of do is set a foundation of what is branding. Then we're going to kind of work into storytelling, how you brand yourself. Then move into go-to-them is you're being able to tell people where you're branding. You go to where your customers are, then sell more. We're going to talk about the two main types of sales, transactional sales and relationship sales, and how branding helps you move through that. And then lastly, we're going to talk about digital, how you handle digital, how everyone handles digital. And considering I work for a website, it's where a lot of my expertise lies. So feel free to ask questions around that as well. All right, so what is branding? The best way to kind of break this apart is look at the dictionary definition. The promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design. Distinctive wording design used to identify a particular brand. So one of the main purposes of branding is to move into top-of-mind awareness. Top-of-mind awareness is the first thing you think about when you think of a category or something. If you close your eyes and think of equipment, or you think of burgers, do you think of Burger King or McDonald's? Do you think of – what type of equipment do you think of? What color is it? All of that is on purpose by these brands, by these dealers, and everything who is out there working, because everyone wants you to think back to them. So if you close your eyes and think about a dark carbonated beverage, more than likely you are going to think about Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is one of the most distinctive brands in the world, and they do that through using their advertisements constantly, and they are consistent with their branding and messaging. You know that they have polar bears as part of their branding. If you were to take away the red on that side of the screen, you would still know it's Coke. If you were to take away the logo, the red alone would let you know it's Coke. The shape of their bottle lets you know it's Coke. So branding is being able to close your eyes, and be the first thing that someone thinks about when they think of a particular category. When I think of dozers, who do I think about? Is it my local dealership? And it's becoming and working up to being that top of mind awareness. So you kind of get on, why focus on branding? Are you unique? I think this quote kind of ties in really well here, is people do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic. So the question becomes, are you unique? Brand recognition sets you apart. It's your value add. It's what makes you different. So you don't want to be different as some corny gimmick, as clown suit Fridays, where every Friday everyone in your dealership dresses up like a clown, and people really enjoy clown suit Fridays. But you want to have that top of mind awareness. You want to be first. So it kind of goes back to one of the best movies ever made, who are you going to call? Everyone knows that's Ghostbusters. So that's that top of mind awareness of when their equipment breaks down, who are you going to call? Who are they going to call? When someone needs a new dozer, who are they going to call? And the reason why you focus on branding is because you want that – you want to be the first name that people think of. When someone closes their eyes at night, or they break a tool in the ditch, you're the first person on their call list. So then we kind of work into storytelling. And it's not great news, but it's a truth that a lot of people need to know is you don't matter. It's all about customers only care about what you can do for them. So marketing slogans should focus on how you help customers, not who you are. It is achievement to be a dealer for X number of years, but why have you been a dealer for that long? You've done it because you've done other things right. You've helped customers in different ways. And that's the story you need to make sure you're telling customers is the reason why we've been a dealership for 40 years or 20 years is because these customers are coming to us because we help them with X, Y, Z. Because at the end of the day, you solve someone else's problem and you get paid for it. So being able to get paid for it is why everyone is here. And so it's important to know those problems you're solving for your customers. And then lowest price, the lowest price in my opinion is not branding. Someone is always willing to sell something for lower than you. The question is when you remove the price off your machine, who are you? And so being able to know who you are and move past just having a lower price than someone is very important. Because there are plenty of places I'd rather do business with because I like their people and their different things. One great example of this is when I go get groceries, I can go to Walmart. Walmart is cheaper and easier to get in and out of. But most of the times I end up walking into Publix because I like the experience of shopping with Publix. I'm willing to pay more for that experience. So that's the story you need to tell. And it kind of works into do your customers like you? Do your customers trust you? Do your customers respect you? And that's the story you need to tell, the like, the trust, and the respect. A great example for storytelling currently is, I don't know who on here follows basketball, but the Toronto Raptors just won the NBA championship. And typically for the longest time, New Balance has been dad shoes. Dads across the nation have united in wearing white New Balances, and they've typically always been seen as an old person shoe. But New Balance for a long time has been struggling to tell the story, no, we are a sports brand, and no, we actually can help you in performance. And Kawhi is the leader on the Raptors, and he is famously sponsored by New Balance. So him having that sponsorship is helping them tell that story. So the storytelling is extremely important because I can only imagine the sales that New Balance is getting after Kawhi won, and all of the branding and everything that he is wearing for New Balance has kind of changed their story to where they've been wanting it, away from the dad shoes and more towards a productive athletic line. So we will kind of then work into authentic branding. You want to focus on what you do best. And so that's talking the talk and walking the walk. On the right-hand side you will see the Ford Thunderbird. Ford's had a comeback recently, but for a very long time Ford was known as the, I wish they were like they used to be. And so they were still talking the talk, but they kind of lost walking the walk. And so they had a lot of struggles because people didn't have trust in their brand. People didn't have trust in them actually walking the walk. So the question becomes is what defines you? In the beginning we started with a dictionary definition. If you were to look your dealership up in the dictionary, what's the definition you would see? And what's the feeling people get when they walk into your dealership? Because that's what they are feeling. Are you talking the talk or are you walking the walk? So it's important to say are you consistent with that? And that's one of the biggest issues people see is are you consistent in your branding and your service? So from the first time someone walks into your dealership to 10 years later when they are getting repairs on the same machine, are they getting the same relationship? So what do you do above your competition with sales, service, and relationship? One important thing to kind of tie this in down here, I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee and we have Chick-fil-A's around here. They are based out of Atlanta. And Chick-fil-A is known for multiple things, but Chick-fil-A is known for its service. And when you say thank you, they say my pleasure. And they are also known for their great chicken. But people are – they are known for saying my pleasure. They are known for saying – and their service. And the interesting thing is saying my pleasure after someone says thank you and their service, that's free. That's free branding that they do consistently across that. And so they do that through their employees. So the question is do your employees know your brand? From the guy who drives around in the lot and moves machines to the CEO, everyone needs to have the same vision and same voice for the company, because most of the time people talking to your employees, or most of the time people talking to your customers are the employees of the dealership. They are the ones answering the phone calls, responding on social media, and talking to people daily. So it's very important, because delivering on this promise of consistent branding, it helps build loyalty and trust. So you need to define your purpose and passion and be genuine. So this all kind of ties in, in just being consistently authentic and making sure everyone from the guy who takes out the garbage to the CEO interacts with the customers in the same way. So the question is – one important question you need to ask yourself is what are you known for? If Chick-fil-A is known for its service and saying my pleasure, what are you known for? If someone, when they leave your dealership, why were they there? So we kind of work into knowledge is power. So one of the biggest things I kind of hinted at on the last screen is who is your customer? So knowing who is your customer and why they buy from you is power, because then you are able to gather that knowledge and apply it to your branding. Why did they call you and not the dealership across the street? Was it just because you were open an hour early, and they broke down that morning and they needed you? Know how you are being found and why you are being found, because loyalty only goes so far. You need to know the problems you solve. When you have a story that's authentic, and you know your customers and what value you provide to them, that's how you are able to close sales. And then like at the end is how did your customers find you? And a very important question is, is your marketing working? You've always heard the famous 80-20 rule where 20% provides 80% of your sales. So you need to be able to know through this knowledge is power where your customers are finding you. So you use all this information to help apply your branding. Now we are going to talk about going to your customers if you know where they are. So Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner, again we are talking about great movies here, Ghostbusters and Field of Dreams in the same webinar. So Field of Dreams, the big line is, if you build it, they will come. That's not true of dealerships. That's not true of anything except Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. If people don't know who you are, and people don't have a reason to go to you, there's no point in opening up your dealership. So you need to ask your customers, how do they find you? And make sure you are marketing in the right location, and also know your customer's preferred method of communication. I've talked with a number of people, and a number of people really like getting phone calls. A number of people really hate getting phone calls. A number of people really like getting text messages, or emails, or some people get so many emails they don't even read them. So make sure you know your customers and how they like getting called, emailed, and who you are talking to. Also, an important question is, are you wasting marketing dollars? So you might find out through asking these questions, you are spending a lot of money in places where people aren't. So being able to save that money and put it in different locations is definitely going to help you be able to drive more sales. And then kind of the empty room Russian box is what that is. Are you marketing to an empty room? If you put a billboard on a road no one drives on, no one is going to see that. And then it's also, most of the people who see your billboard aren't going to be your customers. It is good branding if you know where your customers are, and that's their preferred method of communication, that's a great place for you to be. But you don't know that without asking those questions. So the important thing is what everyone wants to do is sell more. Branding helps you sell more, and I will tell you why. There are two types of sales. There are transactional sales, and there are relationship sales. So the transactional sale works like this. You get someone's attention, whether that be on a billboard, on a magazine, on a radio ad, or all over the Internet. Then through reading your description, calling into your dealership, or walking into your dealership, you help build trust. And once you have that trust, and they believe what you say about that machine, you then move into sale. And then once you have a sale, if you are consistent with your branding through the attention and through the trust, you then build into loyalty. And at the end of the day, loyal customers is what you want. We did say earlier loyalty only goes so far, but that's only if you don't know why people are buying from you. So if you can consistently deliver on the same trust factors that led to that sale, you're going to have continued loyalty. So what we didn't mean to jump into is relationship sales. It's basically saying if you are authentic, you have their trust and attention already. It cuts down on your sales cycle. These people now come to you for the machines they want. They're looking for a dozer. They're going to call you because they trust you. They might call you because they want to know if something else is a good deal even, but that's fine because you have their trust. And then from that point it goes trust-sale and that continually looped in with loyalty. And one thing that I would kind of think about there in terms of loyalty is have you ever been a regular anywhere? In grad school I was a regular at a little diner in a small town I lived in in western North Carolina. If you guys aren't in the south, it was a little southern kitchen where fried food and sweet tea is the best way to describe it. And I trusted them. And most restaurants you go in, you look at the menu, you debate for 20 minutes. I'd ask my wife what she's getting and then she'd probably get the same thing that I'm getting. But when I walked in there, I knew what I wanted. They knew what table I wanted to sit at. They brought out the drinks immediately. And so that's the best way to think about the loyalty that you're going to build with your customers is they're going to become regulars to your dealership. And you have them already, but you need to make sure you know why they are those regulars and be able to keep it that way. And one of the biggest things here is being authentic is free. Being consistent with what you tell people and what you deliver is free. Being able to do consistently good branding is free. Getting the message out in certain locations is not, but it's very important that you know that being authentic and any time you walk into Chick-fil-A, them saying my pleasure after you say thank you, that's free. But it's authentic and it carries through all their different locations and that's one reason why people go to them. So to kind of move into this, we've been talking a lot about where your customers are coming from and how they're finding you. And I said in the beginning slide set, in a digital age. So we're going to move into digital is becoming king and in my opinion is king. You're watching this on a computer. You have a cell phone within arm's length. You probably have a laptop, a tablet, a smart watch, a number of devices within arm's length that are all connected to the Internet. So your first interaction and impression for the branding that we've been talking about is more than likely no longer in person. They see one of your Facebook posts. They see you on Instagram if you're on Instagram. They're seeing you in these different locations and that's their first impression of you. So it's very important. So the question is digital has arrived and are you responding and how are you responding? Because this is where most dealerships that I've talked to are struggling to keep up. So it's very important too. If you're not responding, certain dealerships might need to hire someone to focus on digital because that is how people find things now. Your customers are going digital and trust me from being a search engine, we know your customers are going digital. And one of the big questions you need to ask yourself is why customers are going digital and why customers are looking at your online listings is because customers now do comparison shopping and research. I recently bought an air fryer and I am ashamed about the amount of hours I spent researching a $50 air fryer for Arby's curly fries. I spent no life over four hours researching different air fryers because for some reason I thought having the right temperature for these fries was going to make a big difference. And the machines in this industry are a lot more than $50. So it's important to know your customers are doing research. They are comparison shopping. So what does this mean? Your customers have more knowledge typically when they walk into a dealership or they call. You have smarter customers because of the internet. The internet is allowing these people to do all this research and be able to walk in with more knowledge on day one. And one company we have to put a lot of blame on is Amazon. Amazon has changed the way people buy. So when you go online, you're looking at reviews, you're looking at Amazon, you're looking at which ones are prime, which one can get here in two days. And it's important to know that that's how customers are looking for your equipment now. And so one of the biggest things is where are you branding online? And the biggest place you're branding online is your dealership, is your digital dealership, is your URL. So one way I like to talk about this is how do you greet someone walking into your dealership? When someone walks into your dealership, you shake their hand, you get to know them or you hand them a card. You give them something that they can look at while they're walking around. It's also important to know that how does your dealership look? Is your dealership clean? Are the trash cans empty? Are people in suits or are they in a nice t-shirt? And they're able to greet people and that's the branding you're representing. And so then you have to ask yourself is how are you greeting people who are coming to your digital dealership? I like to use the term click-ins. People use walk-ins for dealership. I use click-ins for online. And so you need to look at your website because that is where people are finding you. It's their first impression of your branding is when they click into your website, what are they seeing? So one good tool to do this is visit your website like a customer. Find it on Google. Find it on a search engine. Find it somewhere else. Visit your website and shop for equipment. Make sure it's clean. You keep your dealership clean. You keep the trash cans empty. Do you have a full-size ad that pops up? Do you have something that pops up that people can talk to you the same way you have in a dealership? Do you have the ability to talk back and forth about what's out there? And then is it broken? I worked with a very large dealership a few days ago talking about their website and all of their contact forms didn't work. So they're missing hundreds of contacts a day, a week because they aren't doing simple checks on making sure that their website is working correctly. One important thing to know about your website is it's all about quality over quantity because you want to make sure you are branding to the right people. If you want a lot of traffic, I can get that and most people online can get that pretty easy, but it might be a few million people in India looking for Bollywood stars. So the difference is you'd rather have one person who's looking for equipment than 100 people looking for car seats. So that's one thing you do have to look at in your website is making sure you're also getting the right people on your website. One way to do that is, is your website easy to find online? Can you find it on Google? Can you find it on search engines? And one question to ask your dev team or anyone who really knows a lot about digital marketing is, is it crawlable so that the search engines are able to find you and you're able to start building that trust with search engines that they like? Because that's how a lot of people are looking for equipment. You want people to search for your name. If you do have that trust built up, they're going to be looking for your dealership. They just might Google it first or they might Bing it first and that's how they might find you. So it's important to try to find out if your dealership is showing up in there. What's the source? How do people find me? That goes back to the quality over quantity. Knowing how people find you, how people come on your website is very important because again, this is your digital branding. This is the first interaction a lot of people have with you. And you have to ask those questions of, why did you buy here and how did you find me? And some salespeople don't like to push the question. They typically like to try to move to the sale, but it's a very good idea to really nail down the how did you find me in a solid way so that you can spend your money correctly. And so you know, as I ask sales, one question that's hard for dealerships to answer is, how many sales came from digital leads and can you tell me the source? Do you know that Facebook sold you X number of machines or Facebook sold you zero machines? Maybe we should spend less money there and move the money to somewhere that helps sell more machines or how many leads did each source create? So that's one thing that I would really focus on and I would suggest everyone, if you can't answer that question correctly, that is something I would start thinking about because ultimately at the end of the day, track, track, track and spend your money wisely. Because unlike most other marketing where you put a billboard on the side of the highway and 95% of the people who see it don't care about your dealership or your branding and only 1% do, for digital marketing you can change that. You can only push towards resources that help you sell equipment, that help create leads and it helps you be cost effective with your marketing. And so ultimately with your marketing and your branding is you want to only show your branding to people who need to see it. One of my favorite things is when I worked at Diesel Jobs, the owner of the company, we were one of the larger startups in Asheville, North Carolina but no one knew about us and any time I told people where I worked, I said good, don't go on the website because we only wanted truckers and diesel mechanics and other people who are there to find jobs on our website, because otherwise it doesn't help anybody if other people are visiting your website. So you want people who are actually there to buy. And so own digital is something that kind of relates back into this is your message when they need it. A lot of people when I talk about the Internet, they don't like it because they have bad reviews. Bad reviews are the ability to put your branding out there a little more. So don't delete, respond. Bill Gates once said, your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. So be able to learn from these, be able to respond to them. People like seeing how dealerships respond to adversity, because people are going to say negative things about you. Some people don't – no matter what happens, no matter how many times you say – you help them in different ways or even if you're Chick-fil-A, people throw milkshakes through the window. So it's important to know that you are going to get negative reviews, but you need to respond to those. And if you're deleting them, the Internet never forgets. There is the Wayback Machine. People can visit how pages look before. So a part of your digital branding is how you respond. Is the person responding from social media going to respond to it the same way the CEO does? So make sure you have that consistent reviews and responding for people online. And then remarketing. Remarketing is one of the strongest tools a dealership can use. It's building trust through messaging. So someone visits your website one time to look at a dozer, but then you're able to reinforce your branding and build trust through them looking on social media, through them reading articles on whatever website that they want to read their news on. You show up on the bottom, you're able to consistently help build that trust which also helps build you to the sale in that relationship marketing. And then you also have to ask yourself, do you have access to your digital information? A lot of dealers don't have access to a lot of the information I've been talking about. You need to know that. You need to be able to find out all these things because you need to know how to spend the money correctly online and be able to do it effectively. I was going to say remarketing your brand helps build trust. And I just kind of want to reiterate that point because it's very important. And collecting data is very important because if you're the only one – are you the only one who gets a lead when someone fills out your contact form? Is your company the only one who gets that lead? Or is it going out to your competitors as well? That's very important things you need to be able to ask. Is your data, own it. And I'm not a big fan of all capitals. My uncle likes to type in all caps on Facebook. I try to stop him from it. The only thing I have in all capitals on my notes over here is own it. Is your data, own it. Big data, the reason why Google is a multi-billion dollar company is because they own data. So you need to make sure you own the information coming in. And so that bottom one is correct data. You only have one first impression. When people search for you on different websites, are you consistently showing that same branding? Are you consistently showing them correct things? And is it a machine that's actually still for sale? There are a number of people who visit websites and their first impression is finding a piece of machine that's not for sale. Or a machine that's not for sale. And that's not a good first impression. So it's important to make sure your data is correct across the internet. And it's like putting up a billboard for a machine you already sold. Make sure your data is correct. So we're going to talk about action items. And what you can do today based on what we talked about. And first thing to do is research yourself. If someone Googles your brand, your company, what comes up? That's what your buyers are looking at. So research yourself. Know what the internet is saying about you. And then talk to your customers. Ultimately talking to your customers is going to tell you why they shop with you, why they want to be with you, why they're there. Use that information to generate a plan. Generate a short-term plan and a long-term plan with goals and have steps in there. And once you have that plan, create authentic stories based off of what you've talked about with your customers. Creating those authentic stories and telling those authentic stories. And being authentic is free. Putting the stories out there in different mediums can cost. But like I said with Chick-fil-A, them being consistent with their service or Publix being consistent with their aisles being clean and their service is free. So create those authentic stories. And then go to them. Based on what you learned from your customers, are you advertising in the right spot? Do your customers find you purely online? Do your customers find you off billboards? Do they find you off the back of a little league team's shirt? Know where your customers are finding you so that you can spend money in those locations and make sure you're not only showing your ads to people in Russia. And then own digital. Like we just talked about, respond to reviews. Own your information. Make sure you know who's coming to your website, where they're coming from. Because digital, your website is your digital branding. It's who you are. It's where most people see you before they ever talk to you. And so that's own digital. And that's kind of the main points that I was wanting to get across and leave some time for questions. I haven't had any questions come in yet, but I am here and would like to answer any questions that people have while we have it open. Any questions or thoughts on anything that was just talked about, presented? Yes, some of it was basic and some of it got into a little more detail. So anything that you guys would like to talk more about, please ask now. I'm going to give a few minutes for that and then we'll move to the final slide that shows my contact information if you guys want to be able to reach out to me. I'll go ahead and put that up just in case. That is my cell phone number on there that you can see, work email address, use Equipment Guide, our URL. You can also go to ueguide.com if you just want to learn a little bit more about what I do every day as opposed to giving webinars. And I would love any questions that you guys can think of. I've droned on here for 40 minutes, so anything that you guys would like to have me talk about, I'd love to jump in on. We do have one question here. In terms of tracking what some of the key statistics you evaluate, you most often look at, engagement is one of the biggest keys to look at from a dealer perspective. If you have a low session duration, that means people aren't reading your descriptions that you are writing, if you have descriptions. So make sure you are really looking at session duration, because it takes a minute to be able to dig into all that information. And I think everything in terms of interaction with a brand, so if you are seeing more pages per session, I would also look at the landing page. So if someone lands on your vehicle description page, they typically won't have as many pages per session. But if someone lands on your home page, you are going to see an increased pages per session. So it's very important to break that down and really understand your traffic. Ken asks, how important is social media such as Instagram and Facebook? That's very important in terms of making sure your branding is being consistently seen, and you have a consistent voice. So a lot of remarketing is done through Instagram and Facebook. It's one of the most powerful tools for remarketing. A lot of the times your engagement will not be as high from Instagram and Facebook, because at that point in time someone is not looking for a machine. They are looking for pictures of cats. But them constantly seeing your branding and your image helps you bring top-of-mind awareness. So when someone closes their eyes and thinks about equipment, you constantly showing up on their Facebook and Instagram feed is going to push you towards that top-of-mind awareness. It's going to help you be able to cut through your customer, or cut through everyone else and be able to show up first. And plus, if you are remarketing to them based on people who like your page and everything else like that, you can also advertise sales and upcoming events if you are having a customer appreciation cookout. It's very easy to reach a lot of your customers that way who don't pay attention to email, but they still like to look at their family members on Facebook and Instagram. So it's very important in terms of branding, and just being able to have people repeatedly see your logo, and see your image, and build that top-of-mind awareness. We had two questions. I'll give another minute or two to see if anyone else wants to jump in with another one. And again, my contact information is right there. I'm also on LinkedIn like everyone in the world, so you can also reach out to me on there as well. Here's a question right here. What if I am a dealership and I have a website that is a third-party? How can I see what my web visitors are doing? And should we invest in a website that we own? Third-party websites differentiate vastly. There are some where people have no control over what's on their website. It's a PDF that's just uploaded to the Internet. And there are some third parties who basically give dealers complete control. They are able to see their analytics. They are able to see everything else. They just don't have to deal with hosting. They don't have to deal with all the other things that go into building and running a website. So I think it's just important to know the features and the abilities that come with wherever you are working on your website. Hiring and running a dev team is very expensive. But working with a third party that gives you your information, puts you in control of your digital destiny, and makes sure people can visit your website, and you know where they are coming from, you know where your leads are coming from, and it's your digital branding. So you are putting your best foot forward and it's not a dirty website. It's clean of ads besides your branding. Maybe there's another ad or two. It's important to – the most important thing you can get is the data and the ability to really work with that, and control where you are spending marketing, and make sure your branding is how you want it on your website. Good questions there. I'm going to give you guys another minute or two and then we'll go ahead and let you guys get back to the rest of your busy day or browsing Reddit or Facebook or Instagram or doing whatever you guys need to do for the rest of the day. All right, thank you guys for joining me here this morning. Hopefully you can – some things that you think about, some things that you would like to work with and ponder on, and some things you will think about on your way home. Please reach out to me. Again, cell phone, email, all of the above. I'm more than willing to look at your website, look at the current branding you guys have online and other places, and be able to help you guys with that in any way possible. Use me as a resource and also check out Used Equipment Guide. I've worked here since it – before anything, before we even had employees. So check it out. I'm pretty passionate about it. So if you guys have more questions about what we do there as well, reach out to me there. Thank you guys. Have a good day.
Video Summary
In this webinar, Clint Lowing, Director of Marketing at Used Equipment Guide, discusses the importance of branding and digital marketing for dealerships. He emphasizes the need for authentic storytelling and the importance of understanding your customers and their preferred methods of communication. Lowing also explains the two main types of sales, transactional sales and relationship sales, and how branding can help drive customer loyalty and trust. He highlights the significance of digital marketing and owning your digital presence, including your website and social media platforms. Lowing emphasizes the importance of tracking and analyzing key statistics to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. He concludes by providing actionable steps for dealerships, such as researching your brand's online presence, talking to your customers, creating authentic stories, and focusing on digital marketing strategies.
Keywords
webinar
branding
digital marketing
dealerships
customer understanding
customer loyalty
digital presence
marketing effectiveness
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