If there’s one word that has gotten its money’s worth of usage in the RV industry over the past year, it’s a certain word that starts with an “M” and ends with “illennials”.
Millennials are our target customers. We must figure out how to reach Millennials. Millennials are a difficult group to sell to because they already know what they want when they show up at the store. What are we going to do about Millennials?
Yes, that 11-letter word has turned into something of a four-letter word.
But some companies are making strides toward helping dealers personally reach that coveted age group earlier in the shopping process and get them in the heart of their online comfort zone.
At the recent RV Dealers Association Convention/Expo in Las Vegas, both Level 5 Advertising and Contact at Once introduced solutions that offer a variety of ways to mine data and find out who is shopping, who has sold and gotten out of RVing and who is just fishing around and doing early research in possible preparation for serious shopping.
Level 5 specializes in building dealership websites.
President Budd Blackburn said a properly built and maintained website is a key to communicating and bringing in a customer before that customer even knows he is in the market.
“A website is almost like a catcher’s mitt and the marketing is like a pitcher,” Blackburn said in explaining Level 5’s strategy for online content. “The webite’s job is to catch the traffic and turn it into a lead.”
Level 5’s Apollo Marketing Platform, he said, includes as much specific terminology regarding a dealer’s inventory as possible to get the highest returns on Google searches. It stresses specific details over ads that just say, “Huge selection, low prices.”
As a result, Blackburn said, a Level 5 customer’s average click-through rate from a search is 27 percent.
“Millennials are everywhere and are obviously tech savvy,” he said. “If you’re going to be good with Millennials, you have to be good at what they’re good at. Our sites are all dynamically sized to fit whatever device you’re on.”
Apollo also can enable dealers to monitor all RV sales within a hot zone for that dealership. The dealer can plug in a specific zip code and see who has been in for service recently, but also whether or not that owner may have sold.
For example, a search Blackburn performed showed that an owner had been in for service on Oct. 27, but the trailer that had been serviced was sold Oct. 28. That data eliminated the need for further marketing of possible service to that owner.
However, dealers also can reach out earlier in the process if a trade-in deal is desired, for example.
“Someone who has paid four or five years on their RV that a dealer might need for a trade,” he said. “We can communicate with that customer and bring them in before they even know they are in the market.”
In a similar fashion, Contact at Once uses technology to make it easier for dealers to reach customers using text messages or even live chat.
Contact at Once also makes use of Google, Facebook and Apple chats.
“We make whatever they’re doing better,” Sales Account Executive Tim Neville said. “Your customer are texting. Why aren’t you texting your customers?”
Neville said that any contact that is made with a customer is automatically transcribed, making it easier for a sales rep to keep track of offers that have been made and making it easier to search for those contacts in the future.
Contact at Once’s live chat feature is monitored 24-7, whether by the dealership or by Contact at Once, so anytime customers may be doing an online search, it is possible for them to feel like they are getting personalized service at first contact.
Neville said that approach is critical to reaching the target Millennial audience.
“Dealers have got to get in the game, because they’re missing it,” he said.
