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OPINION: What You Need to Know About Leads

A picture of Ron Wheeler

Today, virtually every dealer is proclaiming…“Leads, leads, leads—we need more leads!”

Times are challenging. As we head into the latter part of the year, we are putting more pressure on leads.

Without a doubt, leads are the lifeblood of today’s dealership. Everyone’s goals are the same:
“I need more leads to maintain my market share or to grow my market share.”

So how do you do this?

First, the most critical item for you today: know that no silver bullet exists to help you gain leads. Avoid getting sold by less-than-authentic claims about one item that will save the day. Too many people will promise the moon and deliver sand—empty promises with very little follow-through.

You are still in a tough market and you need to pivot and adjust to capitalize on your market’s traffic. Traffic volume is different from market to market.

Your knowledge may not be up to speed on all the strategies available. More important, you must understand what actions increase leads in a challenging market.

Here is the secret behind the curtain: You have to plan for it.

I am here to help you plan for success. Let’s start with a great marketing plan’s basics.

The master plan has three legs: inventory, advertising and sales staff. All three need to be participating at equal levels. I will leave the sales staff up to you and focus on inventory and advertising.

Up to the Minute

In today’s struggling market, the most significant missing asset for dealers is real-time information. Many dealers try to gather data using various methods, which takes an incredible amount of time. The information is crucial in a struggling market, and the missing piece for 98% of you is real-time sales data.

Collecting the needed information requires time, help and possibly both.

Real-time data can be collected today in one of two ways. Some dealers are tracking the information by hand as best they can. This manual process can be very time-consuming but is the only option some dealerships have.

Third-party vendor solutions are coming to market but many are not yet available. These technology platforms will bring automation to the process and speed up dealers’ ability to examine sales data to capitalize on trends as they happen.

Let me ask a few questions now.

How do your sales compare this month against your main competitors’? Who is selling the most so far?

How do your month-to-date sales compare with last month’s?

What are your sales results for travel trailers, fifth wheels, motorhomes and used RVs?

What price points are selling best in your market, last month and this month to date?

You might be able to answer how your store is faring but not how the store is performing compared with your market or best competitors. You could make a few calls to determine what others are selling, but you cannot depend on the information’s reliability.

Imagine if you knew which RVs are selling at your competitors, what price points, all in real time. Could you adjust your marketing with high confidence?

I will answer this for you: Absolutely.

Imagine another scenario. In the first 10 days of the month, you have sold 10 more RVs than your strongest competitor. Usually, you are even.

Your first question should be, “Why?” Based on last month’s data, you saw fifth wheel sales increasing, so you boosted your digital marketing dollars. You sent an exclusive fifth wheel email to your database and to an in-market conquest database.

Just like that, you are receiving more leads and your plan is working.

Let’s do more!

In most dealers’ worlds, they would not know their competitors’ sales results for an additional 45-60 days. Time is a valuable asset to lose. Can you envision buying stocks on data 45-60 days old?

Your pivot might be to realize your competitor is selling low-end travel trailers quickly. Why is that the case? The first items to check are the fast-selling price points, then comparing them with your pricing on similar RVs.

The Right Combination

Leads derive from a simple formula: desire, inventory, price and awareness of inventory and price. To obtain more leads, you need to discover the market’s desire in real time.

The key lesson here is to present the right products with the correct pricing and be confident you are fishing in the right pond. Real-time data is essential. You cannot run an effective business without this information. Don’t be handicapped. Figure it out.

Spend more money when you have identified the month’s niche. We need every last lead we can get. Ask consumers who are shopping your website for their business with an on-target offering.

Stop presenting dress shoes to consumers seeking sandals. Get on top of what is selling in real time and understand your competitors’ inventory and pricing. You might find discounts, monthly payments or low prices that create leads and sales. Gaining this knowledge today will result in more leads, rather than receiving the data 60 days from now when the market has pivoted.

Market and Market Again

There is more you need to learn.

Every dealer’s website is still getting traffic. You are marketing your dealership to shoppers, but you need to double your efforts on remarketing. Maybe you should even put forth 10 times your effort.

Consider this: You have shoppers who could provide 30 more leads simply by increasing your remarketing efforts.

Basic remarketing has been around for years. Google Display ads retarget shoppers to your website, but dealers do not pay too much attention. So, match your messaging with price points, inventory and a call to action, and remember to ask consumers for their business.

Be sure you really increase your Facebook dynamic retargeting. Facebook’s dynamic retargeting automatically creates a carousel ad with the exact RV your website shopper was viewing, plus additional RVs to consider. The ad is placed in consumers’ timelines. The ad cost is very low, the audience is five-star and the click rate back to a dealer’s website is extremely high. Get this in place
as soon as possible.

Now, let’s take remarketing to the next level.

Emailing individuals who have visited your website is legal and possible. Yes, consumers do not have to complete a form or subscribe to a newsletter for you to email them. Data shows that up to 45% of your web traffic is available to email.

Think about this for a second because website visitors are not all the same, and you do not have an unlimited budget. You must think strategically. Create a list of the eight website visitors you would like to email.

If you have been processing this article, you would quickly say to target the people visiting the RVs selling in my marketplace.

Great idea!

Pick the six RVs you want to email to everyone visiting the search page or a vehicle detail page. Next, decide whether to email anyone visiting your service page, about us or contact us page.

The magic here is that, because you know what segments are selling, you can identify the visitors to these key pages and remarket your dealership to these visitors through email in real time. You can create a drip program that automatically does this. Select your days, content and frequency, then adjust as you evaluate leads and sales.

The final remarketing tactic is a little in shoppers’ faces.

The pop-up offer.

You can determine your pop-up rules, but a strong offer and a pop-up ad on the products moving in your marketing will increase your leads. We are finding a strong lead uptick when this is well considered. However, just throwing up a pop-up form will not make a big difference without a strategic plan based on inventory and offers.

Remember, all leads are not created equal. Creating a consumer list and having your sales staff call will not work. You will burn out your staff, and they will become very frustrated. Your staff must focus on working and closing good leads.

Remember, the key to more leads is Planned Result Advertising—understanding the inventory planning, advertising execution and sales staff motivation.

As stated earlier, there is no silver bullet to gaining leads. The process involves strategic thinking, execution and analysis. Go from a dealer living in doubt and challenging times to a dealer filled with conviction and confidence.

Remember, you can create a plan based on inventory, advertising and sales staff. Enter your fourth quarter with a solid plan and have the plan in place before 2025.

Finally, make sure you collect real-time data. It will make a difference.

 

Ron Wheeler is founder and principal at Wheeler Advertising. Ron has been a speaker at RVDA for more than 30 years and at NADA for more than 18 years.

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