TV and billboards may be more glamorous. Everyone may be talking about declining newspaper readership and how the information superhighway is going to relegate newspapers to the history books. But don’t bet your dealership on it. Year after year, newspaper is the meat and potatoes of most dealership advertising budgets for one simple reason - It Works!
When choosing a dealership to shop, more consumers say the newspaper is their primary source of information than radio and TV combined.
But despite the staggering amounts of money spent every week in the newspaper, despite its proven effectiveness and reliability, most dealerships’ print advertising doesn’t get the time and attention other, more glamorous, media do.
So before you rush off to shoot the new TV spot, do the live radio remote, or meet with the geek-of-the-week to work on your new web page, take a look at a few ways you can squeeze more profit out of this month’s print budget.
DOMINATE THE SATURDAY CLASSIFIEDS:
Saturday is the day that customers say they prefer for automobile shopping, so why not fish when they’re biting? Saturday morning before they go to buy a car, they buy a paper. They use the Saturday classifieds like a giant Sears and Roebuck Christmas catalog. It’s a wish book and if you want to sell more cars, you‘ve got to have the prettiest pictures.
Newspaper advertising is different than electronic media which rely on frequency to get inside the customers’ head. Newspaper advertising acts more like the yellow pages. Once someone has decided to buy, they’ll pick up the paper to decide where to shop. They use the ads to help decide where to go first, your lot or your competition’s. Instead of little ads several days a week, run as big an ad as you can afford on the day when people are looking for the car ads.
Of course Sunday paper’s have the highest readership and Sunday is the second choice for car shopping. So if it leaves you enough budget to be a major factor in Saturday’s paper and you’re open, picking up your ad for Sunday can’t hurt and you might get a nice pick up discount. As for the rest of the week, save your money and run bigger ads on the weekend.
A word of caution about the special AUTO SECTION your newspaper rep is always pitching you: The newspaper designed these special sections to boost their revenues, not yours. It’s great to have your ad running with all the others so that customers can compare, but if the section’s not running on a day you want to advertise... DON’T BUY IT!
RUN FULL COLOR:
Independent newspaper industry research shows that full color increases the readership of any ad by as much as 67% As long as you’re running at least a half a page, the extra money for full color is one of the best investments you can make.
The key word there is full color. Running only one or two colors, in some cases, will actually decrease the readership of your ad. And since the cost for the 3rd color is nominal. BUY IT!
But if you’re buying full color, make sure you get your money’s worth. Have whoever lays out your ads design it from the ground up as a full color ad, not a black and white ad with a little color splashed on for the sake of splashing on a little color. And by the same token, once you’ve got a good color ad, don’t tighten up and run it in black and white. The same effects that make a great full-color ad jump off the page turn to dark gray mush when you run it as a black and white.
RUN PAGE KILLERS:
Some research that your newspaper rep probably won’t show you (but your radio reps will) points out that a full page ad only draws a little more than a half page ad even though it costs twice as much.
Now if you can afford a full page full color ad on the weekends, run it.. You might can get a full page discount and you might can get guaranteed back page placement, which is a good thing. But if it comes down to running a full page black and white or a color page killer, run the page killer.
A 9 column x 19 inch page killer will save you almost 20% off the cost of a full page. A 8 x 17” ad saves you over 35%. And the Ultimate Page Killer, A 7 x 15”, Costs the same as a half page ad, but GUARANTEES that your ad will be at least 66% larger than anyone else on the page!
If you run a regular half page ad, either half a page tall or half a page wide, the newspaper is going to almost always put another half page ad on the same page to save on newsprint costs. That’ll cut down on the effectiveness of your ad.
But if you run a 7 x 15 the paper can’t fit another half page ad on the same page. And since the other ads won’t be in color, you can DOMINATE the page for half the cost!
PUT PRICES/PAYMENTS IN YOUR ADS:
There are two types of advertising. Image advertising that is supposed to make the customer remember you sometime down the road when they are deciding to buy. And response advertising that is designed to get the customer off the couch, looking for their checkbook so they can buy NOW!
Those call-before-midnight, spray-on hair TV infomercials are one example of response advertising. Your print advertising is another. If the weekend newspaper is like a Christmas catalog, use it like one. And just like you’ll never see an infomercial or catalog that doesn’t give specific pricing and offer information, you should ALMOST NEVER run a print ad that doesn’t give specific prices or payments.
The offers are the single most important element of any ad. How can the customer make an instant decision to get off the couch, drive to your store and buy a car if they don’t know how much you’re asking?
Discounts and rebates sound great, especially if they’re tied to a deadline. But without a price to look at the customer is just going to assume that you marked up the car $5,000 before you took off the $5,000 discount. And great prices (and especially great payments) put the notion in the consumers mind that maybe they can afford a new car after all.
One trick to use on pricing is not to end all your prices the same (like $199 and $299 a month). Odd prices like $13,893 and $187 a month give the impression that you’re cutting prices down to the bone leaving less room to negotiate.
And since we’re thinking about your print ad as a page out of a catalog, don’t forget to describe the product. A price doesn’t mean anything if the customer doesn’t know what they’re going to get for that price.
You don’t have to list everything including the kitchen sink, but if the vehicles got a V8, buyers want to know. And they want to know if its got air, automatic, power windows and locks or cruise control. What you may not want to list are option and convenience packages, because 90% of the buyers don’t know what they include. On pre-owned vehicles, list the mileage only if it’s impressively low or required by state law. And don’t list a piece of equipment unless it adds value. 4 cylinder engines, 4x2 drive and manual transmissions don’t hook any buyers and only deter those who are interested in big engines, 4 wheel drive and automatic transmissions. One last thing, try not to use CAR TALK. You may know what AT, PW, PL, PS, PB, AC, 70K miles, and ABS mean, but your customer probably doesn’t. And whatever you do, don’t put the words WON’T LAST LONG in your descriptions. Most buyers prefer cars that are going to last a while!
Like every rule, there’s an exception to the NEVER RUN A CAR WITHOUT A PRICE OR PAYMENT rule. Once or twice a year, have a gigantic, everything marked down, no holds barred, extended hours sale without mentioning prices in the ads just HYPE, HYPE, HYPE. If you don’t do it too often, these can be your best weeks of the year.
SPOTLIGHT ONE VEHICLE:
In every ad you do, try to make one vehicle stand apart from the others. Of course you want this to be your best offer on your best selling vehicle. Make that vehicle twice the size of the others. Make the price twice as tall and include twice as many features as on the others.
The optimum number of vehicle to picture in your ad is somewhere between five and nine. And by always using an odd number of cars, you can emphasize one and keep the other cars in nice orderly rows. If you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. So pick one that you’re willing to give a little extra attention and turn on the spotlight.
REMEMBER THE 1% RULE:
On any given weekend less than 1% of the people in your city are in the market for a new or used car. These are the people you need to direct your ads at, not the other 99% who’ll probably never turn back to the classified section to see your ad. 99% of the population will never notice your ad because they have no reason to go looking through all the car ads in the weekend paper, but the one percent who are looking have their checkbooks out trying to figure out how much car they can afford.
If your managers, your spouse, your friends at the country club, your competition or even you don’t like the ad...WHO CARES?
What’s important is that the ad is exciting enough, dramatic enough and aggressive enough to get the attention of that one person out of a hundred who needs to see it.
For instance, some marketing people will tell you that you can’t have a sale every day. “Look at Wal-Mart,” they say. “They’re the number one retailer in the world because of every day low prices.”
Well that’s true. EVERY DAY low prices work for Wal-Mart, because people buy what they sell EVERY DAY. Their customers don’t have time to look around and research the best deal every time they buy a new tube of toothpaste or pack of underwear.
But people, at best, buy a new car every two or three years. And that one person out of a hundred who is seriously looking to buy a car right now, doesn’t want low prices every day, he wants the best price, TODAY!
And don’t change an ad just because your tired of seeing it. One percent of the population may be looking at your ads, but it’s a different 1% every couple of weeks and they’re not tired of your ad. Change your ad when the deals change or when it quits selling for you, not when your tired of looking at it.
USE RIGHT BRAIN/LEFT BRAIN PSYCHOLOGY:
The marketing gurus call it right brain/left brain psychology, but we simply call it pushing all the buttons. First push the emotional buttons and make your prospects think if they don’t hurry, they’re going to miss out on something.
The three most effective words you can put in any automotive ad whether it’s print, direct mail, radio or TV are SALE ENDS MONDAY! If someone’s serious about buying a car, they’ll make sure they check out what you have to offer before time runs out and, if they were really only thinking about buying a car, a good limited time offer can be the thing that pushes them off of their couch and onto your lot.
But after you’ve got them emotionally excited about buying a new car, truck or van, the logical side of their brain is still saying “Yeah, right. Why should I rush out and buy a car just because this ad says hurry?”
So what you have to do is give them a reason, a logical, believable explanation as to why this sale is different. Why this one is FOR REAL! Whether you need the room for new inventory, or you’re trying to increase your factory allocations or these vehicles were used as courtesy cars during a recent golf tournament and you can’t sell them as new. Whatever logical reason you give, one little line in your ad can shut the logical side of their brain up and let their emotions, and their checkbooks, run wild.
LET YOUR SALESPEOPLE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING:
Picture this ugly scenario: You’ve invested thousands upon thousands of dollars into promoting your ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME, NO-HOLDS-BARRED, THIS-WEEKEND-ONLY, ALL-OUT, BLOW-OUT, SUPER SALE. Mr. and Mrs. Car Buyer see your ads and hear your ads over and over again until they are convinced this is the one buying opportunity they can’t afford to miss. So they rush into your store and ask about the big sale, only to have the salesperson respond eloquently, “HUH?”
That’ll sure let the steam out of their enthusiasm, but it’s easy to avoid. TELL YOUR SALESPEOPLE WHAT YOUR DOING! This may be the single most effective thing you can do to make your advertising work better and it’s by far the least expensive. Whether you’re working in Print, Radio, TV or Direct Mail, the more aware your people are, the better equipped they’ll be to handle the traffic.
CALL THE RESULTS TEAM:
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Now that I’ve outlined a few ways to make you’re print ads more effective, I’m going to tell you about the simplest, most effective and hassle-free way to combine all these ideas (and many, many more) to give your dealership the most attention-grabbing, traffic-generating, market-dominating print ads in your market:
Pay me $599 to design the ad for you.
Now I know what you’re saying - I’ve heard it hundreds of times before:
“Why on God’s Green Earth would any dealer in their right
mind pay you $599 to design an ad when the newspaper does it free?”
Well, I’ve already told you: Car dealers spend staggering sums of money in the paper, more than Radio, TV, Direct Mail, Magazines and Billboards combined. That means there are going to be a lot of dealers in this weekend’s paper fighting over your next up.
And the same artist who lays out your ads at the paper is laying out ads for 23 other dealerships in town. So how’s your dealership going to get noticed in all that clutter if your ad looks like every other dealer’s in town?
Your ad in this weekend’s paper is going to cost a ton of money...at least a couple of grand and probably five, ten, maybe even fifteen thousand dollars a page. So spending a few hundred more to give your dealership the most attention-grabbing, traffic-generating, market-dominating print ads in the automotive industry only makes sense.
If you want to stand out, if you want to get noticed, if you want your ads to DOMINATE the paper and bring in more traffic so you can sell more cars this weekend, you’re going to have to do something different.
And I’m not talking about slick, award-winning, lots-of-white-space ads like the factory boys are always wanting you to run.
If We Win An Award for Any Ad We Design for You, We’ll Give You a Choice--Fire Us or Slap Us!
We’re not in business to win awards, we’re in business to create results...to sell cars. And that’s what we do for dealerships just like yours all around the country... help them sell more cars. We know what works and we know what doesn’t.
But you don’t have to take our word for that. If you think a dealer would have to be crazy to pay $599 to have a newspaper ad designed, our clients say you’d be crazy not to:
“The Best Print Ads and Best Results Per Ad Dollar Spent I’ve Ever Seen!” -- David B. Farraez, Bud Davis Cadillac
“Great Results. Outstanding Service. Excellent Traffic Counts!” --Chris Blount, Regency Toyota
“The most successful campaign we’ve ever had! The Results Team definitely does give RESULTS!” --Barbie Jordan, Courtesy Cars
“PERFECT! Their ads make every other dealer’s look homemade.” -- L.H. Fallaw , Gibbes Volkswagen - Mazda
“VERY POWERFUL! The ad was everything I’d hoped for and more.” -- Dean Zampana, Faulkner Buick - Pontiac
“I’ve been in the car business for thirty one years and the Results Team work is the best I’ve ever seen. They produce results QUICKLY!” -- Doug Hall, Richmond Ford
“SALES AND TRAFFIC ARE UP! The ads bust through the clutter. My customers remember them, come in and buy cars!” -- Michael Keppel, KUHIO MOTORS
“THE RESULTS TEAM understands what I want and need. With their quick turnaround, print advertising has never been easier.” -- Jim Hinshaw, HOMER SKELTON AUTOPLEX
“I LOVE IT! Call tonight and the ad’s on my desk in the morning” -- Paul Llobell Jr., SAYVILLE FORD
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“Fast, Convenient and the best looking ads in the paper.” -- Gary Potter, BROWN & BROWN NISSAN
“Sales are up dramatically! THE RESULTS TEAM is the greatest time saver we have. Your work lets us spend our time selling cars.” John Lindberg, St. Augustine Nissan
“Creative, Timely AND Cost Effective...Thanks.” -- Cindy Yohe, KINSEL AUTOMALL
“I’ve never had an ad that drew more! They’re colorful and exciting. And to top that, service like it should be.” -- Gary Linam, CLOVERLEAF
Just pick up the phone and call us at (800) 717-1999 , tell us what cars and prices you want to feature and you’ll have a customized, camera ready ad in a couple of hours. We could have your ad at the newspaper before your newspaper rep even returns your call.
And it’s risk-free. We’ll bill you just $599 (plus shipping). If it’s not the most attention-grabbing, traffic-generating, market-dominating ad your dealership has ever run, you don’t pay for it. Simply mark the invoice denied and return it with a brief explanation of where we went wrong.
But that’s not going to happen. This will, without a doubt, be the best, most effective $599 you’ve ever spent!
Effective Advertising! Rapid Turn-around! Affordable Pricing! GUARANTEED!
There’s only three things left for you to do:
1) Pick up the phone and give us a call at (800) 717-1999 .
2) Tell your newspaper rep the ad’s on the way.
3) Call the factory and see if they can get you more inventory before Saturday!
Whether you call us or not, you’re going to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars in the newspaper this month. For another $599, you can have the most exciting, eye-catching, traffic-generating ads in the market. It’s worth a shot, and besides, since we’re even paying for the phone call, you’ve got nothing to lose! Call today, (800) 717-1999 .
Click on instant-events.com or call us at 1-800-717-1999
