SEMA: 3 tips to maximize digital marketing

One of the greatest car salesmen in history was a Detroit native named Joe Girard, who made the Guinness Book of World Records for selling 1,425 cars in 1973.

The secret to Mr. Girard's success? He got people to like him. He would send out more than 13,000 cards every month to current and prospective customers, with the message "I like you" on the front and a holiday greeting (Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, etc.) on the inside.

It was an effective strategy in the pre-Internet era.

In the digital era, salesmen — and businesses — usually have to take a different approach, said Jim McKinley, the principal and co-founder of the digital marketing company (Un)Common Logic.

Mr. McKinley has been a digital marketer since 1999 and has worked with more than 100 companies over the last two decades.

He said winning companies typically have one of three things:

• A structural advantage (like being the only Honda dealership in a geographic area);
• An ability to monetize traffic at a higher rate than competitors (either because they have a great website or a strong brand such as Amazon);
• A willingness to do the "hard things" in digital marketing.

Mr. McKinley focused on the third aspect in his 30-minute presentation at this year's virtual SEMA Show. While specific tactics will vary from company to company, he gave three tangible ideas that every business can implement.

"To be clear — I'm not setting some sort of success recipe or list of secret digital tactics; that's not the purpose of today," Mr. McKinley said. "What I am doing is talking about three of the 'hard things' that winners are doing."

Tip No. 1: Don't pour your digital dollars into leaky buckets.

Driving customers to a bad (or outdated) website is the same as pouring water into a leaky bucket.

"All — not some, all — successful digital marketers spend a significant amount of time and researchers on building and improving their website," he said. "Period, bar none."

It's also important to ensure your ads direct customers to the right page (which is typically not the home page) and ensure the "value propositions" in your ads are reflected on your website, he said.

"If your ad talks about free shipping, make sure the page where users land mentions free shipping," he said. "You don't want people going in and out based on unfulfilled promises."

Tip No. 2: Market to the full funnel.

All customers go through a marketing funnel when purchasing something. The top (i.e. widest) part of the funnel involves gaining awareness of a product. The middle part involves researching a product. The narrowest part involves purchasing a product.

"We do this whether or not we're buying a pack of gum at the grocery store or a specific auto part or a rocket launcher," he said.

Winning businesses don't fall into the trap of focusing solely on low-funnel customers, Mr. McKinley said. For one thing, low-funnel marketing is expensive. For another, customers are not locked into a single brand when they start researching and 60% discover a new brand when conducting a search online, Mr. McKinley said.

"If you are not introducing your brand to new customers, you simply will not grow," he said.

High-funnel marketing includes paid search, display advertisements and content that simply educates customers. YouTube, in particular, is great for automotive marketing since automotive is the No. 1 category on the site.

"You need to experiment and test different options," he said.

Tip No. 3: Adapt to your market.

"One of the most powerful parts of digital marketing is you can make changes quickly," Mr. McKinley said.

The demand for tires, for instance, fluctuates throughout the year. Mr. McKinley's company found that businesses don't just sell more snow tires during the winter, they sell more at specific points of the winter: during and immediately after snowstorms.

So his clients adjusted their tire advertising — and their advertising copy — during those points and it resulted in higher sales.

The same flexibility has worked during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than talking about having the lowest price, businesses might advertise, say, having contactless payment.

"Digital marketing always changes and what your customer cares about also changes," Mr. McKinley said. "What you need to do is engage with customers on the things they care about most."