Project Management

Even used in the most basic of ways, project management tools keep good ideas visible and gets things done.  Some of these tools cost as little as $19 per month and help even today’s time challenged dealer employees become experts at developing plans the move dealers forward.  Visit www.basecamphq.com for a great example.

Business CRM systems

I used to use a term when managing my dealership, “garbage in, garbage out”.  It was a soapbox talk once each quarter about the importance of gathering contact information.  In exchange we vowed to use the data to their benefit. Loosely defined, a CRM system of any kind should enable every dealer to automate marketing and follow up processes, be connected to the website, push and manage leads and give management quick and easy ways to see who is doing what.

It should NOT require the sales staffs to become data entry clerks. If you did a survey of your dealers, how many are on their way to being effective in today’s hyper competitive environment?  Are there leading organizations within your organization you might point to to help replicate processes across the board?

Search Engine Optimization

The average dealer has very little chance to keep up with Google’s latest algorithm.  Search changes so fast, with video, Google Places, Google Plus, Social Networking and other critically important functions.  The average dealer is behind in the game before they start to play it.

But the fact remains… most consumers are using the internet, so how does each dealer find a company they trust that understands THEIR business and customers?  Find that partner and the internet can effectively double a sales staff and reduce overall marketing spend if a plan is put together to reduce current spend in other, dated media categories.

Sales Force & Marketing Automation

We are still fundamentally about relationships and personal closes.  However, how these relationships are now created and CAN be managed has fundamentally shifted and many of the available technologies are off the radar to our industry to keep our staffs OUT of the small, tedious follow up processes, and focused on the personal and closing aspect of sales.  The web and mobile give a dealer an opportunity to generate a massive amount of interest and follow up on auto-pilot in a completely error free way.

If you surveyed your dealers, would they be able to clearly articulate an understanding of this concept and point to consistent execution of this part of a plan?

Technician Recruiting & Retention

The labor pool of qualified techs is shrinking, but you’d be surprised to see Google’s analytics on the sheer volume of search traffic for “technician” related job terms.  We all know it… techs change jobs for a buck an hour, the wrong mood or working too many warranty or flat rate jobs.

Good internet strategy these days will include an employment landing page that is optimized with video, text and might include a local PPC campaign to drive them into a dealers page.  Keep the  pipeline full but telling them your story, getting to know them, they’ll get to know you and you’ll add consistency to this key aspect of running your business.  It is much more controllable than you think.

Lead Generation & Management

It’s worth pointing out that generating and managing leads, while connected to many of these disciplines, is a uniquely different set of processes that need to occur internally and externally at your dealerships.  We had a 16 point checklist we lived and died by, from calling back in 30 seconds to responding 4 times in 48 hours with an internet lead.

If you really dial in this aspect and take the guesswork out of it, it’ll pay off exponentially on all levels, from new sales through the aftermarket and beyond.  Define and develop these processes and take the guess work of a lead that can lead to sales and profits that pay for a lead generating campaign 1000X over!

Direct Response Marketing

This is the art of producing marketing material that tells a customer or prospect what to do.  It’s kind of like asking for the order, but you combine online and offline efforts to essentially tell someone where to go, what they’ll get, what’s in it for them and capturing their information.

Unfortunately, the art of writing headlines, sub-headlines, offers and calls to action on every part of a dealers marketing material is not done that consistently, so they lose a good opportunity to use some very cost-effective ways to create new customers.  Some basic fundamentals here go a very long way!

Graphic Design Companies

Good companies help a dealer create a great first impression, When they use a logo, images, web addresses, 800#, calls-to-action, offers and everything tied together so the dealer is not missing the key opportunities to trigger something within a prospect, they can help multiply the sales opportunities our reps miss when they’re not present.

When really done correctly, these same companies will help dealers plan to lower costs by printing multiple campaigns, or working with other dealers to lower costs.  They will genuinely act like they care about the dealer’s bottom line instead of just getting a check for the job completed.

Website Design & Development Companies

All companies are not created equal.  A good company will have a STRONG emphasis on development, Web 2.0 & 3.0 standards (social, mobile and user based designs), a clear understanding of the process a visitor goes through when visiting, a conversion strategy and the willingness to test and offer suggestions related to search and user behavior.  These same companies will proudly point to metrics that indicate success, and have many happy customers and testimonials.

If you used a typical set of dealer product/service search terms in each respective geographic area, it would depress you to see how few of the dealers are even on the first page, let alone the first position or two of organic, or natural search.  The get beat out by random articles, by accident really, and they literally have the ability to control ALL of this.

And, frankly, it’s pretty easy to do with a good plan and consistent management.

Database Management

Most dealer databases are a wreck.  The “management” more often falls to sales, IT, marketing, a little of this and a little of that.  If you used the USPS records to match addresses, you wouldn’t be surprised to have 35% or more not match records.

The contact information can be a mess, multiple contacts for the same record, a sales rep that left with his database and the company didn’t know half of what was was going on in the first place.  All of this can be remedied with an annual plan that ensures this discipline becomes part of a culture, not a “one off” annual event.  But, there’s that “plan” word again.  It simply takes discipline to understand the process and do something about it.

Customer Surveys

In today’s mobile world, how cool would it be to collect customer surveys in as little as minute, across all customer touch points, by employee and branch location and send a notification back to Human Resources when an employee is not doing their job?  Intervention is immediate, and powerful.

The customer survey methods that can literally drive a dealer’s customer satisfaction levels through the roof are there to be embraced, not run from or seen as one of those areas they get around to “eventually”.

Dealer Process Programs

I added this in at the end, because the art of sitting down and systematically identifying areas of improvement can, well, be improved!  Many employees have great ideas but are unwilling or unable given their location to come forward.

What methods are dealers using to collect employee input and systematically map out better processes that save time, money and keep employees happy?  It’s something that warrants looking at when we’re all tasked with doing more with less.

Of course, there is more to what is above, but I thought I would put this together to group some things together that helped my dealership move forward, and what I typically get asked about in one way or another.

To Your Success…

Good News: They DO have the internal resources, time and can execute a vision that will drive them forward.  Listed below, please find a short summary of things to consider as dealers get real in today’s digital world:

• Internal Support: With some of the young talent they have, dealers can completely and utterly change how leads are created using employees that have the perfect skill set to execute on a digital plan.  This plan might include mastering the Google ecosystem, creating and using video, understanding and applying good social media strategy and a host of other technologies they live and breathe every day
• Things They Do: On a daily basis, from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Sharing and other key activities, these same employees are extremely well versed in the technologies that the evolving dealership will need to harness to manage their current and emerging generation of customers.
• Skills to Look For: Post a job looking for certain characteristics, have them bring their phone with them to the interview, and ask them to show you how they 1) Upload and use YouTube to search, share or have fun, 2) Use Facebook on a daily basis, and do they understand how to run contests, promotions OR know where to look for best practices for these, 3) Use mobile apps on a daily basis.  That’s just for starters, but you get the picture.
• Hours Per Week: A proper social media, content generating and other campaign elements are centered around key activities that should take no more than 10 hours per week. These activities are intertwined with a website, making the website found online,  mobile apps, and other technologies your current and soon-to-be new customers DEMAND a dealer use.
• Summary of Technologies: From Facebook, to website Content Management Systems, to SEO strategy and YouTube, these technologies you can substantially improve how dealers market and generate leads.  And there is a defined order and structure to use these effectively WITH a dealer business system.

Let me know if you’d like a complete job description and posting for your dealers, injected with some mild humor for our industry.  They can then add to it or customize based on their needs.  Good selling!

To Your Success…

4 Main Reasons for Apps

App, this, app that!  Strip away ALL of the hype and really understand why apps have evolved.  Faster recall of information, reducing minutes into seconds, better analytics… the list goes on.  But if it doesn’t solve a business problem, there’s no reason to consider them in the first place.  An app needs to at least address one of the following areas:

• Improve revenue by engaging more customers

• Decrease costs by making a costly process more efficient

• Improve customer satisfaction by making processes faster and more efficient

• Solve basic customer management and retention problems, act quickly on the data

If an app is not doing one of these, it might be a waste of time, money and resources.  And we have an abundance of neither. IF it applies using some of these four basic criteria, then move on to assessing where you are, where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

Assessing Your Situation

Information Gathering: Get to know internal stakeholders, leverage or conduct user research; look at competitors and market trends; assess the constantly evolving mobile landscape

Evaluation of Mobile Practices: Analyze each aspect of your mobile practice in light of your goals; create a project prioritization matrix; devise a model for accurate mobile benefit analysis

Definition & Dissemination: Articulate your business goals; assess each goal against specific mobile objectives and capabilities, get buy-in from appropriate teams as needed.

Of course, there is plenty more than that to develop a mobile road map that can serve your company for years to come.  But, if you do it right, it will be one of the single biggest, positive return on investments your company will undertake today and well into the future.

If you’d like to discuss a mobile road map for your business, please give us a call.

To Your Success…

Key Concept: Mobile is one piece of the puzzle. It should augment good web and communications strategy. Mobile might be considered the “cliff notes” to good desktop and web strategy, but it is essential to address this as more users turn to mobile solutions.

Start Small: It’s important to look for quick wins. There is potential for low level entry points projects to experience the efficiencies first hand, manage buy-in and feedback and design a true improvement to any existing business process.

Deal Customization: There is opportunity to bring the traditional “brick and mortar” goal of more customer spend  into the mobile experience by offering deals, discounts and incentives to either spend more, return for more services in the future or generally be notified of something they’d like to hear more about.

Product & Service Reviews: How you collect, use testimonials and case studies that emphasize the “positive” to combat any negative reviews of products and/or services is an easy and important element to good customer service strategy.  Mobile make this as easy as possible, and bypasses some of the confusing social media strategy that is out there.

People & Story: Mobile can potentially weave a story using testimonials, case studies to highlight success stories with products and services very easily.  Video and photo compression speeds and technology, and a recorded happy customer testimonial are easy to generate, share and be notified when a customer has an issue that needs managing.

Product Feedback Loop: Mobile can assist with creating product feedback loops and improving customer response times via direct messaging. This can assist with collecting data and managing negative reviews when customers aren’t happy with a product or service.

Mobile & The Desktop: The goal is a good user experience, one that is connected to both desktop and mobile devices. Good SEO strategy accounts for the fact that search engines index desktop web platforms differently than mobile platforms, so it’s important to design user experiences that make this as seamless as possible.

Needlessly Complex: Many projects are needlessly complex because they don’t begin with the end in mind. A good discovery process would reveal ways to ensure the mobile initiatives succeed at a simple level first (kind of like driving a 49 Buick, reliable, consistent compared to a high performing car). You can generally get where you need to go, but it’s important to understand the pace that best meets needs… and will lead to success.

Planning for New Technologies: The pace of change and introduction of new mobile devices and platforms is happening quickly, and revealing incredible opportunities for those companies that plan properly.  Some brief topics to consider might be:

• Windows Phone 8: it is a viable browser for first time and the technology on par with other (IOS, Android etc.)

• Blackberry 10: It’s finally a good browser, but there is poor public opinion, history and the future might be questionable (from battery replacement… seriously?… to 1% of total market, to acquisition, to “who knows”).  The point is, it’s good to know about and plan for.

• IE 10 Browser Possibilities: The newly released browser makes many things possible now to a huge user group of your customers.

• HTML5 & Javascript & Animation: Pardon the super tech speak, but Windows Phone 8 shored up deficiencies with these technologies that will improve your customers user experience and allow you to promote your business much more effectively.

• Project Experience: Today, experience is not measured in terms of years, it’s by project. Windows Phone 8 is an example… not many development companies have experience, yet is vitally important to plan for any medium

Why Mobile?

This section is for another upcoming post, but look at your needs as a business first, then begin to understand why mobile might be a fit for you.  A super short overview might look start with these basic areas:

• Internal Efficiencies: Improve processes, both external, customer facing AND internal communication strategy
• Savings/Analysis: Discovery processes will reveal multiple opportunities for savings
• Employee Feedback: From notification systems, to chat, to closed loop process improvement, mobile provides this opportunity

Data Storage

And, lastly, the question I get asked most often about has to do with data storage.  The quick and dirty answer is it’s hosted on the cloud, is safe and secure and is backed up.  And you access and control the data like you do on your smart phone.  But, it’s smarter to NOT start with Cloud anything… it’s like a mystery word that scares people off.  Instead, start with high level, understandable concepts like:

• How is the data managed?
• Who has access to it?
• What are the security and back up plans?

Big Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

When undertaking a mobile project of any kind or scope, there are a few key points to consider first to make this a successful business initiative:

• Wrong Perspective, Web vs. Mobile: Too often, they are looked at as competing initiatives. Instead, they should be viewed as complimenting each other, NOT as separated platforms.  This preserves the integrity of your team that may not be familiar with the mobile possibilities, but will be required to help this initiative succeed.
• Lack of Internal Focus: More often than not, we tend to start outwardly to customer facing initiatives, when internal efficiencies can be gained just as quickly, and possibly more powerfully to lower costs, improve time and communication between internal stakeholders.
• Assumptions: With mobile, it’s best not to assume anything is or isn’t possible.  But, ask LOTS of questions about the possibilities and you’ll soon get excited about the possibilities.

Anyways, that’s a good dump of information that will soon be elaborated on during an upcoming webinar and additional posts designed to educate our industry about the possibilities.  If you have any questions about what you see here, please let us know.

To Your Success…

I just read an article by Jamie Turner of the 60 Second Marketer that blew me away. I wanted to share some of the highlights with you, because if you’ve ever needed to convince someone (including OEM’s, dealers or management in general) that the world has gone mobile, some of these facts ought to do it.

Just The Facts Please

Jamie asked Cory Gaddis at Mobilize Worldwide to gather some essential facts about mobile marketing that everyone should know and these are just a few of what he came up with (along with my thoughts):

• According to Nielsen, 30 million consumers watch television content via their mobile phones.  Yes, this includes your customers, both today, but increasingly so in the future.
  

• Half of smart phone owners have scanned QR codes and 18% have used the QR codes to complete a purchase

• The average amount of time smartphone and tablet users spend with mobile applications reached 94 minutes in December 2011, more than the 72 minutes they spend on the Web

• Nielsen reports the majority of 25-34 and 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (64% and 53% respectively).  These are your future customers!
• Gartner says that by 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. Which is a reminder for all those web designers to brush up on their mobile skills if they want to stay in business.   The way mobile websites are built for smart phones are fundamentally different than browser based sites.
• Exact Target (a leading edge email platform) reports that 16% of smartphone users report that they have made a purchase as a result of a marketing message they received on their phone. 55% purchased as a result of an email they received on their mobile device. Turns out email isn’t dead after all… especially if the e-mail is timely, relevant and has benefit to your customers
• Nielsen also said that in Q3 2011, teens increased their mobile data consumption by 256% over the prior year. These teens will be employed by your customers at some point… make it easy to do business with them!

• Inneractive found that there is a direct correlation between the size of a mobile device’s screen and the click-through rate (CTR) the device yields for mobile advertising. For instance, the iPhone yields a 4.35% CTR with a 3.5″ screen, compared to a 6.61% CTR on the iPad’s 9.7″ screen.

While it’s easy to dismiss these little facts, you’d be doing so at your own peril.  The world is going mobile, and if you’re not moving in that direction, you’re falling behind.  Make sure mobile is part of your overall marketing plan.

This market is exploding and the only thing more exciting than watching it happen is figuring out new ways to take advantage of the opportunities it presents.

If you want to check out the other fun facts that Jamie and Cory found, you can read the entire article here:

Be sure to look for our next post where we’ll be showing you how delivering value doesn’t always require a huge investment of money.

To Your Success…

Marketing 101 and Your App

Promoting a mobile app is just the same as marketing your business-you need to implement a variety of strategies that all work together to make it happen. The good news, however, is that these strategies do not need to be complex, involved, or expensive. The key is consistency and making sure you and your app regularly appear in front of your target audience.

With that in mind, here are a few ideas to get you thinking about ways ways to promote your app today.  As with all things, traction takes time, but you can begin to gain some by trying these out:

• Promote it on your Facebook Page. Make sure all your fans know that it is available and then entice them to download it with special offers.
• Use barcodes in your advertising. 2D mobile barcodes can be scanned with camera phones, sending people directly to the app stores to download your app. Place the barcode on flyers, brochures, menus, displays, or anywhere else you see fit.
• Put it in your email signature. How many emails do you send out each day? Put a link to your app at the bottom of each one and share it with the people you connect with the most. Ask them to tell others about it, too.
• Continue to add new features. Each time you add a new feature, shoot out of press release to sites like PRWeb.com and industry trade publications to let the world know about it.
• Capture those reviews. Get users to review your app and then place their comments on the front page of your website. It’s one thing to tell your customers about how great your app is. But it’s even better when they hear it from someone else.

Those are just five of the virtually limitless possibilities for app promotion. As with all of your marketing, it’s all of these pieces that work together to add up to something very big.

To Your Success…

According to the latest analysis of global mobile traffic by the network company Cisco Systems, mobile devices will outnumber humans by the end of this year. Cisco also predicts that by 2016, there will be 10 billion mobile-connected devices around the world and networks will be carrying 130 exabytes of data each year. (That’s the equivalent of 33 billion DVDs.) On the other hand, there will only be 7.3 billion humans on the planet at that time.

More Proof Required?

To get a further idea of how rapidly this market is expanding, consider this: the report also says that mobile data traffic in 2011 was eight times the size of the global Internet in 2000.

Remember the Yellow Pages back in 2000? I can clearly remember people telling us we were crazy to cancel our contracts back in 1998, the internet was a fad and it was
” a relationship business”.  It IS a relationship business, but the way that you connect, create and manage them has fundamentally changed.

It’s easy to ignore these trends and think we’ll catch up if/when fad actually becomes a trend.  The fact is, most companies in our industry considered the Internet still in its infancy in 2000. But the reality is that it had already ramped up and become a regular part of our daily lives by that time.  So when you consider that there is already 8X as much traffic on mobile platforms alone, it’s clear this industry is accelerating at a pace we have never experienced before.

Here are some other key finding from the study: Average smartphone usage nearly tripled in 2011, from 55 MB per month in 2010 to 150 MB per month.

• Smartphones represent only 12 percent of global handsets in use today, but they handle over 82 percent of total global handset traffic.
• In 2011, the typical smartphone generated 35 times more mobile data traffic (150 MB per month) than the typical basic-feature cell phone (which generated only 4.3 MB per month of mobile data traffic).

Our Industry, Our Time

The fact is, our customers have gone mobile and we ‘re missing out on the single best way to connect with them.  When is the last time you went 5 minutes without looking at your phone?  Your customers are doing the same thing, and they’ll be doing it more often in the future.  When you have an app that let’s them choose their settings and notification schedule, you give them control.  With simple push messaging, you’ll be in front of them more often with the right message about what you sell and service.

Plan for this trend starting today.  For more information on the EquipmentFX App Suite, click here and begin to visualize your mobile world today…

To Your Success…

How to Get Your Customers to USE Your App

Even if you’re giving away your app for free, customers still need a compelling reason to download it. There needs to be something in it for them, otherwise they won’t bother to go through the effort of putting it on their device. (Yes, it’s amazing what we consider an “effort” these days.)

Are you offering coupons or discounts to app users? Are you providing information or incentives they can’t get anywhere else? Whatever it is you’re doing, you need to always deliver value with your app. There are countless processes your customers would love to see improved, but think through very clearly the steps you have to go through to actually design your app so it takes little to no effort to download, use and receive updates from your company.

Deliver Value

And value isn’t just about the information you deliver. It’s also about the way you deliver it. You don’t need to go over the top, but there should be at least a little production value to your app. Something that puts you in a positive light and doesn’t send people running the other way.

That’s the benefit of this new app revolution compared to the Web revolution of the 1990s. We’re just a few years into this, but mobile apps have always had the potential to look very stylish and to be simple to use. We aren’t all making this up from scratch like we were when the Internet first came along.

So there’s really no excuse to deliver anything less than worthwhile value to your customers. What that entails depends on the business you are in and the expectations of your customers. But get creative and develop an app they’ll enjoy and use time and again.

Make a list of ideas, by department, and map out a few of the steps that you currently go through that need changing.  From this, great things can start to happen in the App revolution

It’s worth the investment. And it doesn’t even have to be a big one.

To Your Success…

Yesterday, I participated in a webinar led by two thought leaders in the mobile app space.  The conversation centered around statistics, trends and practical applications (like, almost everyone can use one, but they might not think about it… yet).

Good equipment marketing and marketing service companies should think long and hard about some practical application and customer needs.

Shocking Statistics Not Heard By Many

You’ll see plenty of upcoming posts on mobile applications from us, but for now, take a look at some statistics that should get your attention:

• There are currently over 5.3 billion mobile phones compared to 1.5 billion PC’s
• There have been over 100 billion “push” messages sent to mobile phone users (ads pushed to smart phones with a clear “call to action”
• 97% of “push” messages reach their intended audience, most are viewed completely within 5 minutes
• Current email open rates run around 4-10% (10% on a VERY good day)
• There have been over 18 billion downloads from Apple’s “APP store
• There have been over 10 billion downloads of Google’s Droid apps
• There are over 1 million smart phones being turned on every day!
• It is estimated that within 18 months, there will be over 2 million smart phones being turned on every day

Mobile Marketing is the most powerful media ever invented… The New York Times

So What?

The way people consume information is fundamentally changing.  Mobile apps and tablets are taking over as people (yes… your customers!) are now looking for apps to solve problems instead of using Google to find information.

There are four basic drivers of app creation that customers (this means you and your business) care about:

• Leads: How will mobile apps generate leads?
• Customers: How will mobile apps create more customers?
• Sales: How will mobile apps help increase sales?
• Exposure: How will mobile apps increase exposure to our customers?

Plan Your Future

In the past mobile apps post we discussed ways to think differently about this opportunity.  It does and will continue to apply to your business.

Don’t be that guy that thinks it won’t apply to your business and equipment marketing plan. Take charge and start planning for this today!

To Your Success…

Then again, neither are most people that post videos. If you’ve seen the videos that have garnered millions of views, more often than not they are not made by experts.  They are often spontaneous, without a thought to optimizing video for the search engines.  They go viral because they are funny, shocking or have that hard-to-define quality about them.

Good, strategic video marketing in our business  likely will never have that same effect, but we can drive in substantial traffic to our site and build followers of our business with a few simple, practical strategies. Good marketing service companies should have a comprehensive plan for this as part of your online marketing strategy.

Practical Steps to Own Your Online Space

Video marketing is becoming more important literally every day.  The video marketing post last week highlighted why this is so important.  We’ll have more posts coming topic, but for this post, we’ll focus on a few more tips and video marketing strategies to help you visualize more of the steps required to build your online presence:

Five Basic Rules to Follow

• Good Lighting: Keep the light source at a 30-45 degree angle in relation to the subject
• Background: Don’t have a distracting background, show only what is important
• Hold Still: Limit the movement and running around, keep the shots simple and well framed
• Come From afar and Get Close: Establish the setting, then move in closer
• Sound: Try and get natural sounds (no background noise) when interviewing a customer for testimonials

Edit Your Video and Make it Short

There is some of great, easy-to-use software to do this by yourself, or assign to a talented person within your organization.  Beware the perpetual “snackers”, a term used for those that seldom watch the end of a video:

• iMovie: An Apple product that comes with any Mac computer
• Windows Movie Maker: Similar to iMovie, it comes free with Windows
• Final Cut Express: A bit more advanced for those that have to have it just right
• Adobe Premier: A professional level editing product with lots of features
• Under Two Minutes: Professional service firms recommend this as the optimum length
• Cool Tip: Put your website address on the bottom so the prospects know how to reach you

Video and Search Engine Optimization

This will be another upcoming post, but keep in mind search engines LOVE video.  So, when you make your video and upload it to YouTube, the basic strategy to get your video and company found is to properly tag, title and describe your video so it becomes indexed properly by the search engines.

Details Make a HUGE Difference

Once you get into a routine to share your story using video using the described techniques, the power of video often becomes as important as having an entire website optimized for the search engines.  One video done right can be a lethal tool in your equipment marketing tool kit!

To Your Success…