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Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

Every time we turn on our television sets or computers, we are barraged with an endless stream of automotive commercials or advertisements from an auto dealership online marketing campaign. What many of us don’t realize is that while they are selling the same product the means in which they do so are completely different. Were you aware that there is a difference between automotive advertising and auto dealers marketing?

The majority of auto dealers make the mistake of confusing the two without even realizing they are doing so. Little do they understand of the complexities involved with auto dealership online marketing versus their advertising. Now, think about all of the many billions of dollars they waste every year in automotive advertising and car dealer internet marketing due to their ignorance. The automotive business accounts for the largest spending on local newspapers and local radio stations, for example.

Let me begin with going over the formal definitions of each with a quick explanation of how auto dealership marketing and automotive advertising vary from one another:

Automotive Advertising – Different from car dealership internet marketing in that this is usually defined as a paid, public, and non-personal announcement of some type of persuasive message from a particular sponsor, in this case the car dealership. Automotive advertising tends to be a non-personal presentation or promotion of its products to existing and, more importantly, new potential customers. Read the rest of this entry »

A common question that arises is, “How do you plan your Internet strategy in a world where technology is changing constantly?” This is a somewhat valid question. Yes, technology changes, but this does not affect only your Internet strategy; it affects every facet of your business. The best way to answer the question is with the following question: “How do you plan to grow your business?” If you don’t have an answer to this question, you have a bigger issue and probably should be reading a book on developing a business strategy. More importantly, if the Internet (or related technologies) is not a part of how you plan to grow your business, you should definitely keep reading this book.

So how do you typically plan to manage the growth of your business? For starters, you forecast to the best of your ability where your business will be six months, one year, two years from now, and so on, and you develop a strategy to facilitate this growth both from a sales and a delivery point of view. How does this relate to the Internet? Well, your Web site and Internet strategy should be flexible enough to grow with your business without having to start from scratch every time your business reaches a new milestone.

Illustrates what we refer to as “the foundation” for all Web site activities. If you don’t take the foundation into account, then the structure of your entire online marketing strategy will fall to pieces. The key components of your foundation include:

• Understanding your primary online marketing objectives

• Identifying your primary and secondary target market segments

• Having a clear understanding of what you’re promoting on your site.

Once a retailer has decided to focus on being customer-centric, the next step is toaddress the following four strategic imperatives:
1. Build an organization that defines a shopping experience that evolves with changing customer expectations: Retailers need to build a dynamic organization that is aligned to listen to the customer so that it can continuously enhance and sustain customer satisfaction. This requires a commitment to innovate and experiment with new concepts and offerings.
2. Provide a truly convenient shopping experience: Stores need to be designed to create an environment that is easy to shop and provides customers with the necessary tools, information, and services needed to make an informed and confident purchase.
3. Develop an integrated view of the customer: Retailers need to achieve a foundational level of customer information integration that includes eliminating customer data silos and integrating fragmented pieces of data gathered across all customer touchpoints and channels. This level of integration allows retailers to deliver more seamless shopping experiences and also deliver more relevant offerings to customers.
4. Deliver a flexible product/service offering: Retailers need to be able to tailor their offerings to meet customer needs across different segments, local markets, shopping occasions and product categories. The store should be designed and operated with flexible options that allow customers to shop the way they want to shop.
Further, while it is critically important to embrace these imperatives, achieving an increased focus on the retail customer’s perspective requires retailers to focus on execution excellence throughout their organization. In doing so, senior managers should focus on six major aspects of their business operating model: organization, People/process, information, tools/systems, format/merchandise, and IT infrastructure. We provide examples in three selected areas:
• Organization: Precise execution comes from clarity of approach and alignment of incentives and performance measures that supports a customer focus. In merchandising, for example, a retailer could consider moving the focus from products and product managers to customer segments and segment managers.
• People/Process: Since store employees are integral part to delivering a customer-centric experience, it will be important to reduce non-customer-facing administrative tasks and elevate training policies to emphasize “continuing education” versus a one-time event tied to a new capability rollout.