9:56 am, July 22, 2015
The Shard and the ‘Walkie Talkie’ building
By Ben Garside
AFTER visiting London recently I got all pumped up from seeing the big lights, big buildings and big advertising everywhere. This made me take action in a few areas. One of the key areas I wanted to focus on was dealers capturing more finance leads via point-of-sale material. Our point-of-sale merchandise is one of our most requested assistance tools.
However, even though we are sending thousands of pieces out every month to our motor dealer partners, most dealers will not know what is available to them, why we have the specific messages on them, or what process has gone into producing this merchandise.
Over the past few years we’ve made a lot of changes to the point-of-sale material we give out, and also on the advice we give to dealers when they want to produce their own.
So let’s start with the specific messages. Why did we add the lines ‘ask for more info’ or ‘ask inside’ to our point-of-sale material?
It was derived following research we had conducted. The findings were that customers didn’t ask motor dealers about, or ask for, finance products. This meant that dealers were not maximising the potential of their site, as they were not asking the customers if they wanted or needed finance either.
Since implementing these messages the feedback we have had from dealers has been really positive with most getting a steady number of customers asking for finance. I must add that by placing finance messages around the pitch I believe that some motor dealers may have also started asking customers if they want to know about the finance options available, as it is a constant reminder.
So why do we have so many products? Dealers we had spoken to previously believed visitors may not have been aware they had finance products available to them, so they left the forecourt without speaking to any staff at all.
This meant we needed to figure out how to get finance messages in the consumer’s view.
With the mass range of dealer types we deal with – from small single-man outfits to large dealer groups – we needed to think about placement, how many points of contact were needed. We also needed to make sure we didn’t make any of the dealerships look cluttered. We set about reviewing what we had already and what we needed to add to fulfil as many options as possible so we completely revitalised all our products so they had consistent messages and colours and were all consumer-focused.
This month alone we have recently added three additional products to our portfolio and have two more products in the pipeline for next month.
So what should you do if you want to capture finance leads from your visitors?
Take a good look at your site from your customers’ point of view and purchase new signage or point-of-sale material to fit the requirements.
Or you could just call us. We’d love to help.
Who is Ben Garside? Ben is marketing manager for First Response Finance. Call him on 07817 518739 or email [email protected]
