Why & When You Absolutely Must Follow Up

Auto Marketing – Why & When You Absolutely Must Follow Up

Sales departments and automobile marketing people waste insane amounts of money. It’s all for one ridiculous reason – fear of overwhelming or annoying prospects.

Granted, you don’t want to do either of these. This begs the question: How often should you be sending out a campaign to your potential buyers?

Consider these two powerful facts:
1. Each time you communicate, you’re gaining influence or traction – even with people who don’t respond.

2. Each one of your campaigns should build on the previous ones – the effect of each should be cumulative.The vast majority of businesses send out one email, one letter or postcard and then stop. This is great news for you. You know better than this. If you send the pieces so far apart (or never again), you lose both influence and the cumulative effect. Not to mention, you’re wasting money you can’t afford to lose.

Many messages over multiple months makes money!

Dan Kennedy, recognized as one of the greatest marketers of all time, says “one” is the worst number in marketing. You absolutely must use multiple steps and multiple media. Nothing has changed and this truth has been around for a long time. John D. Rockefeller said, “Perseverance…overcomes almost anything, even nature.”

Each message can stress a unique advantage of your business. If one approach doesn’t create as much response, you go back to the prospect with a different pitch. Go ahead and refer to the previous message within the verbiage of your new campaign – it works.

Magazine publishers and credit card companies are decimating forests and clogging email servers. They go on and on, begging, hounding, cajoling, until the 87th message says, “Okay, we give up. You’ll never hear from us again.” At which point, of course, a ton of people respond!

You don’t need this many campaigns to create urgency. Is it corny to show a clock ticking that says, “time is running out”? Of course, but it keeps on working!

When you send your campaigns, make sure to freshen your data. Every week people transfer vehicle titles. Every month, a good data source makes millions of updates to their auto owner records.

At this point one thing should be clear. You need to contact your public every single month. Would it help to reach out to them even more often?

Split your list in two and try two different campaigns. Send the exact same message – the only thing that changes is how often you contact them. Perhaps one half of your list gets reached every two weeks; the other once a month.

After that, all you have to do is sit back and see which one worked better. Which got better responses? Which yielded more qualified leads?

Continue to tweak and fiddle with your intervals until you have a plan that really works for you and your business.