MarketingCommentary & Insights

Your company’s story and messaging are the core of everything: it’s how you market, how you sell, and how you retain loyal customers. The story is the backbone of your company’s brand and should permeate every aspect of the business. That’s why rebranding your company is such a big project – it’s a chance to revisit the essence of the company and apply it to every part, big or small. Rebranding is a journey to take only if the name, logo, and tone of your brand no longer do your company justice. Whether it’s outdated or misaligned, the decision to rebrand should be intentional and purposeful.  The rebranding process takes time. Dedicating the proper resources and creating a robust timeline is the best way to ensure a frictionless process. Here are four things that helped our company manage our recent rebrand: Start with buy-in  Before beginning any process, it’s critical to get executive buy-in on the process. As mentioned, a rebrand is no joke, so making sure you’re aligned with the leadership of the company will set up the process for success as it becomes a company priority.  In addition to getting leadership buy-in, establish an internal committee responsible for providing feedback along the way. The committee should include different team leaders and members from various departments to keep the feedback as expansive as possible. You want different opinions and perspectives, so ensure the makeup of this committee serves that purpose. Keep the committee intimate and controlled; we found the sweet spot to be about 5-6 people representing different areas of the company.  Once you’re set on a final direction, employee buy-in will kick in. Prepare your team with the tools they need to understand and embrace the change.  Stick to a project plan Creating a master project plan is best practice as there are a lot of moving pieces in a rebrand. Start with a master list and break down tasks by department. Once tasks are assigned, you can rely on department heads to fill in specific details along the way. Use organizational software like Asana or monday.com to help organize the project.  It’s also helpful to create mini-deadlines to support the major deadlines. If you plan on launching your new brand on a specific day, make sure you create deadlines to hit certain milestones before launch day. This will break down the project into smaller, more achievable tasks.  Lastly, you will likely benefit from creating a phase 1 and phase 2 of the project. A rebrand is no small project, and it may be impossible to accomplish everything before launch day. Creating a phase 2 allows for more flexibility and can re-energize the teams heavily involved in the project.  Create a comms strategy  Aside from the master project plan, there should be a separate communications plan that maps out the messaging for each specific audience. How and when will you tell external stakeholders, journalists, enterprise partners, and clients about the rebrand? What does communication look like? Who will be handling this on behalf of the company?  It’s also critical to create an FAQ document for your clients and employees so you can answer any concerns or common questions that will arise.  We used the table below to help us prepare our comms strategy:  While it may seem unnatural, it’s important to make a big deal out of the rebrand, so it helps get your brand’s new story out. Be obsessive about it so the news can spread and you can feel good about the work you put in.  Setup a “war room” The rebrand doesn’t end on launch day. Once the news is out, you want to set up a post-launch execution room with your top players. There will be certain things you can’t set up before the news is out, so this dedicated time will let you focus on pushing live anything that couldn’t be set up pre-launch. You should have a running list of these items, so prepare a checklist prior to launch day, as launch day will be exhausting. Expect things to go wrong and be prepared to fix them. This time is dedicated to setup spillover, inbound questions and requests, and to head-off any mishaps.  Rebranding a company’s story, logo, design, and/or messaging is a big deal - so prepare for it. Be consistent and aggressive with aligning your team, departments, and all stakeholders around the change. And, of course, use the opportunity to create buzz and news about your company. This is your time to shine!

CEO of FIXED OPS DIGITAL The Start "I grew up in Southwest Minnesota. No one lives there because, well, it's way too cold."  Owen grew up in a small town, "just 14,000 people," he shares.  He went to college in his hometown. "My focus in college was actually financial planning; I thought I was going to be either a financial planner or a stockbroker, you know, something in the financial sector. "  Owen, however, also really enjoyed marketing.  Having a conversation with Owen Moon about the automotive industry is like getting into a fast car and just accelerating. A fast-talking, quick-thinking, honest CEO, Owen is very open about who he is, the challenges he has faced, and how he plans on launching over any obstacles that come his way.  "As I got out of college, and I started to look at opportunities, I realized that being in financial planning, you know, selling money, felt a little limiting." Owen Moon: I needed to let my creative side go, and I got lucky enough to end up with an advertising agency that was fully focused on automotive. Being a small-town kid who had never owned a new car, it was just great.   Owen's first brand-new car came shortly after starting his automotive career. It was a white Chevy Tahoe, "I loved that truck. I absolutely loved that truck," Owen smiled. "I was fortunate enough to be in the dealerships, sitting with the owners and general managers, working with high-level executives every day. I became a sponge and was absorbing everything around me, learning the industry from the inside out."   The Foundation “This is my 23rd year in the business, working with Dealerships.” Owen Moon: I was purely focused on helping my clients when I got introduced to my Business Partners. We had a discussion about how we could take some of the strategies that we've seen work on the sales side and move them to the service side of the business. FIXED OPS DIGITAL was born.  Owen Moon: Most of the service marketing that you'd see out there was email or direct mail campaigns, and a lot of it was retention-based marketing where dealerships target people in their DMS, their past customers. What wasn't being addressed was the online service customer. These customers are done with their warranty and are searching for great value and great service. We realized that there was an opportunity for us to move in that direction.  The Wins   "I had to learn how to be a CEO." Owen Moon:   I feel like I'm growing every day. When it started out, it was just four of us, and we all were kind of splitting up duties. Then, as we grew, we started to add personnel, and we began creating departments. My role has drastically changed in a lot of ways. "Today, I'm more focused on partnerships and working with the OEMs to help move us forward as a company."    “It wasn't always easy.”  Owen Moon:  Our industry experienced a lot of challenges during the recession. I had a full-service agency back then, and we were doing a lot of TV, Radio, and Print Ads. I had a major Group out in Hawaii and was traveling a lot, working with really big marketing budgets. I was meeting with all the publishers and media stations, and then that all came to an end. All of a sudden, I found myself working with smaller franchise and independent dealerships throughout South Dakota.   "I love the dealers out here. They are so great, real car guys but just a whole different game." Owen Moon: Being a CEO is a different challenge. People need to evolve, you need to take chances, and you need to avoid being comfortable. As you're growing in your career, you're gonna have to do a lot of different things. Not all of them will be what you want to do, but they are necessary, and they need to get done. I have a lot of conversations with different industry friends, and I'm still learning from everyone I meet. I like having conversations about our industry. I like speaking with high-level executives from other groups, OEMs, and vendors. What also keeps me grounded is that I have a lot of people on my team who are talented and have a lot of experience, but still come to me for advice. They want to do a good job. They want to represent our company well. I still feel like I operate on both sides of the business. I am paving the trail for myself within this role but also in the trenches with my team.  I am giving them advice, something I never had. I had to make mistakes on my own.  Trust me, I made a lot of mistakes, and there have also been those times when I thrived and made the right decisions. I learned from every one of those experiences, good and bad.   The Future As we progress into 2023, we're focused on continuing with our partnerships from an OEM level. We will continue to create integrated partnerships, looking at what we can do to help our dealerships with all of their fixed operations profit centers.  "We want to connect." This past year we were able to implement some interesting features and benefits with our software to help customers easily find services during inclement weather. We want to ensure that we are able to bring connectivity through other areas of our partners' business. We want to engage within the industry and vendor spaces.   Owen is gifted, but beyond that, he understands our industry. He has put the work in, gained real experience, and integrated fully into the dealer environment. We look forward to Owen’s 2023, his contributions and watching his story develop further.

We sat down with Pam Walter, the VP of Business Development for Thought Leadership Summits, the producer of CXAUTO Summit Series and Founder of MAPconnected Membership Forum and the VEHICLE SERVICE & WARRANTY LIFECYCLE Summit. Pam is remarkable in the way in which she engages with people and has helped build a brand and community that is changing the way that the automotive industry comes together. How has the last couple of years affected the CXAUTO Summits? At the start of 2020, we had already begun planning for the CXAUTO summits in June. I never thought that we would need to go virtual. We kept moving the date out until we realized that things were not changing, in fact, the restrictions were becoming more severe as the year progressed. We had to adapt our strategy to support our brand and our community. It took a lot of work, coordination and relationship management; we were just not set up for virtual conferencing and it required a lot of effort and understanding to make it successful. After CXAUTO2020, I had considered what we had achieved and was grateful that we had been able to adapt our model and make it work. That said, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that we would need to do it all over again, virtually, the following year. When CXAUTO2022 was in its planning phase, we decided to focus on in-person fully and decided not to adopt a hybrid model and include digital. It may have been more accommodating to those who are still not traveling but based on our brand, our audience and our business platform, it made more sense to create an exclusive and closed environment in which to share and meet people. What was different about this years’ summits in comparison to those held, in-person, in previous years? There was a distinct sense of appreciation for creating an environment for people to connect in-person, to shake hands, to step out from behind their computer screens and connect once again with people. Attending an event in-person, forces you to be fully present without the distractions that come with digital technology being the sole environment to connect. It really created the opportunity to share, engage and network. What makes CXAUTO different? There are many conferences that take place in our industry, there is a huge market and an incredibly diverse ecosystem within automotive. As a smaller and select group, our events allow for everyone to experience direct access. Anyone they want to speak to is available and so you are able to create relationships with people easily and the quality of the engagement is beyond that which can be experienced at large events or in a different environment. We have found that based on the exclusive environment that we create, everyone in attendance, as well as our sponsors, come prepared to share and receive thought leadership and experience something very personal and unique. How did CXAUTO come to be, how did you come to build this brand and create these experiences? I specialize in automotive and have been running CXAUTO within the Thought Leadership Summit brand for the last 6 years. I think that traditionally, my role represents a very transactional function. However, I am fully invested in each person who forms part of our ecosystem, I truly want everyone to benefit from participating and attending. I truly care about people, their brands and their business. My distinct specialty is relationship marketing and having built my foundation in the hospitality industry, I am able to bring something different to the table. I stay in touch with our network and really focus on sharing the experience with everyone in it. For the most part, we have an exceptionally high retention rate based on the experience we create and the relationships that we build. In terms of my own story, I spent the late 1990’s and early 2000s in Chicago working for Hyatt Hotels. I was selected for the Executive Committee, Director of Catering role to re-open the flagship Park Hyatt on Water Tower Square and was really on top of my game. My husband was approached by his company to launch a program which he had started in the US, over in Europe. What was meant to be a 2-year sabbatical had turned into a 15-year European Adventure and it forced me to look at other career opportunities. It was at that time, living in Amsterdam, that I got my first taste of being a hotel customer while creating and hosting pan-European business to business conferences in key cities such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin and Paris. Living abroad and working extensively while immersed in different cultures changed our lives. It was such an incredible opportunity and experience. When we returned to the US, I knew that I wanted to continue to focus on automotive conferencing and that I wanted to do it through building real human relationships. What is up next in the calendar? Well the dates for CXAUTO2023 have been confirmed and we will be back at the Ritz-Carlton Marina DelRey next year June 20-22 but until then, I am really focused on MAPconnected Members Forum which I started in 2021. It is a network of executives responsible for the warranty lifecycle: warranty, aftersales, aftercare, technical services; all the way from the manufacturer’s warranty through to additional extended warranty and financial services products. There are a lot of events focused on marketing and new and used car sales which get a lot of attention in the industry but very limited attention and forums for warranty and technical services peer networking and benchmarking: which is a huge expense for manufacturers besides raw materials.   MAPconnected was created for this reason and offers different levels of membership and varying packages which allow for single or multi user executives who are interested in connecting with like-minded people. The MAPconnected model provides monthly small virtual benchmarking and sponsored webinars, and our messaging forum allows you to further communicate as well through private and group threads throughout the entire year.  And, the annual summit, VEHICLE SERVICE & WARRANTY LIFECYCLE Summit will be taking place October 25th and 26th at The Southfield Westin in Detroit, open to leading automotive, powersport, bus, truck, construction and agricultural equipment OEMs, Parts & Equipment Suppliers, their Retailers, Dealers, Distributors, Logistics & Services Providers.  We have a really exciting lineup of 35+ speakers who will be sharing case studies on Strengthening Your Warranty Roadmap in a Customer-First-Connected-World focused on 7 core topic pillars including: Warranty & Quality Strategy – Connected Customer & Recall Strategy – Financial Services & Extended Warranty – Service Operations & Parts – Legal & Regulatory Compliance – EV Warranties & New Services – Technical & Field Service Ops Take advantage of the July early bird special and receive 2 tickets for the price of 1 through July 15th.   Reserve & Read more here: www.mapconnected.com Pam Walter LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pam-walter-4aa9143/

“True disruption means threatening your existing product line and your past investments. Breakthrough products disrupt current lines of businesses.”  – Peter Diamandis  Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Owen Moon, CEO of FIXED OPS DIGITAL and a new Expert Panel Contributor for Dealer Marketing Magazine. For most of my 22-year career in the automotive industry I have considered myself to be a disruptor. My career started in early 2000 when I was hired to help an automotive focused advertising agency create and sell a comprehensive sub-prime program. For the next few years, hundreds of dealerships across the country utilized our program to break into what was at the time a relatively new, but lucrative market. This program included everything from Marketing, F&I, Inventory Management, Software, Leads Handling, and even BDC Training. I would spend the first few years of my career travelling around the country helping our dealer partners implement this program into their dealership culture. Looking back, I considered this experience to be the best education anyone could’ve gotten to learn the auto industry from the inside out. A few years later I once again found myself in a unique situation as one of the early adopters of personalized database mailers. At the time using variable data fields to personalize the information for each customer was a relatively new concept. I remember when we ran our 1st “buyback” direct mail campaign and helped a dealership sell 35 new KIA’s in a weekend utilizing a target list of 2,000 previous customers. In a weekend we helped sell as many new KIA’s as they usually sold in a month! Over the next few years, we would develop and execute multiple personalized database mailer strategies for dealerships across the country!  As technology began to evolve the “next thing” again presented itself. I was introduced to a new strategy called GeoFencing. Geofencing is a real-time location-based marketing tactic that uses geolocation data to target users within an established geographic area. Then delivering ads based on where they are or in what locations they have previously visited. I moved my focus to helping dealerships execute targeted geofencing campaigns. I also spent a lot of this time speaking at conferences and 20 groups showing dealerships the power of this new type of mobile marketing. Then came 2018. The auto industry was booming! Dealerships were spending most of their marketing budgets utilizing digital strategies and the industry was full of vendors and agencies who were more than willing to help! In such a crowded vendor environment I again found myself in a situation focusing on a new concept. This time in the service department. FIXED OPS DIGITAL was born and for the first 12-18 months there was just as much educating going on as there was executing. As FIXED OPS DIGITAL started to grow, we took pride as being the industry leaders in online service marketing. As 2020 rolled around we knew that service marketing was going to continue to get more attention. We had no idea that both Covid and the new vehicle inventory shortage would only magnify this! Today FIXED OPS DIGITAL is the Premier Service Marketing & Technology Company servicing over 650 dealerships in the United States and Canada.  Are you a disruptor?! Then I applaud you. Disruptors are risk takers. Disruptors are educators. The challenge with being a disruptor is that the first couple years are usually the hardest. Trying to educate and gain dealership adoption can be tough. As a new Expert Panel Contributor for Dealer Marketing Magazine, with the opportunities and challenges today’s automotive market is facing, I look forward to bringing my years of experience being a disruptor to provide valuable insight.      

Within my own career journey, I worked at a high-line auto group based out of the New York Market. Originally when I took the role, the group had an advertising agency responsible for all marketing accounting oversight in conjunction with the CFO and Controller of the company. As time went on, the owner decided to eliminate the agency and have myself and my team handle all the marketing in house, including working directly with accounting on all marketing responsibilities that the prior agency held.  My responsibilities varied day to day as Vice President of Marketing but I worked very closely with the entire accounting department on annual and monthly marketing budgets. Reviewing parts statements, contract negotiations, vendor billing management, marketing accruals, co-op submissions, co-op management, and marketing accounting oversight, I had to sign off on every single marketing, advertising, or 3rd party invoice prior to it getting to the check signer for all locations. Depending on the dealership, this area is sometimes not well defined or looked upon as a priority. Having a buttoned up and fully transparent marketing strategy, where all the internal teams are in sync, is not always part of the narrative. Especially when making decisions, not all accounting departments are involved with the marketing strategy.  Flash forward to 2021 when I met Kelly Edgar, who I now know as The Virtual Controller. We clicked instantly over synergies we have as we both work within the accounting department of a dealership; we have very similar philosophies and mindsets on the topic of marketing accounting. I sat down to interview The Virtual Controller about best practices and any advice she has to maximize profitability for your store. M: What is a sustainable marketing accounting process that every dealership across the US needs to have?  VC: For all my dealerships, every month I run an advertising expense report. This is always matched up with the budget and ties to the financial statement, so the partner or the GM can easily see what they agreed to and where the final expense came in at. This is a great tool to use month to month to order to see and understand your expense tracking. This is also good for the GM to compare to their other advertising reports because they have access to reports that we don’t get to see from a traditional accounting standpoint. An example would be the ability to compare their ad expense on Facebook to the number of impressions generated: this is also helpful in terms of the GM’s ability to monitor and understand whether there are expenses that are able to be cut, those not converting to traffic for the store. These reports are important to produce, even if they’re not asked for because there will come a time that the GM must make a split decision and they can refer to these reports easily, building trust within your accounting department and controller. M: Why is reviewing the advertising budget important to do monthly? What are some best practices and tips you can suggest for a new General Manager or Owner? VC: From an accounting standpoint, their Controller should be in consistent contact with the GM/O/MP concerning any out-of-the-ordinary advertising items. I know, for me, most of the time, I don’t get the budget until the month is almost over. This is just because the GM certainly does not have to get my permission on what his ad spend is, but at the same time, I am responsible and required to let him know when I see something that appears too high or too low. This is also something I feel comes with time as well as knowing your GM. There are a lot of times that I advise my GM on items that appear out of the ordinary and don’t receive a response. Regardless, my GM likes to know that I am watching those things, that is what I am there for. Another reason it is important to watch the budget is because the GM can monitor trends, both good and bad. I always give my GM a report of where the actual expense came in; it is in this way that they can compare the impressions they are getting on Google Analytics vs. what they are spending on such. M: Why should a dealership have an accounting department (virtual or in-house) manage the marketing accounting vs an agency? VC: You know, I have worked at dealerships before where we had an in-house marketing professional as well as having worked at a dealership that used an advertising agency. I really do see the benefit of both. In my opinion, the consideration really comes down to who has the most/best relationships. You may be dealing with an advertising agency that has a far reach, for example, having used the same radio station for a long time and can get you the best spots at a discount. And you may find that local professional that also has longtime relationships with different outlets that can provide you the same value. Either way you are paying for their experience, which can be expensive. Ultimately what you want is the exposure for your store. I am a strong believer in allowing your staff to do what it is they thrive in doing. And to me, other than monitoring the expense side, advertising should be left to a pro. It is way too large of a commitment and expense to trust to someone without skin in the game.

A customer for life goes a long way in automotive. It’s not just the vehicle purchase, it’s everything that comes with it: maintenance, service, add-ons, renewals, and, of course, referrals.   But it’s hard to scale personalized campaigns to past customers and to leads that ghosted. The messaging is different, the approach is sensitive, and the timing has to be perfect. There are also several factors that come into play like the last website visit, VDP views, and lease/finance renewal.  While no human can physically scale this kind of personalization, this is just another application of machine learning that could turn your CRM into a money-making machine. Think about it: if your CRM has 10,000 non-active leads, and you can reawaken even as little as 10%, you're looking at 1,000 new customers for life. It’s really pure gold waiting to be discovered.  It’s all about the audiences  The first step in making sure you’re investing in the right technology to turn more of your CRM into revenue opportunities is the audience game. You want to make sure your dealership isn’t bucketing opportunities into irrelevant audiences, like lease renewal for someone who has more than a year remaining, or service for someone who just came in. The demanded-- and expected-- hyper-personalization starts with the right segmentation, so you need to be optimizing audiences like people who recently visited VDPs, cash renewals, and cold “non-buyers” (leads that converted over 8 months ago and did not buy a car from you).  Make it dynamic  Once you have the right machines in place to identify and segment appropriate audiences, you need to make sure your email templates and SMS marketing have dynamic templates and merge tags. No one wants to receive an email without their first name or pre-filled forms. If you’re sending the email, you should know who they are!  But it goes even further than this- as you send traffic from an email blast to a specific landing page, your dealership can have dynamic videos and forms already embedded on the landing page to maintain that 1:1 conversation with your prospect. Once someone clicks on a hyperlink from your email, you will know how to identify them and greet them when they land on your website, keeping the transition and user experience extremely smooth. You can also personalize things like vehicles of interest or relevant services with dynamic templates.  Don’t forget connectivity  Even if your dealership invests in the best technology for mining your CRM, real-time machine learning can’t possibly function at its best without connected data. Make sure your dealership’s website data and ad activity is connected and communicating with the CRM so you have a full picture of the prospect’s digital footprint. While CRM information is critical, it has to be coupled with shopper activity in order to make the most of every opportunity and turn more (dead) leads into sales. When data is connected it also provides you with the most updated version of your customer’s story, bringing you one step closer to conversion.   There are a lot of pieces to pull together when thinking about personalized lead nurture at a scale that can convert more of your database into business. And while no human can possibly do this, your dealership should consider AI-powered technologies that can learn your audiences, segment, and target shoppers with just the right message on and off the site. Your data and your customer base could be the gold mine you’ve been looking for, so don’t miss out.