By Russell B. Hill, Managing Partner, FixedOPS Marketing
Service departments are your bread and butter, now more than ever, but how do you increase revenue during these times of uncertainty?
Here are a few tips to help boost your service revenue:
- Make service/specials on your website easy to find so that consumers do not have to hunt for these offers. Place your service coupons in obvious places on your site – like under your service and parts menu and on your specials menu). This will make it easy for customers to stay informed on the current specials that your dealership is offering.
- Digitalize your service coupons. Once your customers get to your specials page, your coupon messaging and offer must be attractive and modernized for today’s consumer. Don’t make your customers go through the hassle of printing a coupon – make it digital.
- Streamline access to your offers. If a customer has to click more than three times, you’ll lose them. They will go somewhere else. The general rule is that if a website visitor has to click more than three times, they’ll leave your website, so get them to your specials page in two clicks.
- Too many links can overwhelm customers, making them more likely to leave your website. Make your website menus easy to navigate by having seven links or less in each dropdown.
- 60% of consumers are searching dealership websites on mobile, so your website must be mobile-friendly!
- Instead of having only one way for customers to engage with your service department, provide customers with five or more actions (print, email, call, schedule online, text) so that they can engage reach you via their preferred channel.
Effective service campaigns can potentially boost your conversion rate by 20-30%!
About the Author
Russell Hill is a Managing Partner at FixedOPS Marketing. He began his career working as a Salesman at Tyson Buick in 1985. He worked his way up to General Manager at Competition Chrysler Jeep. Russell left retail for the vendor space in 2000 when he became a Managing Partner in CAR Research, a CRM company. Russell became a Managing Partner at RnD Interactive in 2011. In late 2019, Russell joined forces with Rick Eckert to launch FixedOPS Marketing, a new technology company specializing in increasing service visits while increasing revenue per RO through videos.