Why I Prefer Retail Automotive Experience Over Marketing Experience

It’s easier to train someone about digital marketing if they’ve been in the car business than it is to train someone about the car business if they’ve been in digital marketing. It’s an idea that has always been present in my mind but it wasn’t until I started my own company and saw the results that I fully embraced it.

There are exceptions, of course. Two of the three people we’ve hired in the last thirty days have no retail automotive experience. Then again, the previous eight people we hired do have automotive experience, so I suppose it balances out. Besides, the people we hired recently are exceptional.

You might by asking, “Great, what does that have to do with my dealership?”

There’s something that can be said about diving into other industries to find best practices that can be transferred over. This is important. Fresh ideas can often turn into a wonderful thing. However, in the worlds of search and social that are often driven more by content than specialized marketing knowledge, it’s important to make sure that your partners are knowledgeable about your business.

In other others, you should test to see if the people working on your account have been in the trenches at dealerships or if they’re turning a marketing degree into a job in automotive marketing. Ours is an industry that is unlike any other. Most marketing jobs are about exposing a brand and helping sales happen online. In the industries that rely on internet leads rather than direct sales, they’re rarely doing so at such a high expense at buying a car if they’re B2C. Moreover, there are idiosyncrasies that come over your customers when they’re in car buying mode that are unlike any other industry. It’s not like buying a computer or a pair of shoes where the product is the focus of the sale. In the car business, they have to like and trust you and the dealership before they’ll pull the trigger in most circumstances.

I have never sold a car or worked at a dealership. It’s this perspective over nearly two decades on the retail side that allow me to see the value of hiring “car people”. I partnered with a car person. We hired several car people. This is one of our greatest strengths and is the best choice we’ve made.