Make the most of your marketing dollars
By Anna Townshend

If the money a dealer spends on advertising isn’t increasing his business, then it’s not doing its job. Usually, however, it’s the dealer that’s not working hard enough.

To help dealers get the most out of their marketing efforts, they should embrace the following concepts:

• practice fluid marketing
• effectively monitor their budgets
• track the success of individual promotions.

Practicing fluid marketing
Legendary Marine in Destin, Fla., is both a dry storage marina and a boat and motor dealer. It has four Gulf Coast locations that employ a variety of marketing methods, including magazine, newspaper, and Internet advertising, radio promotions, direct mail and e-mail campaigns, special promotional events, and boat shows.

What separates Legendary Marine from other dealers is HOW it chooses to spend its marketing dollars—it’s always changing. “I call it fluid marketing,” said Marketing Director Laura Mobley, “because we’re always having to change our strategy from month to month, even day to day sometimes.”

This marketing philosophy manifests itself in two ways:

• Don’t be repetitive—If Legendary did a certain promotion or event last year, it definitely won’t do the same thing the following year. It’s important to stay fresh, so customers won’t become uninterested merely because they’ve seen it before.
• Modify plans based on changing market conditions—Legendary changes its marketing plans as quickly as time permits. For example, when high fuel prices impacted boat sales last fall, Legendary offered free fuel with any boat purchase. Now, with the country’s troubled credit market, it has tried to alleviate the financial pressure on its customers by doing promotions with local credit unions, who get publicity in exchange for offering Legendary customers a lower interest rate. “We don’t make any money on the finance side, but we’re looking at it as a way to sell boats,” said Mobley.

Effectively monitoring the budget
Just as Legendary’s advertising plans change with the times, so too does its advertising budget. Legendary currently has a $1 million annual advertising budget, which is about 2 to 3 percent of its annual gross revenues.

The monthly budget, however, changes all the time because Mobley monitors it on a weekly basis. She meets once a week with department heads and the chief financial officer to talk about revenue closing that week. In these discussions, Mobley tries to associate revenue numbers with marketing efforts from the past couple of weeks.

“We discuss service revenue and marina revenue, shrinkwrapping, deliveries, anything that has to do with a dollar figure,” said Mobley. “We talk about it. We line item it, and I talk about the marketing projections for the next seven days.” From those weekly discussions and number crunching, Legendary frequently alters its marketing dollars to ensure it’s spending the money wisely.

Tracking individual marketing promotions
One of the most difficult things for marketing programs is to justify their budgets based on a return on investment (ROI). Not so with Legendary Marine, which closely monitors the customer response to individual marketing campaigns through the help of Who’s Calling Inc., headquartered in College Station, Texas.

Mobley said the Who’s Calling program provides the simplicity and specificity Legendary needs to easily determine its ROI on marketing dollars. By using individual toll free numbers and call related features, Legendary can track the individual customer response to its specific marketing efforts by promotion and location.

In addition, the Who’s Calling program offers a dealer the following advantages:

• Thoroughness—the program records every call. Thus, it can readily identify every lead the marketing program generates, even those the staff misses.
• Follow up information—the program easily collects and organizes prospects’ contact information and interests. It will even transfer the appropriate customer calls to a specific salesperson.
• Statistical backing—it generates numerous graphs and reports that analyze overall campaigns or specify results by location.
• Instant feedback—it tracks the response to promotions daily, even hourly. For example, dealers can look at what specific calls came in that morning.
• Insight—it easily distinguishes between your successful and failed promotions. This allows the dealer to make informed decisions on the spot.
• ADDED BONUS, as a training tool—by listening to recorded customer calls, the dealer can identify areas where the sales staff may need help.

An example
Here’s an example of how Legendary used the program to customize its weekly marketing efforts.

• The plan—During a consignment program promotion, Legendary ran different ads in local newspapers (both display and classified liner ads) beginning on a Friday.
• The numbers—By its weekly Tuesday meeting, the dealer had received 10 calls about the liner ad and none about the display ad. In this case, the display ad cost about five times more than the classified ad.
• The process—Legendary didn’t instantly pull the display ad when no phone calls came in the first few days because it knows that the two types of ads work differently with consumers. “We want to let them run their course, especially with print advertising,” said Mobley. “You might run it one day, and people might need to see it for days in a row before they call.”
• The result—After five days without any response, Legendary pulled the unsuccessful display ad. At the same time, customers were still calling about the liner ad the next Friday, so renewing it was an easy decision.

A dealer can make the most of its marketing dollars by employing a fluid marketing plan that reflects current market conditions. To maximize those marketing dollars, though, takes creative planning and regular scrutiny.

---

Anna Townshend is assistant editor at Boat & Motor Dealer. She can be reached by phone at 847/647-2900, ext. 1308 or via e-mail: atownshend@boatmotordealer.com.