Many of our clients covet the small, independent dealer. So how do you add more of them to your stable of dealers? First, let’s profile the people you are selling to. Marketing geeks call this creating a “persona”.
One of the key’s to great marketing is to really connect with people. Part of that is connecting with their unique needs, but a big part of it is connecting emotionally with them. Think of it as speaking to people where they are at. That emotional connection is where the vendor finance business fails in trying to bring in smaller, independent dealers. Most vendor finance companies speak to virtually none of the key persona attributes listed above, yet wonder why the fight to establish a value connection can be so hard. Mcfly? Because you aren’t speaking to them where they are.
They want to feel that don’t just know them, but that you are like them. If you sound like a big company finance geek, you’ll struggle here. Come down to earth, talk about their equipment and about the challenges of being a small dealer. In fact we offer all of you a free idea to implement as soon as possible:
Campaign concept: Winning against the big boys
- 2 articles a week talking about how small dealers can position themselves to win against the huge, branded national dealers.
- Of course these articles should lean to financing as a tool, but not too directly. You don’t want to be seen as pitching a product, but as sharing ideas that help them grow
- It’s OK to include some ideas that aren’t finance related at all. Again, it’s about you being super interested in their success, not exclusively your own.
- Push the ideas out in email, house the articles on a blog
- Read the leads coming in from email and you’ll book more sales calls
- In less than 3 months, you’ll have 2-3 dealers a week calling you that you have never made progress with before.
This campaign is extremely simple and it will work. BTW, this is how campaign marketing works and if you ever wanna chat about how to do stuff like this…give us a holler.