Easy Design

How Car Dealerships and Golf Courses Waste Their Marketing Efforts on Inefficient and Ineffective Strategies

Imagine for a moment that you are stranded in a mountain cabin by a really brutal snowstorm. You have been there a week when one morning the weather breaks, but it’s obvious you won’t be going anywhere for a while.

You are out of food and have not eaten for a couple of days when you meander out onto the deck with the single shot rifle you found in the cabin. Bingo, your luck has changed. Right in front of you is food! The food comes in a variety of sizes, three rabbits, two coyotes and a moose, each just 10 feet from your nose.

You have never shot anything in your life but you have a choice to make and your life depends on it. You don’t know how long it will be until you are rescued and you badly need a meal. Which animal do you decide to aim at and make an attempt to shoot with your single-shot rifle?

I hope you said the moose, because the moose will not only provide you with the biggest, easiest-to-hit target but also with the biggest pay-off in terms of food. It is a pretty understandable example but at the same time it is the one least often used in most business situations. As the amazing advertising expert David Ogilvy once said, “If you have to hunt for business you might as well hunt for great business!”. Most business owners still go after the small rabbits rather than moose, they fish for minuscule minnows rather than large whales. Yet ten thousand minnows do not equal one whale, any more that ten rabbits make a moose.

I regularly hear business owners find fault about the nature of clients they get in their doors. They always seem to be getting low-end bottom feeders that do not provide good value they whine. They never purchase enough merchandise or stay long enough with the business. They opt for the cheapest made product over excellence, and so on. The funny thing is that when I ask them what type of marketing they are doing to attract new clients, it’s usually mass-mailing discount coupons or discount-oriented print ads in the local paper.

Let me give you a quick example. My wife is in the market for a new car and every car dealership in Citrus County and the surrounding area should know that in a big way. Why?

Because she is only just a few of months away from the end of her lease on her existing vehicle. It’s a high-end SUV and we live in a high-end neighborhood. What are the chances that she will keep the SUV for another year once the lease runs out? Roughly zero – in fact we are already overdue for a new car and I have my eye on a new Audi RS4.

Some car dealer in Citrus County should know that. They should know that because of the lease dates, the registration, or by whatever means they use, but they should know that. The dealer I bought my last car from should certainly know that. They should have called my wife or I to secure new business. They should have asked if they could drive around to my house and let my wife test drive the latest model of the same vehicle. On a $70,000 SUV you should expect get personal attention.

Instead of spending some time on going after people who have already demonstrated that they have the desire and enough money to own such a vehicle, they run full page ads in the local newspaper, use extremely ineffective TV commercials, and send out John Doe letters that do not work well and generate minimal amounts of response. It’s like they never spent anytime planning thier marketing and probably have never picked up any type of small business marketing books in thier lives!

A daily-fee golf course spends six hundred dollars for a discount ad in the local paper to attract individual players at an insignificant rate. Instead, they should sporadically break the mold by taking the $600 and using it to send 1,200 sales letters to all the local charities, fraternal, and fund-raising organizations. This advertising letter would contain all kinds of information promoting the event and tournament hosting services that the golf course offers. If just one organization out of 1,200 books an event, they might get 144 players to show up. If just one percent of the twelve hundred people who get the letter book an event, that would be 12 events, or well over 1000 players. Compare that against the thirty to forty people who clip the discount coupon to save twenty dollars! The difference is shocking, but most businesses just do not do it.

Instead of spending six hundred dollars on an poorly designed marketing ad, or a direct mailing that would provide better results, how about hiring a temporary sales employee for the week and spending the six hundred dollars on calling all the people who held a golf tournament last year, or donated to your ideal charity. If they make fifty contacts every day, that will be two hundred and fifty in one week and that is low. We used the same technique for my golf management companies with great results. What could your business get done if you called two hundred and fifty of your best customers? Could you resell them or up-sell them? Of course you could and that is my whole point!

adidas Porsche Design Sport – Spring Summer 2010