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THE DEALERON BLOG

Using Content to Market Your Fixed Operations

By April 9, 2014Service Websites

Every year since 2009, according to NADA’s Dealership Financial Profile data, the average dealer has generated over 50% of their gross profit from Fixed Operations.  When I speak at NADA or other national conferences on service department marketing, I get the same reaction – lots of heads nodding, lots of note-taking, lot of dealers telling me, “I know we should be doing this”.  Unfortunately, I’ve been getting that same reaction for almost 3 years.

We all know that dealers are busy people and they frequently struggle to make time for new things, like investing time and money into marketing their Fixed Ops department online, even if they know they should be doing it.

In 2011, one of our smartest and most creative customers requested that we build his dealership a brand new website, entirely separate from his dealership’s site, devoted to marketing the Fixed Operations side of his business.  At the time it was fairly unheard of – everyone knew that a dealership’s website existed to sell cars.

We think it’s important to help our dealers test digital marketing strategies, so we worked with our customer to build a separate, stand-alone site that strictly marketed his Fixed Operations.  Now, nearly 3 years later, after having started from scratch with a new URL, his site gets more than 2,000 visits per month – more than some dealers’ regular websites that have been online for 15 years.  Because our customer had the foresight and willingness to invest his time and efforts 3 years ago, he now controls a valuable digital marketing asset—a Fixed Operations website that generates more than 2K visits per month!

In 2014, I encourage you to re-examine how you are allocating your marketing budget, and make sure that you’re devoting enough time and resources to the Service Department, which is probably generating more than half of your profit.   As we all know, Google considers content to be king, so give your team a goal to generate 3-4 pages of unique, Service-related content each month.  In a year, you will have 40-50 pages of unique, high-quality content focused on marketing the most profitable part of your dealership.

Once you have enough content, you can start building campaign-specific landing pages for email marketing campaigns to your DMS contacts.  You can build PPC landing pages and begin running Adwords campaigns to conquest Parts and Service business from the National Service Brands like Firestone and Goodyear.  If you want some more ideas on how to market your Service Department after you start building content for it, check out my Webinar from June, “7 Proven Strategies to Double Your Fixed Ops Profit”.  You will learn what types of keywords consumers use when they research service department offerings and how mobile is impacting Fixed Ops marketing.

So, even if you haven’t built out any online content for your service department asides from the few out-of-the-box pages your website provider incorporates into your regular website, make it your goal to begin creating Service-focused digital content in 2014.  In 2 years you will build up an asset that may generate as much traffic as your regular website already does.

Author Jeff Clark

Jeff Clark joined DealerOn in 2008 and he currently oversees all sales channels, including Inside, Outside, Business Development, OEM, Enterprise, Current Customers and New Clients. Jeff began his professional sales career after serving in the U.S. Navy during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Proud to have served his country, Jeff is a decorated Veteran who was awarded and commended for his service. Since the beginning of Jeff’s sales career, his consistent record as a revenue generator has been nothing less than impressive. This success is grounded in a passion to see DealerOn and their clients achieve their greatest potential which makes Jeff a favorite among dealers and industry professionals. Prior to joining DealerOn, Jeff held senior sales and marketing positions at Coca-Cola, Cars.com and Dealer.com Jeff was one of the six founders who launched NewCars.com retail division which was later positioned for acquisition by Classified Ventures (Cars.com) Jeff is a renowned and respected speaker on Fixed Ops Digital Marketing and is a regular speaker at NADA, Digital Dealer, JD Power along with countless OEM and industry events Jeff’s sales leadership was instrumental in helping DealerOn be recognized on the Inc. 500/5000 list. He is a member of Manchester’s “Who’s Who of Executives and Industry Leaders”, but he stays grounded through his family, love of baseball, golf and of course…cars. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Lydia and their two boys. Education: BA Communications from The University of Missouri, St. Louis

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