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Auditing Your RV Dealerships Marketing Budget

Auditing your RV dealerships marketing budget has never been more important than it is now.

If you want to be one of the RV dealerships that stay around and don’t get bought out by a giant like Camping World, then you have to make sure your marketing and sales processes are lean and efficient.

As you look at auditing your RV dealerships marketing budget, there are a couple things to keep in mind.

The whole purpose of our marketing is to create a conversation and customer lead for our sales team.

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This means our billboards, TV commercials, radio ads, digital ads, etc, are all designed to create a conversation with our sales team and our customers.

So when we look at our marketing budget and where we have our dollars allocated, we have to keep at the top of our mind, “how many conversations did this marketing avenue create?”.

This is important to keep in mind because say our monthly marketing budget looks like this:

Billboards – $1000
Radio Ads – $1000
Local TV ads – $5000
Online Ads – $500

With this outlined marketing budget your RV dealership would be spending $7500 a month to start a conversation with your sales team and your customer.

The next piece of the puzzle is understanding how many conversations these marketing avenues create.

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So for example, say you track the conversations and it looks something like this:

Billboards started 100 conversations. ($10 per lead)
Radio Ads started 75 conversations. ($13 per lead)
Local TV Ads started 300 conversations. ($16 per lead)
Online Ads started 100 conversations. ($5 per lead)

If the numbers look like this when tracking the conversations and breaking down your budget it won’t be hard to see how your RV dealership could get more efficient.

If your RV dealerships marketing audit produce similar results to the numbers above then it would make sense to adjust your budget.

Think about it.

We will never sell a RV without starting a conversation with our sales team and our customers.

So the main objective in your marketing should be to start that conversation.

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If it cost you $5 a lead to start a conversation using your online ads, while it takes $10+ to create a conversation with a radio, TV ad, or billboard, then to create a lean marketing process we would adjust our budget and put more into our online ads.

Sometimes this is hard because it is harder to track the ROI of our TV ads, radio commercials, and billboards.

Without having a solid process and asking every buyer, “What piece of our marketing brought you to our dealership” it gets hard to track.

The good thing about online ads is the date is right in front of you.

With online ads you can see how much it cost to get the click back to your website.

Next you should track how many of those clicks turn into an internet lead, so you can track online ROI.

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Auditing your RV dealerships marketing budget like outlined above is very important.

When your competition are giants like Camping World, it is impossible to go head on head with your marketing budget.

The only way to sustain against a giant is to have leaner marketing and sales processes.

So don’t make the mistake of never auditing your RV dealerships marketing budget because it could be the reason your dealership gets bought out.

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Lead Optimization For RV Dealerships

Christopher Paulino
January 25, 2020
Digital Marketing, internet marketing, self help
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Lead optimization for RV dealerships is a big deal.

The lower your cost per lead, the higher your profits, so we have to make sure we focus on our RV dealerships lead optimization.

In today’s digital age, most of your customer leads will come from the internet.

RV buyers are shopping online, reading reviews, and looking at your inventory online way before they turn into a customer lead for your sales team.

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But how do we make sure these RV buyers go from a view, to a lead, and then to a buyer?

We focus on our lead optimization and RV sales process – which is a topic for another blog.

The way to focus on your lead optimization is to make sure your RV dealership isn’t giving out all the information your customer needs on your website.

For example, if your website shows your customer the best price, then your customer can use that info against you to negotiate a better price with their local RV dealership.

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The better approach, is to require a Name, Phone Number, and Email to get your RV dealerships best price.

This way your online viewer turns into a customer lead that your sales team can start a conversation with.

We need make sure our dealerships website, digital marketing, and social media, is creating customer leads for our sales teams in the most efficient ways possible.

The fact is, without starting a conversation between our online viewer and our sales teams, the dealership will never sell a RV.

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This means the main focus of your RV dealerships digital, social media, traditional, and radio marketing is to create a customer lead so your sales team can start the conversation.

If your current marketing efforts aren’t doing this, your RV dealership has a big problem.

The main question you have to ask when evaluating your lead optimization is, “How can I use my marketing budget to generate customer leads more efficiently?”.

The way you do this?

Audit your marketing budget!

If you’re spending $500 on a radio ad that brings you 1 customer lead a month, then you’re spending $500 for one lead.

If you put the same $500 into a Facebook Ad campaign where you generate a customer lead for 1$, then you will get 500 leads for that same $500 budget that got you 1 lead on the radio.

This is lead optimization.

RV dealerships are missing out on the magic Facebook Ads and other digital channels can provide for their dealerships, while car dealerships are taking full advantage.

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If your RV dealership is missing out on customer leads because your website and digital marketing isn’t optimized then you need to switch focus.

Their is a lot RV dealers can do to increase the lead optimization at their RV dealerships and this 1 thing will make the world of a difference.

When you start spending your marketing budget more efficiently and pay attention to your cost per lead, then you can increase your profits.

But if you continue to do the same marketing and are spending higher costs per lead, then your profits are being ate up.

Make sure you’re paying attention to your RV dealerships lead optimization because your profit depends on it!

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The Good About Outsourcing Your Dealerships Digital & Social Media Marketing

Message Chris To Learn The Benefits Of Outsourcing Your Dealerships Marketing

New Hires Can Get Expensive

It can get expensive to hire new employees and it is not getting cheaper.

The average cost of an employee is 1.25-1.4x their salary. This means a $50,000/year employee will usually cost your business $62,500/year.

Don’t get me wrong, bringing great people into your dealership or company is an important part of making sure your company succeeds.

However, this doesn’t mean you have to hire your own team to get the most bang for your buck.

Most companies don’t understand that it takes more then 1 person to handle a digital and social media marketing strategy.

To be found in today’s digital age you have to provide consistent content, photos, videos, ads, etc, and to hire employees to do that can get expensive.

Adding a social media manager to your team (national average 54k/year) will only add one piece to the puzzle and that person will still need help.

This leads to paying extra graphic designers, videographers, web site developers and other professionals to get the work done.

Things like this can add a lot of unexpected cost to your dealership and will affect your bottom line.

Invest In Your RV Dealerships Digital & Social Marketing

Outsourcing Can Be A Great Investment

When you outsource your digital and social media marketing to a company who work in your industry, you usually get more bang for your buck at a lower annual cost.

Digital and social media marketing agencies, like IMR, have the teams you need to create a successful digital and social media strategy for your dealership or business.

When you pair a great team that has industry specific knowledge and marketing experience with your business or dealership you get an efficient team that will help grow your online brand and customer leads.

If you hire the wrong person or who you put in the position doesn’t know what they’re doing, it can get expensive.

Some hires cost your dealership a lot of customers and they can burn a hole in your pocket with wasteful ad spends while they try to figure out what works.

Experience or Risk

The next downfall to hiring someone into your dealership or company for social media and digital marketing is it’s a relatively new space.

When a company hires someone with a degree in “social media or digital marketing”, what this really means is they’re willing to take a risk on someone with no experience.

Good digital and social media marketing comes from trial and error and is something you learn by doing.

College students spend time in the classroom and learn from professors who may have never ran a successful digital and/or social media marketing campaign and it’s counter-productive.

While the person you’re hiring fresh out of college has been spending time in the class room learning about the war of 1812, your digital marketing companies have been testing and learning what works and what doesn’t in your industry.

One of the best things about digital and social media marketing agencies is before you hire them, they’re using other peoples money to learn what works and what doesn’t in the respective industries.

Your dealership or company will benefit from this because now your money is spent more efficiently and you’re not spending cash on R&D for your digital and social media marketing.

This is a huge upside for any company because you will waste less money on unsuccessful campaigns and you will save time by using a company that has already learned a lot of the mistakes with OPM. (Other Peoples Money)

Get Better Digital & Social Marketing For Your Dealership

Outsource To A Professional

With professional marketing companies in almost any industry, it makes sense to outsource.

Just as you would go to a heart surgeon for heart surgery you should go to a digital and social media marketing company for digital and social media marketing.

In the digital age we live today you can find companies who specialize in dealerships, doctors, lawyers, and everything else in between.

The good digital and social media marketing agencies will already have the team in place to grow your business and they won’t waste your time or money like a new hire might.

Outsourcing your digital and social media marketing to professionals in your industry will allow your company to focus on increasing sales and creating relationships with new customers.

No more worrying about how you’re going to get customer views from your digital and social marketing because you have an experienced team handling it for you.

Next time you’re re-evaluating your RV Dealerships or companies digital and social media marketing strategy think about outsourcing it because there might be an agency you can use that will be more efficient and yield better results for your company.

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Learn why IMR managing your dealerships digital and social media marketing is more efficient by sending me a message on LinkedIn: Message Chris On LinkedIn

Photo Credit – Top 5 Reasons Small Businesses Should Outsource Their IT Solutions