Welcome to Accelerate Automotive Marketing Solutions
INTRODUCTION
The business of selling automobiles is more competitive than ever. And yet, in the last several years things could not have changed more.
The economic woes of the last year have made things especially challenging in regard to the finance aspect of selling cars.
On top of that, the marketing environment has changed as well. Even the big, established players have undergone (or will yet undergo) dramatic restructuring.
General print media, while generating less and less in response, has continued to increase in price. And while everyone agrees that the Web is the "next big thing" in Automotive Marketing, where do you spend your marketing dollars?
I will help you navigate the murky waters of the web, lead generation and all the other concerns that are so critical to the success of your business but can be a distraction from the important day to day issues that must get attended to.
My job is to accelerate your business. To get it up to web speed. Profitably and comfortably.
To be your marketing eyes and ears, and hands and feet when necessary too.
To be the marketing department that you don't have... or the time to be yourself.
Give me a call and let's talk about how we can get your business up to speed.
WHAT IS YOUR ADDRESS? NO... YOUR WEB ADDRESS!
My Top Ten Reasons You Should Have A Web Site
The day has long been coming, and indeed has come, when to be taken seriously by most potential customers, an auto dealer must have a web site. Not just a page that says "Here we are", but a REAL web site with inventory, pictures, the ability to communicate with a prospect, to capture his/her information, to interact with them professionally, to accept a payment from them.... you get the idea. Even if you don't agree that most customers expect you to have a web site, there are too many benefits from having one not to. On top of that there is absolutely NO downside.
First things first
The internet has dramatically affected how consumers research major purchases. In automotive marketing we now know that a consumer will visit a number of websites before making a purchase decision. We also know that if the LAST one they visit is YOUR website, that has a major influence on where they will purchase. So if you have no web presence at all, you have absolutely NO chance at the consumers who research cars on line, which is increasingly becoming the vast majority of all car shoppers.
What about The Big Auto Sites that we all know?
To have your vehicles listed in The Big Automobile Marketplaces is of course not a bad thing. They spend a lot of money getting consumers to go to their sites to research their vehicle purchase. But very few consumers actually MAKE A PURCHASE from these large sites. They may find a vehicle they are interested in, but that is closer to the BEGINNING of a purchase decision than the end. If they find a vehicle from your inventory there, most likely the next step in the process is to research YOU and YOUR operation. Your website is YOUR tool to make a favorable impression, to establish and develop a relationship and begin to close the deal.
As long as the consumer is on The Big Website, they are comparing your vehicle to ALL THE OTHER VEHICLES in your market. While comparing is going on, no deciding is happening and NO MONEY is changing hands.
Consumer Focus
Have you ever had a customer who couldn't decide between several vehicles? They have driven three, and are looking at a fourth. What happened next? Did they buy one of the four under consideration? Most likely they did not. And they probably even left your lot. Why? They had too much under consideration, they had not focused enough on a particular vehicle to actually buy it. So when you can't decide, what do you do? You don't make a decision!
When a consumer is browsing around on The Big Website, they are comparing your vehicle to ALL THE OTHER VEHICLES from ALL THE OTHER DEALERS in your market. Is that the point at which they will decide to buy? Probably not. You want them to be on your lot (or YOUR website) developing a relationship with YOU. Until that happens they are not making a purchase decision, they are still shopping around.
Developing Customer Satisfaction
When a prospective customer calls to inquire about a particular vehicle you have one of two possible choices. You can describe everything about the vehicle they want to know, or you can SHOW them everything about the vehicle they want to know. Which is generally better? How much time could you save yourself and your prospective customer by going through what is on the website and lettting the professionalism of the website and the completeness of the information there take over. A picture really is worth a thousand words, and websites never forget any important information, where you and I might.
Back Office Organization
Where do you track and control all your inventory? What is the central point from which all information about your inventory flows? If it is not tied to your own website, you are wasting a lot of time and losing a lot of sales.
Some dealers I know have created an Excel spreadsheet into which they enter the information about each vehicle they purchase just so they can print an inventory list! Some dealers do it in Word. With a website that has the necessary inventory management functions, you enter that SAME information once, and you have an inventory list, plus you can make that vehicle available for sale to anyone in the market. When you delete a vehicle from inventory the process can be as automatic.
Data Distribution
Once the vehicle is in your inventory and has pictures, pricing and all the necessary sales information attached, you are really ready to sell it. HOW are you going to promote it for sale? If you DO subscribe to one or more of The Big Web Sites, posting your inventory is now automatic, it will happen automatically. Again, save time and money - enter it once and have your inventory promoted around the county, around the country, or even around the world.
Build YOUR brand not The Big Web Site brand
Yes, it is true that there are lots of car buyers looking on The Big Web Site. But whenever you direct customers to THAT site, whose brand are you building? Pretty simple really. Have YOUR cars on YOUR web site and promote YOUR web site, even if it is having the web name of your business appear IN the ads on the big web site. That way, you are building YOUR brand and your business not The Big Web Site's.
24/7 - 365 Store
When you have your own web site and are actively promoting it, consumers will be finding your cars and learning more about your business and why they should buy from YOU even when you are not able to have them take a test drive or answer their phone call. Web sites are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year. Why would you not want to have a salesman who never forgets, has complete accurate information about every vehicle in your inventory, shows your inventory from every angle, tells your customer all the good stuff about the vehicle and your dealership and never calls in sick (and never argues with you)?
OK, that wasn't really ten reasons. But you get the idea.
SERVICES
Identity/Branding
Media Management/Consulting
Web Presence
Web Marketing
Lead Generation
Traffic Generation
Inventory Capture/Web Site Updating
Advertising/Marketing Consulting
Lot Management
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Hope Is Not a Strategy
I recently came upon a book with a title that began “Hope Is Not A Strategy...”. This book has nothing to do with auto sales, but the title made me think. How many times had I been guilty of thinking that it was… and were auto dealers I know guilty of the same thing?
We all fall into the trap of getting in a routine. We go about our daily duties and we hope that everything will work out. But without being intentional, (in other words without a conscious effort) to improve and get better at what we do, our strategy essentially IS hope!
For example, “I sure hope sales are better THIS month than last month!” or “I hope we get more calls this week” or “I hope traffic is better this week than last week.” Yeah, we have got the inventory, we did talk to the customers that came to the lot, but HOW are we going to change our results?
What is the answer? The opposite of “hope-ing” is having a plan and working the plan. Hope becomes how. When you can answer the “how’s” of your business you not only feel in control you also are in control. Isn’t it a lot more satisfying to have a plan and be working it than leaving the results you are going to achieve to circumstances? Hope is not a strategy, HOW is!
Unicycle or 4X4?
If you were facing a trip across a vast expanse of rocky, rugged terrain which would be the best mode of transportation - a unicycle or 4x4?
Many business owners may be operating under a false premise. The premise is that they should establish a budget for promoting their business, growing their business, or bringing new customers to their business. That budget is fixed and they cannot exceed that budget and operate the business prudently. If marketing expenses were like capital expenditures, or like other operating costs which are fixed costs that would probably be true. Here is where the nature of this type of expenditure is different - if you do not see a return from marketing expenditures, then you are spending the money in the wrong way. An expenditure to grow your business is made with the idea that when you invest a sum of money it will return the investment you made and then some. But a realistic question to ask is - can the return happen BEFORE the expenditure?
This can be likened to investing in inventory - if you know that you have a certain profit margin to be achieved by investing in (and then selling) a certain amount of inventory, and if your goal is to make money, that is most certainly something you would do. The question really is not "How much do I have to invest?" but "What is my return and when will I receive it?". For most businesses it would make absolutely no sense to use a fixed, arbitrary number to determine how much inventory to buy. In fact many businesses will invest more in inventory at a certain time in anticipation of a stronger selling season or the like. In that case, it would actually be counter-productive to use a lower sales month to determine how much your inventory investment would be, because you would be diminishing your opportunities to take advantage of those enhanced selling opportunities. Why do factors, inventory financing, or flooring plans exist? Business owners routinely "go into debt" to buy inventory because they expect that their investment in inventory will create a return which will enable them to cover the inventory cost and have a reasonable return to boot.
And so it is with marketing expenses. Let us suppose that you are advertising in the newspaper, and that gets results. If you had the opportunity to advertise on radio, and it was demonstrated that this particular investment carried a reasonable expectation it would bring more customers (and therefore more business), would it be a prudent decision to do that, if you could accomodate the increase in traffic, had the inventory to sell, etc.? It is fairly clear that from a strict business perspective the answer would be yes.
Which brings up a different point. Many businesspeople might look at the larger, more well known players in their space and deduce that they advertise or promote their businesses in many different ways because they are so large they can afford to. It is hard to pick up a newspaper, or turn on the television or radio in some towns and not see a certain competitor. Here's the question - do they advertise because they are that size, or are they that size because they advertise? It is very true that some business owners or managers understand the realities of the market today and they see marketing and promotional expenditures as a necessary, even crucial, factor in the long term health of their business. Admittedly, it is possible in some of these cases they may continue to spend money on ways to promote their business from which they have no idea the rate or amount of their return, how many customers call or come in because of, etc. But that generally happens after a business is humming along so smoothly and gets such a good return on most of what they do that they are then able to spread their risk and weaker returns are just not as obvious. They just know that the more they spend, the more business they get. It does not make business sense that a business that is growing and thriving would consistently over a period of time spend money on promotion that did not bring a reasonable return. Eventually a business that did that would just be out of business.
Which brings me back to the unicycle question. Having one proven marketing or promotional method for your business is kind of like depending on a unicyle to traverse the business terrain. Would it not be a smoother ride with a bicycle (a mountain bike, of course)? And if they still made the three-wheel ATVs the ride would be that much better. And a 4x4 would obviously be better, more stable, more secure and take you farther.
Would you rather traverse today's rocky and uncertain business terrain on a unicycle or in a 4x4? And if you pick the unicycle, what if you have a flat? I bet the 4x4 has a spare!
You Want HOW MUCH for That Ad?
How much do you pay as a "bird dog" or referral fee to someone who sends you a buying customer - $100? 200? Why is it worth it to do that? Because you make MANY TIMES more than the referral or bird dog fee when you sell a car. Right?
How much would you pay in bird dog fees if EVERY car you sold came from that source? I'll wager that it would be a lot more than what you spend on ALL your advertising and marketing combined right now.
So this makes me wonder...
Does it REALLY make business sense to "save money" by not advertising when it is slow, or to not advertise using a certain medium because you can get the ad "cheaper" than somewhere else? Are all advertising mediums created equal? Which is the better advertising medium? Television? Radio? Newspapers? Isn't the question really "Which advertising medium provides the best ROI?"
Why not save money on rent? If you didn't have to pay rent, you would save a lot of money, right? Or, if you didn't carry inventory you could save a TON of money. Vehicles are expensive to buy or floorplan aren't they? If you didn't use electricity that would save a boatload of money,too.
I hope you thought at some point, "That is moronic, of course you have to have a place to do business, inventory to sell and lights so you can see." Exactly. And do you not need to have a steady flow of qualified prospects to whom to sell your wares? Why would you invest in ALL those other things and then NOT insure you have someone to sell to? It doesn't make sense.
Oh sure, you have a lot of traffic that drives by your place of business every day. You could hope that someone sees your place of business driving by and rather than patronize one of the abundance of your competitors in town who are actively marketing themselves to your customer cross your fingers that they would (for some unknown reason) choose to do business with you. A lot of people in your business have operated that way before. Yep, they saved a LOT of money on advertising. Yeah. The folks that are now OUT of business.
Do you want to point to a business you are aware of and say, "Yeah, but look at XYZ Company. They NEVER advertise, and they have been in business for a bazillion years." I have a couple of questions/comments about that.
First, how do you know? Maybe they advertise is such a way that you would not be aware of it. Maybe they spend their marketing dollars in a less obvious way, such as referrals fees, web marketing or something else.
Second, (let's be honest here) is that the MOST PROSPEROUS example of someone in that line of business that you can think of? Probably not.
In business it could well be said that the businessman who thinks he is saving money by scrimping on marketing is only fooling himself, and possibly causing his business to suffer, NOT prosper. In any case, why would you bet AGAINST the success of your business by saying you bet you can get customers without spending any money (in other words, devoting any resources to it). And what happens if you LOSE that bet?
"Staying the Course" - Wisdom or Folly?
No, this is not an (expressly) political discussion. But is IS a good question.
In your business, how many moments, days, weeks or even months (maybe years?) have been exceptionally poor? In fact has there ever been a whole day when you did NO business? Why was that? More importantly, did you continue to operate the business after that period - or did you just shut the doors? Why or why not?
The truth is that the wise way to look at the success or progress of a business is over a period of time. After all, Rome (as they say) was not built in a day. I have also heard it said that complex processes such a very involved surgeries always look like a mess in the middle. But does anyone ever look at heart bypass surgery from the perspective of when everyone is scurrying about the operating room, with the patient unconscious and being kept alive by machinery, with their chest cut open and their innards exposed and say, "This is a mess. This isn't working out at all. Stop the operation!" If they did MOST observers would consider them a loon! Why? Because it is obvious that heart suregry is a complicated - indeed messy - process and that the time to judge the success or failure of the procedure is NOT in the middle of it.
So it is in business. You would not be in the business you are in today if you made decisions based on the "messiness in the middle" or on a day, week or even month alone. The most important factor in determining the health of the business is the trend of the results over a period of time. In other words, the question is - are you going in the right direction? If so, don't worry about how far down the road you got today. Maybe good advice might be to try to make some progress (however small) every day, as long as it is in the right direction.
It does make A LOT of sense to periodically - some might say continually - evaluate the direction the business is headed and make corrections in the course. So then, is "staying the course" wisdom... or folly? That depends, because here is the REAL question - will "the course" eventually take you to the intended destination or goal?
The Big Blue Gorilla
In this day of cable television and internet, it is increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd. Consumers are bombarded with more and more advertising messages, with the effect being that consumers are becoming increasingly numb to the onslaught. It is also said that today's generation is increasingly dubious in regard to advertising messages, placing very little trust in them. Can anyone blame them?
The fact is that if the end of our efforts is just to get someone's attention, then we need to think again. What we want is an opportunity to communicate how what we are doing is relavent to potential customers, how we are trustworthy and why they should spend their money with us INSTEAD of with someone else. So, yes, to get a potential customer's attention is important. But we have only a few scant seconds after that to communicate why they should allow us keep their attention long enough for us to explain all the rest.
It would seem then that all attention is not created equal. After all, you can walk up behind someone with an airhorn and blow it, and you will most certainly have their attention, for a moment. Very shortly after that, when the attention turns to anger, the buying mood will not be... shall we say... optimal. Likewise, you may dress up in a lime green lame clown suit with the requisite white facepaint and a bright orange mohawk. You will most certainly get people's attention. But if you are selling anything other than entertainment at children's birthday parties the attention may not be coupled with any credibility or with the suggestion you might be someone who may have the solution to a serious problem your customer has. To use a recent example, does driving by a business that has characters dressed up as Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty standing outside waving to us as we drive by really give us the impression that they are a dependable organization fully qualified to handle our tax preparation needs in an accurate and timely manner? I, for one, was neither impressed nor convinced. I laughed, waved back... and kept driving.
What is the best way to get a potential customer's attention?
I would suggest that you consider how to speak to their needs, or how you are different than everyone else who does what you do. That says you are thinking about them, not just how you can make a buck off them. Yes, people do buy based on emotion. But what emotion would you seek to evoke by having a 25 foot blue gorilla in front of your place of business? And does that emotion make someone say, "Now, I know what dealer I have to buy my next car from!"
NBC versus Google
Many people may wonder how some of the newest businesses in the world such as Google seem to have come out of nowhere to become hugely successful, seemingly overnight. In the meantime, long-established companies we thought would be around forever are struggling, laying off employees and cutting costs to try to survive, such as NBC recently did. Can we learn anything from this situation?
On the face of it, both of these companies are pretty similar in that they sell advertising. Everyone has heard how much money a one-minute Super Bowl commercial costs. It is also well known that Google itself makes millions by selling advertising. However, there is (at least) one significant and fundamental difference between NBC and Google.
NBC gets you to watch their network by showing you various sorts of programs so they can ALSO show you advertising for all types of products and services. While you are watching “Deal or No Deal” they blast you with all sorts of ads for everything under the sun from products to cure your athlete’s foot (even in you don’t HAVE athlete’s foot) to Feminine Hygiene products (even if you’re not “feminine”) to beer (even if you don’t drink) and so on. They never even ASK if you are interested in those products. In fact, they never even ask if you are interested in ANY products!
Google on the other hand starts off by asking you, “What are YOU interested in today?” When you tell them (by searching for something) they not only show you what you wanted to know about, but also all the things you never even thought to ask based on what your search showed interests you.
Which strategy seems to be most likely to get better results?
As someone in the business of selling something, doesn’t it make sense that you will be a lot more successful when you present your product to someone who you already know is in the market for that product? If two percent of the population is in the market for what you sell do you WANT to talk to one hundred percent of the population? That doesn’t make sense!
First, Gimme Some Heat
Imagine you were in the mountains on a vacation. It is winter and snow is blanketing the ground, and your accomodations include a quaint, rustic cabin. One problem - the cabin is heated by a wood-burning stove. It is so cold outside, you can actually see your breath... while you are inside! Someone in your party says, “I want to get warm. I‘ll put some wood in that stove and start a fire just as soon as that stove starts putting out some heat.” What would you think?
When starting an enterprise, all sorts of preparations are necessary and all sorts of investments need to be made before the first day of business and before the first dollar of revenue is generated. Once the business is going, the necessity to invest in the business still continues. Can you ever say, “OK, I am sure glad that whole investing in inventory issue has been resolved.”? Of course not. Throughout the life of a business it is necessary to invest in many different areas (with prudence and a reasonable expectation of a satisfactory return) on a regular and continual basis. In fact, if the business is prospering, the cycle continues and the dollar amounts in question become ever larger. Having to buy larger and larger amounts of inventory would actually be a "high-class" problem, wouldn’t it?
It is easy to lose sight of this, since the effort to sustain a business seems much less than that to begin a business from scratch. It has been said that it takes a lot more energy to get an airplane into the air than it does to keep it flying and that sort of stands to reason. But then again, as a passenger, aren’t we thankful that the airline kept the engines going (and didn’t try to save the fuel money) once we were in the air?
An area of business in which this mental disconnect frequently manifests is in marketing and advertising. I have actually heard business owners say, “It has been kinda slow so I don’t think I am going to advertise this week. Maybe next week it will pick up and I can run my ad again.” Think about that. Does it make any sense at all to diminish the effort to bring customers in when business is slow? And how likely is it that things (without someone being proactive and creating an environment of change) are likely to just turn around on their own? Not very. Yes, there are budgets and other factors to consider. I am not advocating fiscal irresponsibility. Just common sense.
We wouldn’t look at a wood burning stove and expect heat before we put in fuel. It just wouldn’t make sense. Certainly “you know what” will freeze over before a wood burning stove will ever put out heat without FIRST putting in fuel and starting a fire. Is your business any different?
Anyone... Anyone... Bueller?
One of the luxuries of modern life is all the cool tools. In almost every area of our existence technologies are ever advancing in order to offer us opportunities to do things better, cheaper and faster. In business it is not only more pleasant to employ the best, most efficient tools, it is usually more profitable. If you were in the business of digging ditches, and you had a project the size of the Panama Canal, one could rightly ask if would you rather use many workers with shovels or one steam shovel. All other things being equal, most of us would probably say the steam shovel. Better, cheaper, faster. More profitable.
In regard to promoting your business you can waste a huge amount of time and money by employing the wrong tools. When it comes to advertising there all sorts of options such as TV, radio, print (newspapers, magazines, etc.), direct mail, internet and so on. These may not be equally appropriate for all businesses. In fact, they may not even be equally appropriate for all enterprises in a given industry. In light of the primary business objective of making money, the most basic criteria to use in evaluating a means pf promoting your business is this - is it worth it to spend the money in light of the expected return? It is true that the goal of a percentage return is a completely different one than "Increasing brand recognition", but in the end, does it really make a difference to you that a certain number of people recognize you if they DON'T spend their money with you? Probably not.
So in light of all the options available, what is the "right" one? In short, the answer is "the one that creates results". But what is the best way to have a feel for what option that might be?
There are several things to consider. Essentially, it boils down to how much it costs you to get a customer to call you or come to your place of business, and ultimately how many sales you generate from a certain expenditure. If your goal is to generate sales (as opposed to increasing name recognition, or something of the sort) then it is reasonable to ask a basic question - does this option give me a realistic means of reaching my target market? And at what cost?
Here are some common examples. Can you reach car buyers in your market by advertising on television? Possibly. But can anyone who sells you television advertising tell you how many car buyers you will reach using their medium? It stands to reason that the best they can do is make an educated guess. In the same way, the newspaper knows in a general way who reads their paper, but the same problem occurs. Out of all the people who pick up a paper that day, who is in the market for a car, and how much will it cost you to reach them? It kind of makes sense that it may be a waste to talk to "everybody" in the area to find only the people who are in the market for a car. And it can be expensive.
If you could talk to only those people in the area who were looking to buy a car, it makes sense that in the long run it would probably be more productive to do that. That is the difference between what is called mass (or broadcast) media and target marketing or target media. Iintuitively we all know that is has to be a lot more expensive and a lot less effective in general to try to talk to everyone in town (or at least a huge faceless crowd) to make an offer that is only going to be of interest to a small percentage of the population. Ideally you would want to talk to the person in the crowd who raises their hand (Ooh! Ooh!) and identifies themselves as in the market for what it is you do before you talk to them. That way you don't waste your time (and seem pretty silly at that) trying to sell a car to someone who is looking for coupons to use at the grocery store, or who just wants to hear what book Oprah is going to recommend this week.
The internet gives you an opportunity to let people find you who are in the market for a vehicle and who are looking for either a particular one, a dealer in a particular area, or a dealer who can help them because they are credit challenged. And there is print media available that can promote your inventory, your dealership and your programs just to people in the market for a car. Would you rather be following up with people who made an inquiry of you from the web, or called you because they are in the market for that vehicle they saw in print, or... stand in front of a faceless crowd of people yelling, "Anyone... anyone... Bueller?"? And what do you think will be more profitable?
Psst… Hey Lady, Wanna Buy A Car?
Many independent dealers may have at one time or another thought if only they had the budget to advertise on TV, or on radio, or in the newspaper like the franchise dealers do then they’d be in the big time. It seems kinda sexy to see the name of your business splashed across the pages of the newspaper, or flashing up on the TV screen.
If you do any research on the subject at all, you will quickly find that research says that the days of someone seeing an ad on TV and jumping off the couch to go buy the advertised product have long since passed (if they ever even existed). If you pay attention, very few television ads actually ask the potential customer to DO anything, they just trumpet the fact that they are there or they proudly announce they are who they are!
There are several problems with "mass media" such as television, radio, and the newspaper. The first problem is cost. The proposition of reaching thousands, tens of thousands or a million people in one fell swoop is expensive. Second, the question of relevance comes up. In other words, even if I can reach all of those people in one shot, how many of them actually care about my message? So the high cost of mass media is made even more so by having to talk to a lot of people who care nothing about what it is you want to talk to them about in order to find the ones who do have even the slightest interest in what you are talking about.
Target marketing is communicating your message to pre-qualified prospects who are in the market for your product or service. In some industries they may make that determination with a front end offer to a bunch of likely prospects which many times involves something for free, like a free report or a free trial size, etc with the intention of selling those who respond one or more products after they respond to the initial offer. Yes, in some business they actually GIVE SOMETHING AWAY in order to find out who might be a likely paying customer! Why? Because the LIFETIME VALUE of a paying customer is far exceeded by the cost involved to identify them, and is a lot less expensive than wasting the resources to talk to a bunch of folks who couldn't care less.
Think about it this way – does it make any sense to try to sell a car to the lady reading the newspaper to find a sale on shoes? How many customers like that would you have to talk to in order to actually sell a car (if you EVER did)? How many cars would you sell if you were mostly talking to people like that?
With target marketing you can get the maximum return on investment and get the fastest results because instead of talking to thousands of people who might or might not be in the market for what you sell, you have already gotten beyond the sifting process to talking to people who definitely are in the market for what you’ve got. Using target marketing may not be as "sexy" as mass marketing, but it stands to reason that it works a lot faster for a lot less money.
The Definition of Insanity Has Changed
It has been said (in a quote attributed to none other than Albert Einstein) that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. In a way that is true. After all, you really don’t need to add two and two more than once to know it always equals four.
When it comes to applying that wisdom to business you have to be careful. In the two plus two example, the nature of two is always the same. 2x plus 2x always equals 4x. No matter what “x” is, the sum of 2x and 2x is ALWAYS going to be four “x” whether it is apples, oranges, or jumbo jets.
When you go from numbers and things to people and business the situation changes a bit. After all, does anyone in business do things EXACTLY the same way as five years ago, much less ten years ago or twenty years ago? Aren’t we all to some degree or another using wireless phones, computers and the Internet in our businesses? None of those tools even existed twenty years ago.
If you try something in your business in order to improve it and that doesn’t work, do you keep doing that thing that doesn’t work, or do you adjust and try again? Of course, you adjust. We all go about our business the same way, constantly making adjustments with the goal of staying on course, probably without thinking about it too much.
The reason is because in business the environment is constantly changing. The economic situation changes, consumers change based on fads, trends, information, etc. Consumers who were here move someplace else and people who were someplace else move here. Competitors enter the market and affect what consumers want. Competitors leave the market. New products come and go.
If we were to be honest, we would say that while two plus two ALWAYS equals four, in business things are constantly changing and a successful business has in all likelihood been constantly adjusting its entire life. While what we call the business may be the same, how we go about that business and the best practices to be successful in that business are constantly evolving.
So then, is it a good reason to continue to do something a particular way ONLY because we have always done it that way? And if we had to be honest could we really say that the results are exactly the same as when we started doing it that way? Probably not. In fact, given that the business environment is constantly changing, isn’t it likely that if we really have always done a particular thing a certain way that we are not getting the results we once were or we could achieve dramatically better results if we went about it a different way? Probably.
Two plus two will always equal four. But isn’t it fair to say that if I go about my business in the same way I always did, but the background is constantly evolving, that I most likely do not get the same results I did back in “the good old days”? So really the definition of business insanity is doing the same thing AND expecting the same result, isn’t it? Think about it.
How Many Fish Is Enough?
Very few businesses have the problem of having too many customers. If anything, quite the opposite would usually be true. It would make sense then, that it would be a good idea, maybe even a crucial one, to continually think of ways to get more customers from different sources.
Many businesses stake their customer acquisition “strategy” on location. Granted, in some businesses location may indeed be a crucial factor for success. After all, the best location for the new “Pork Chops R Us” store would probably not be in the middle of the largest Jewish community in town. But few businesses these days prosper by settling on drawing their business from a very small geographic area.
Even if the location of your business is the reason you get a large part (hopefully not all) of your business, it is reasonable to ask why you would not want to get a customer who typically does not drive by. Are you willing – or can you afford to – settle only for getting customers from the small percentage of the world that happens to drive by every day? Another way of looking at that is by asking another question – how many potential customers in your market area DO NOT drive by your business every day/week/month? The answer to that question may depress you or get you very excited. Maybe both.
One thing successful, growing businesses do is diversify their customer acquisition strategy. That is, they attract customers in a number of different ways. This makes sense for a variety of reasons, but certainly a major one is diversification. Here is the simplest way of explaining it – if your business depends on drive by traffic and all of a sudden there is a huge public works project that impedes or even completely eliminates that traffic, what will happen to your business?
So, what are the different possibilities for your business? First of all, it is important to focus. Who IS your customer? What are their interests? What are their concerns? Where do they hang out? Who else do satisfied customers of yours know and how should you make sure they know about you? Avoid the shotgun approach – not everyone in town wants what you are offering.
Then, take action, track and adjust. Tracking is work. It is easy to avoid. But knowing what does (and DOES NOT) work for getting customers is crucial to the long term health of your business. Why would you spend your hard earned money on a means of getting customers that does not work when you could shift those resources to something that does, or to finding another (possibly successful) strategy?
Having one tested and proven method of getting customers that works is nice. Having two is fantastic. Having three or more may well be business nirvana. This process may be likened (with all due respect to customers) to fishing. A fisherman with a boat and one rod is certainly not going to catch as many fish as a fisherman who has a fleet of boats with many rods, lots of nets, etc. And after all, if business is fishing, how many fish is enough?
Who Are Those Guys in the Khakis and Cute Little Polo Shirts and Where Did They Come From?
At one time most grocery stores, gas stations, and video rental stores were neighborhood businesses operated by independent business people. Nowadays, it is rare to see a successful, thriving independent in any of those businesses. Is there a lesson to be learned?
It wasn’t that long ago that a trip to get groceries was a trip to a place much like Cheers where everyone knew your name. And the name on the outside of the business corresponded to the name of an actual person inside the business. Anybody call you by name at the supermarket recently?
It has been quite some time since anything like a service station as we used to know it has existed. Yet at one time that was all there was, and again many of them were owned by a person who you would meet when you filled up. He'd chat with you as he cleaned the windshield and checked your oil. Anyone else (other than you) check your oil or clean your windshield lately?
More recently, most decent sized towns in the country had one or more independent video rental stores. In fact even in small towns there was often at least one locally owned and operated video store. How many of those are still around today?
What is there to learn from these examples? Certainly it is not that people do not get groceries, rent videos, or buy gas these days. And it is certainly not that people do not like to know who they are doing business with and be known by those with whom they do business on a regular basis. What then?
If you think about it, one thing that you will admit is that many of the independent businesses operated dramatically differently from one to another even in the same industry. Also, while those businesses may have been personal in their approach they were not necessarily professional. These days when someone says a business is a “mom and pop” business, it doesn't generally have a positive connotation.
Many of the old “mom and pop” businesses were what you could call self-centered. They were built around the proposition that they would do business on their terms and that was that. Anyone who is old enough to have gone into a video store in the pre-Blockbuster days can attest to that.
Many of the large chains in these businesses were built on recognizing the potential of the markets they were in while making those businesses more systematized, professional and customer-centered. You want to shop on Sundays? No problem. You want lower prices instead of a nice guy in a uniform who checks your oil? You got it. Don’t want to join a “club” to be able to rent a video? Your wish is our command.
Have you noticed that even some of these businesses have recently been challenged by another competitor who has again changed the rules of the game and in so doing has raised the stakes? Think Wal-mart Super Centers and Netflix, or even Redbox. What does this mean to you?