When I got into Digital Marketing most dealerships wouldn’t even consider buying a website. Many didn’t even get a website until they were mandated by the OEM. SEO and Social didn’t exist yet. It has been extremely cool watching the majority of the industry not only adapt to digital but continue to embrace its power and allocate more and more of their advertising budgets toward digital. One major problem that we notice is that as those budgets have increased, the results haven’t always resulted in more sales.
We’ve changed the way we interact with our clients to a more consultative approach. We analyze and discuss everything they are doing digitally and solve problems that may not even be directly related to our services. Why? Because ultimately, everything now ties into Digital Marketing in some way shape or form. Even if it’s not a service we directly provide, we wanted to find ways to fill the gaps and complement the efforts our dealerships were already making. As we began this consultative process we started to realize dealerships were spending a lot of money in silos. Often times budgets were allocated to multiple vendors doing the exact same services. Other times our clients felt they were covered in an area where they were left wide open to their competition. We stumbled across an opportunity to incorporate a strategy that the advertising world outside of Automotive has already embraced. Enter Omni-Channel Marketing.
Omni channel marketing offers a seamless experience regardless of channel or device. It ultimately puts the consumer experience above all and effectively is a better way to market products or services because of that notion. Omni-Channel Marketing clearly illustrates the collision that JD was envisioning, on a much larger scale. Imagine the shopping experience when SEO, Content, PPC, and Social are all working in unison delivering the same experience.
JD Rucker is ahead of his time often and this is just one example. I remember reading this article a couple years ago Search and Social Will Not Be Separate Marketing Endeavors in 2014. JD Rucker was predicting that SEO and Social would collide and become one service. I think he was more right than he could have ever imagined. As we were striving as a company to evolve the Search and Social offerings for our dealerships, we began to realize that it was much bigger than the two services colliding. This is the top reason why we made the decision to also add PPC and consulting to our portfolio. The second reason being the vast experience and knowledge in those areas we hold in our team.
We have just scratched the surface of the power of omni channel marketing and how it will benefit our dealerships. I look forward to sharing in more detail as things develop.