ENTREPRENEURS, especially powersports Dealers, are success-oriented individuals. You might have started a powersports business because you love to ride or wrench, but at the end of the day, you want to see your business grow and flourish.
Online marketing can look like “the secret weapon” that will make that happen. But if you’re not careful, you can fall into a trap, and that trap is called Over-Aggressive Expectations.
We all read the success stories about small business professionals who create online businesses that grow faster than kudzu, thanks to brilliant online marketing. But it’s important to remember that for everything that goes viral, there are far more efforts that grow to fruition over time. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and that’s particularly true for online marketing. Chances are, as a Dealer, you will constantly work to build your email marketing lists and your social media followings, and you will be working regularly to identify new online advertising venues.
Online marketing is not a slam-dunk. Have a plan, benchmark some metrics, and track your performance.
Your marketing will most likely be a permanent work in progress — and that’s exactly the way it should be. Just like any aspect of business, online marketing is not a slam-dunk.
What can help you keep your expectations while you make progress is goal setting. That means having a plan, benchmarking some performance metrics and regularly tracking your performance to see how you are accomplishing those goals.
Target some key metrics
Metrics keep you rooted in reality. So, define a broad set of metrics. Review your online marketing and determine the metrics that will mean the most to improving your results. Perhaps you need to increase your email open rate, or maybe your Facebook following is well below the number of powersports enthusiasts in your local area.
Outline specific goals
Once you’ve reviewed the online marketing metrics, you want to set very specific goals for improving your performance for those metrics. Your goals must have a specific target and define a clear (and inflexible) deadline. For instance, the goal might be to increase your Twitter following by 500 people in four months. The target and the deadline will force you to start thinking about how you will accomplish that goal.
Your goals should be aggressive
Too many people set tepid, easily accomplished goals. You want to go well outside your comfort zone. It’s better to accomplish 80 percent of an audacious target than it is to achieve 100 percent of a lackluster objective.
Communicate your goals to the team
Chances are you have some smart, hard-working people on your staff who can help you accomplish your online marketing goals. And, of course, that’s double-true if you have someone on the team who is dedicated to your marketing efforts. Communicate your goals, outline your plan for accomplishing them, and get the team working on the project. You want to have firm commitment from everyone.
Establish milestones
Milestones are critical in goal setting. While the goal itself is the ultimate objective, you want to identify the successive steps that will help you reach that online marketing target. For instance, if you want to grow your email list, you want to identify the ways that you can do that, and estimate how much each of those ways can help you grow and how fast. This will create a roadmap for success.
Plot a timeline
After identifying your milestones, consider how long it will take to accomplish each of those milestones. Like setting your overall goal, don’t be afraid to be aggressive. Again, it’s okay if the timeline for achieving these “mini goals” makes you feel a little nervous. That will help you fast-track your success.
Monitor your performance
You’ve established your metrics, you’ve set a goal, you’ve outlined milestones, and you’ve set a timetable. Now you need to regularly report on those metrics so that you can track your progress. Regular reporting will help point out where you are falling behind and where you are ahead. It will also help you identify best practices and areas of improvement.
The key in all of this is to commit to your goal setting, timetable and performance monitoring. These practices will keep your feet planted firmly on the ground, and help you work within the framework you’ve built for yourself. It makes sure your marketing expectations are on track with your marketing plan, and that, in turn, ensures optimal outcomes.
DEALER Q&A: HOW DO YOU MANAGE YOUR MARKETING EXPECTATIONS WHEN IT COMES TO 1) GENERATING SALES AND 2) BUILDING A SENSE OF COMMUNITY?
“We expect both. We use our website, CycleTrader and Craigslist to focus on sales. We use Facebook, Google and some Instagram to promote awareness, community. All of our online materials attempt to drive traffic to our website.” – Bob Kee, co-owner and co-founder of Destination Cycle, Kerrville, TX
“Our online marketing expectations vary slightly based on what exactly it is we’re marketing, and where we’re marketing it. For an event marketed through Facebook, we’re looking for interactions, but if we market the same event through an email, we’re looking for awareness.” – C.J. Copley, marketing director, Killeen Power Sports, Killeen, TX
“In any of our marketing initiatives, we look for sales. One of our online marketing goals in our social media is for the end user to ‘get to know us.’ To explain further, we want our posts and interactions to have a ‘personality’ that people will get to know and want to come in the store to find out more. Yes, our brand is about freedom and strength; however, some people can be intimidated by that. We look to communicate that everyone feels comfortable and welcomed, because they are.” – Sean Wilkinson, sales and marketing manager, Trev Deeley Motorcycles, Vancouver, BC
“Online marketing should increase sales, and will especially increase awareness and interaction. We are in our infancy of really utilizing online marketing, especially social media outlets such as Facebook. Boosted posts have been most effective for the dealership. We are testing out what works and what doesn’t seem to, as well.” – Andrea Tarnick, advertising manager, Star City Motor Sports, Lincoln, NE