8 Marketing Budget Priorities to Spend Money On




On the marketing budget for 2022, all of the i’s and t’s have been crossed. You’re coming to the end of another successful sales summer. Although you’d always like to sell more, you’re happy with the way your store is going. The money you’ve set aside for marketing is wisely allocated and well-understood. What more should I be doing to rule the following year as I get ready to confront the blustery winds of winter?

 

I’ll explain. You must employ some marketing techniques, no matter what. Each of these objectives should be taken into account when creating your 2023 marketing budget.

 

1) Schedule 12 campaigns in advance

 

Set reasonable targets for the output of each month by researching the historical volume of units sold every month on each day. Align it with the matching monthly budget. Now, calculate the amount you expect to spend each month in 2023. (Be careful not to devote too much money in advance of what you expect to be a challenging month. In similar situations, it is preferable to underspend and schedule more free or low-cost guerilla marketing activities to boost traffic.)

 

Prepare an omnichannel marketing plan by doing some research on the monthly events and holidays you can use. Recognize that any campaign you prepare in advance needs support in addition to financial commitment. If you publish anything in print during a given month, it ought to be an article emphasizing the campaign. The website should then be modified to make it obvious which campaign is running each month. You should make sure that the graphics and designs you create are appropriate for usage across all platforms (print, TV, video, website, email marketing, display ads, in-store signage, and more) as the campaign changes each month.

 

marketing schedule

 

Now, for each month, establish columns of categories for:

 

Print marketing

 

Postal service

 

Building a website or landing page

 

Email campaigns and e-blasts

 

Display, SEM, and retargeting

 

Offsite activities

 

the internet

 

Tools for optimization and conversion

 

Television

 

Radio / Online Radio

 

Payroll increases for dedicated tasks

 

Assign a percentage of the budget to each area, emphasizing preferred suppliers (or team members), and indicate which projects need marketing funding to succeed. You will know what to plan for and how to get ready for each month once you have finished this. You’ll be able to quantify spend vs. results as you roll out each campaign and inform your staff about the selected “sale” for the upcoming month.

 

2) Update your sales procedures, phone scripts, and email templates.

 

Put yourself in the shoes of the shopper to begin with. Check out your webpage. Submit a lead using a fictitious user name, then mystery shop for yourself. What kind of online experience do you offer? Does your website provide answers, or do you still have questions? Is the messaging you get persuasive? Do you observe that your employees communicate differently, or is it more of the same?

 

email formats

 

To appeal to today’s mobile-focused customers, you must develop straightforward, clean messages for use online, in emails, and over the phone. Salespeople AND customers must be considered when designing processes that fire out and trigger within your CRM, not just what management thinks would be wonderful to happen. This is the first item we alter when serving a client because it is the simplest approach to turn current opportunities into new sales.

 

3) Investing in Intangibles Instead of tangibles

 

You may (and should) purchase leads.

 

You can (and should) pay for traffic.

 

Deep links to your VDP are available for purchase (and you should).

 

For awareness, you can pay (and you should).

 

But in 2023, a successful, inventive saturation of your local online market will define a significant portion of the future of your company. Personnel must invest their time, effort, and intellect toward cultivating goodwill among the community.

 

These are not items you can just go out and buy with your money. Instead, it necessitates investing money in the intangible activity of putting together teams charged with coming up with innovative ways to connect customers and strengthen the dealership’s brand. In some cases, it might be payroll, but you should also include it in your marketing budget.

 

4) Merchandising Improvement

 

Already, your product images seem fantastic. You’re using a powerful camera to take pictures in a photo studio, and you already have a ton of edited, watermarked, and enhanced shots. It makes no difference because you still have work to accomplish. Every item in stock needs to start acting as its own advertisement. By omitting the automatically generated remarks and instead leveraging data to create customer-worthy statements on the condition, service history, accident history, and ownership history, you can add more detail to your written product descriptions.

 

dealership advisory

 

To increase the value of each car, you should also add digital validation to your product display pages (or VDPs), such as market studies, video trade testimonies, transparent pricing, price validation tools, and third-party reviews. Lighting, numerous high-quality photos, video proof, well-written descriptions, and infinite data assets to sway customers’ choices are all necessary to make a product or piece of inventory sparkle.

 

5) Using video in a creative and consistent manner

 

This is in the middle of the tangible and intangible spectrums. The trend of watching more videos than opening emails will not alter. According to statistics recently released by Google, the three types of video material that car buyers are most interested in seeing are:

 

Video Demonstrations

 

Product Explanation Videos for Features and Options

 

Videos of walkarounds and product demonstrations

 

video promotion

 

You should put those on your video to-do list for 2023, but you can’t stop there. Films on your website should include resources like staff biographies, client testimonials, value propositions, how-to films, service walk-throughs, and explanations of the sales process. Executing, filming, and editing this, takes time, planning, and a crew. However, it has a remarkable effect on your time spent there, consumer engagement, and converting online shoppers. Continue after that. What online videos do you enjoy watching? humorous videos? Videos focusing on human interest topics or your neighborhood? Why not hire a person who can produce original videos that foster a kind of theater-related goodwill with the viewer? Continue through the required vehicle videos. Consider your dealership as a movie theater, and consumers will think they want to go there.

 

6) Concerning Yourself More Than Others

 

The databases of your technology contain a book of business for you that is far more valuable than the contact details of a possible new customer. I’ve always maintained that great businesses understand they must spend twice as much effort working to keep existing clients as they do trying to win new ones.

 

customer support

 

Open your CRM and create procedures, promotions, and communications that strengthen the bond between your devoted customers and your business. On birthdays and anniversaries, anything as basic as a phone call ought to be customary. It is vital to follow up every time they are scheduled for servicing by email and SMS. ensuring that you utilize your previous clientele to generate favorable reviews for your company and then disseminate those reviews via social media and the web. As I’ve discussed with several of our clients, you can go as far as allocating marketing funds to a “thank you department” in an effort to leave a lasting impact on your most deserving customers over time. To possess a foundation of consumers moving ahead, you must embrace all of these priceless acts of connection. Making customers feel valued is essential if you want to gain their recurring business.

 

7) Making internal training and outside coaching mandatory

 

It takes time and effort to consistently train employees and reinforce procedures and approaches. Furthermore, it shouldn’t just be done over the course of a weekend with little follow-up. Internal training must be conducted by your own management. We advise weekly save-a-deal meetings between managers and salespeople, daily check-ins with each salesperson, weekly product/process group training, and monthly performance evaluations with goal-setting. Managers must take such action. Manage. Running a fluid sales organization begins with making sure the workforce is up-to-date on using in-store technologies, comprehending the benefits of the products, and adhering to a specified method.

 

dealership education

 

Coaching, though, ought to be outside. When managers are receiving in-store training, they need to make sure they are adhering to best practices advised by external organizations rather than just stealing philosophy from their own belief system. Although they have time in their schedules, sales managers don’t have enough to serve on the CRM’s task force for accountability. Being that attentive eye within the CRM on behalf of our dealer clients is one of the main services that we observe them utilizing. In front of real-time, interactive video chats, we collect their sales teams and handle their individual demands while customizing their continuous training to their store. With this two-pronged strategy, which combines in-store training with continuing mentoring from external influencers, dealer owners can be certain that their most important resource—their employees—is being taken care of and prepared for success in the future.

 

8) Online advertising

 

With today’s social media advertising, the ancient sales proverb “fish where the fish are” has never been more accurate. Social media is the big fish in the big pond of marketing since it allows for the targeting of over a billion individuals based on their interests in addition to their location and demographics. Companies big and small are doing everything they can to grow their brands and engage important customers on these platforms. Daily user rates and mobile usage on these sites both continue to rise.

 

However, simply having a Facebook profile and posting frequently to it is insufficient. Currently, Facebook advertising is one of the best uses of advertising dollars, and every business should allocate money specifically for it in their marketing budget. Businesses may now use Instagram, various platforms can be used to buy advertising space, a new generation is discovering Snapchat, and a new app is released every day that has the potential to impact a certain demographic. Organizations can no longer assume that merely being present on these sites will keep them competitive. If they want to reach their target customers, they must invest in advertising their companies.

 

You must get ready for what lies ahead in the economy as well as the industry. When things are going well, you need to batten down the hatches and figure out what is driving sales in your company and what is just spending money. Making a well-thought-out game plan for a year’s worth of campaigns and advertising expenditures shouldn’t be rushed or done in a vacuum. However, doing so is essential for any business owner who wants to succeed in the future year rather than just maintain their current level of success. Following the aforementioned advice and doing enough planning, you can determine your marketing budget for 2023 and start tracking the ROI of your efforts well before the ball drops.