A little planning goes a long way. That’s true whether you’re writing a business plan for a new auto dealership or preparing to leverage new online marketing tactics to attract in-market shoppers.

The key to success is starting with the end in mind.

Think about it. Before you opened your doors you had to make three critical decisions:

What am I going to sell?

Your choice of OEM(s), models and service offerings formed the core of your business. What you decided to offer was influenced by buyer demand in your local market. Which leads us to your second big decision:

Where am I going to locate?

Careful research was needed to know exactly where to open your rooftop. As you chose the location, you were also thinking about what kinds of customers you were trying to attract, and what calls to action you’d use to attract them to your business.

In other words, what was going to make you the best choice in your unique market, and what value (pricing) would customers put on your offerings?

What’s my expected return on investment?

You needed to fuel your business with an initial investment, with an eye towards offering vehicles and services that would generate a healthy profit.

3 Decisions, 3 Levers

I wrote this thought leadership piece for a national automotive dealer magazine to be useful to GMs and Internet managers who should understand that these three early business decisions match perfectly with my three levers of online marketing success.

To grow, every business must set a budget for marketing and sales activities. The budget should also contain measurable goals along with an expected ROI (return on investment).

That starts by setting measurable business goals. Do you want to sell 100 cars a month? Double your used sales? Increase your fixed operations activity?

Once these are in place, we have three levers we can manipulate to power maximum results.

Useful tips (via Dealer Communications magazine):
3 Levers of Online Advertising Success