This month’s edition of CarDealer Magazine finds G-Forces’ Tim Smith looking at how auto dealers can survive the recession by finding the marketing campaign that works for them, and sticking to it.

A recent newspaper article from a ‘noted’ psychologist declared optimism as the key to professional success in a recession – we’ll fair better if we’re smiling cheerfully. Thankfully this article was printed in the paper’s science section rather than business and for good reason.

Business advice from a psychologist usually found analysing body language on an Orwellian-titled reality-show is not the best advice for a company operating in a recession.

Blind optimism is more of a danger than an answer for business. Simply smiling and getting on with it is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand while loss-making habits continue.

What will help companies get through these turbulent times and avoid the red ink being used for their statements is finding what they do best, sticking to it and seeing it through.

Take, for example, the high street music stores: one teetering over the edge and one gone before it was time for the January sales. Compare such lacklustre performance to a music shop like Rough Trade who are currently thriving and the “find what works best and stick with it” rule applies. Rough Trade sell only music, you don’t step through the doors only to battle books,  emblazoned shirts and mp3 accessories before you get to the music in a supposed music store.

While Auto dealers aren’t about to start selling box sets of the latest American sitcom on dvd, the need to find what works best and stick with it still applies for success when it comes to marketing your dealership. The importance of web marketing for your automotive website and dealership is well documented and the best way to find success in a recession is to find which marketing campaigns work for you and stick with them.

A full understanding of which marketing campaigns are working well for you and which aren’t is vital. There are many good tools available to analyse traffic generated from online marketing, including Google Analytics and Webtrends, and just as many – Mediahawk or BDM -that track success of the phone-based campaigns. However, to fully grasp which of your campaigns are working for you and warrant further investment, a program that collates online and offline data, such as Net Director LeadBeast, is ideal.

By collating information from both online and offline tracking, what marketing campaign is working for your dealership becomes clear. All users of LeadBeast have noted how significantly lower cost-per enquiry is from online marketing compared to offline.

It’s still important to note that balance is imperative but there is still too much credence on offline marketing. The pendulum is swinging toward web marketing and will continue to do su until the correct weighting is found for effective marketing strategies.

Only by investing in online marketing campaigns and sticking to them will dealers become increasingly optimistic. When the dust settles after the economic implosion you’ll be poised to take an even bigger bite of the market and reap the rewards of your hard work.

As part of our continuing growth, G-Forces Web Management LTD is pleased to welcome Steve Cooper to the team as Head of Enterprise Business. Steve has worked within the digital mobile, Internet, TV  and print media industries for over 15 years and was one of the founders of Sportal, and help enable the IPO of Eunite to JD Williams in 2001 for £17.8m.

Steve established the Film2fone group of companies and, as Managing Director, raised venture capital and headed the sales and marketing function for 4 years. Most recently, Steve was Managing Director of Lightmaker Tunbridge Wells. 

Steve’s main remit is the championing our lead tracking software LeadBeast and strengthen range and quality of services we can offer our clients.

Welcome aboard Steve!

As the clocks spring forward an hour, the Sun decides to shed some light across the wonderful Kent countryside around our offices, Spring is clearly in the air and in keeping with the new-feeling in the air, we’re thrilled to have launched three more websites over the last week. 

Given our wide range of services, it’s fitting that this week’s launches represent completely different industries. DC Automobiles in Surrey approached us looking to create a new website to better represent their offline standing and wide range of used cars and motoring services. Making full use of our expertise in creating award-winning automotive websites and our content management software from NetDirector, the new site for DC Autombiles is highly functional and offers a great look at their cars and even a live-chat service so visitors to the site can talk directly to a member of their team for more info.

Meanwhile, nestled elsewhere in Kent,  Penumbra Blinds of Tunbridge Wells have been specialising in the design, manufacture, supply and installation of internal and external blinds, curtains and awnings since 1991. This week we were happy to set their new website live too. While the company is based in Tunbridge Wells they’ve got representation across the region and offer their services into London and the Home Counties. Their new website – built with the NetDirector Content Managment Solutions – offers representation of all their services and looks pretty good too!

KLC, offering a complete in-house turnkey design and build service, create inspiring spaces to work in and so they apporached G-Forces to build them an equally inspiring website. With a crisp, clear and effective layout, the new KLC site offers an indepth look into their services with some great visuals and flash animation, show casing some truly stunning environments they’ve created. 

We’ve got many more sites poised and almost-ready to “go live” so stay tuned for further details and check out our clients area for a fuller picture of the work we’ve done.

In this month’s edition of Car Dealer Magazine, G-Forces’ Tim Smith looks at why increasing amounts of companies are moving their marketing budgets away from print and into online marketing and the importance of the medium during a recession.

As stated in my previous column, marketing and advertising remains an important and key element of your business during a recession and one of the most effective ways of delivering your message to the widest possible target audience is through online advertising. 

The internet has grown exponentially since its commercial introduction in the early nineties and, as every new medium consumes its predecessor, so too has the amount of budget given over to online advertising from budgets. 

In the UK alone, spending on internet advertising reached £1,682.5 million in the first half of 2008, a massive increase of 21% year-over-year. This was in a pre-recessive market place and while marketing budgets overall are predicted to decline over the coming year, the percentage amount of budgets given over to online advertising is still predicted to grow.

Research from Netimperative gives a clear example of the import now placed on online advertising. While 31% of advertisers will decrease their television expenditure and 40% of businesses are lowering their newspaper ad spending, 73% of businesses will increase their online ad spending.

From a personal perspective, an increasing amount of our automotive clients have been reducing their offline marketing spends in favour of web marketing and advertising as it has greater results in terms of cost-efficiency.

But why? Well, put it this way: if video did, indeed, kill the radio star, then the internet took video, along with radio and television, and bought it to an even wider and audience then let them share it with their friends via social media sites. Not only that but the sheer size of the online audience is one that advertisers can no longer ignore and now serves as a reflection of the demographic make-up of the UK as a whole.

If the rumoured 85% of advertising pre-internet went unnoticed there’s potential for online advertising to prove equally ineffective given the size of the audience. In fact, a streamlined and targeted online advertising campaign can not only lower that percentage but, by aiming your message at an audience with a known interest in your product, can increase the chances of conversion.

Automotive dealers can now focus their online advertising and deliver it to their target audience be it through advertisements on motoring blogs, automotive forums or PPC advertising on specific search terms. In short: online advertising gets the message delivered to those who want to see it when they want to see it and are thus more likely to follow up on it. 

As companies streamline their budgets and search for more cost-effective and result-driven advertising campaigns, it’s no surprise that the spend on online advertising and web marketing is predicted to continue growing with a 17% growth expected for 2010. 

In his recent column in Car Dealer Magazine, G-Forces’ Tim Smith discusses the importance of marketing and web marketing during a recession. 

The automotive industry, according to Peter Mandelson, is “in the frontline of the economic downturn” having fallen “faster and further than any other sector since the summer.”

The media doesn’t help, playing up every market downturn and spewing continual negativity and uncertainty into the collective consciousness just to fill airtime. Uncertainty delays decisions and creates confusion around business.

However, research shows that businesses that are pro-active and continue to advertise and increase their market share reap the rewards when the market bounces back.

McGraw- Hill research, analysing 600 companies between 1980-85, found that after the ’81-’82 recession, companies that had kept advertising saw sales rise 256% over those who had not.

My own experience is backing this up with many of our customers reporting record sales months. G-Forces have many delighted Directors and Dealer Principles enthusing about the Christmas period and the start to 2009.

This is national, too: a well-known Scottish dealer recording their best Christmas ever, a Midlands-based car supermarket breaking all-time sales records and many of our South East clients amazed by how good business is.

So what differentiates them from their competitors and is responsible for such stellar performance in this economy? To my mind it’s their attitude and the way they run their companies. It’s no coincidence that G-Forces is employed by some of the most forward-thinking and progressive main dealers in the UK. It’s this attitude, combined with their belief in embracing every sales and marketing avenue available and delivering premium service levels to customers that continually drives innovation throughout their businesses.

Peter Vardy views his website as his fifth dealership. This philosophy has meant a commitment to building a quality service around the internet.

His internet team are very knowledgeable about the website, monitor everything and are proactive in improving their web presence. They treat their website as a critical part of their marketing armoury by complementing print and other offline marketing with their online activities. The internet means they can counteract a diminishing local market by reaching further afield.

Advertising Age recently stated that “recessions offer unprecedented opportunities to market in an environment of relatively less noise as others around you are cutting back”. Whilst risk is ever apparent in business and spending on marketing is the last thing most businesses want to do right now, if you aren’t moving forward, you’re sinking.

Markets expand and contract over time for many reasons; be they economic, political, social or technological. The Automotive industry is currently contracting yet everybody I talk to is looking past the recession to brighter times ahead. This demonstrates belief in the long-term viability of the automotive market from business owners.

Logic dictates that if you don’t believe you can make money out of it, you’ll exit the market and go and sell something else… like websites, iphones or wind turbines. Establish a commitment to the market then back it up. Generate sales, continue to improve your business and gain market share. This means performing the same basic business functions even though times are tougher. If you don’t someone else will.