By Ara Ghanbarian, CEO, Marcient
The tools and techniques you need to hijack your competitors’ traffic are available to you right now!
As a $70-billion-per-year industry, traditional marketing – despite changing over the past several years, especially as a result of the rise of digital marketing, still very much has a place in the automotive landscape today.
Marketing is becoming increasingly hyper-targeted, carrying messaging across multiple channels, including specific webpages, landing pages, splash pages, social media, and more.
But using these various platforms can add another layer of confusion when it comes to tracking your ROI on specific channels, for instance, consider the example below.
When driving down the freeway, you hear a radio advertisement for a local Nissan dealership. Even if you’re in the market specifically for a Nissan vehicle, and the radio advertisement highlights the vehicle price you’re looking for, you likely won’t call that dealership while you’re driving. What’s more likely to happen is you get home, and, if you happen to remember the advertisement at all, you pull out your phone/tablet to look up the deal that you vaguely remember hearing on the radio.
Now, who gets the credit for this? The search engine, of course! While obviously, the real source of the traffic in this scenario was traditional advertising, due to a gap between the dealership’s traditional and digital marketing efforts, digital often gets the credit.
As a result of this flawed attribution, many reduce or pull their traditional ad spend altogether when traditional and digital work hand-in-hand to maximize messaging reach and optimize budgets.
Determining the Optimal Mix
Both traditional and digital avenues must get looked at with a close eye, focusing primarily on content.
Messaging should be well thought out and researched. Knowing what’s worked, makes it much easier to broadcast that proven content across both traditional and digital platforms.
You must know the specifics, like exactly when your ad will run – how often, in what spots, on which days, etc.
Once you have these specific details for your radio, television, and cable spots, you can carry forward the same messaging across all of your digital marketing platforms. For example, if you know your radio ad runs every Monday at 10 am for two minutes for the next six weeks, then you can post the same messaging from your radio ad on your social media, website, and landing pages, starting just a few minutes before the traditional ad gets broadcast.
Broadcasting the same content over the airwaves and digital marketing platforms, allows you to capture more people in your target audience.
This is not where you stop though! You need to know how well this strategy is working for you.
Each time a traditional media ad runs, analyze your phone, website, and foot traffic. Then, gauge the spikes in traffic from when your ads are running, and compare it with the valleys in traffic when ads are not running.
When armed with this data, you will be better equipped to gauge how strong (or weak) your advertising efforts are across all media forms.
During a session at Digital Dealer 27 Conference & Expo (Aug. 19-21, 2019 – Las Vegas, NV), Ara Ghanbarian and Sam Errama of Marcient will discuss the specific tools, methods, and techniques that keep you informed, giving you an edge over your competition.
About the Author
Ara Ghanbarian (CEO of Marcient) is an entrepreneur, author, and technology lover. After graduating from CSU Fresno, he started a telecom co. and immediately tuned in to his natural passion for sales and marketing. He developed integral skills for the ever-changing marketing world, and always endeavors to bring a fresh, exciting approach to business while developing marketing campaigns that are innovative, trackable, and effective.