Let me start off by saying that I generally dislike the descriptors “small” and “big”. Generally, they’re overused and not very creative. In this case, they’re the most accurate way to describe these examples. Let’s dig in!
When clients choose to work with FlexDealer, we always reflect and consider why specifically they chose to do that, from our point of view. Sometimes, it’s because the appeal of working with a specialized agency like ours is alluring and logical. In other instances, and I would say that this is the majority of the time, it’s because of simple features that we offer that are game-changers to our clients.
These unique features that seem really small and simple to execute on our end are so often the things that make the most incredible and impactful differences to our prospects and clients (there’s a reason why our average client retention rate is 7 years and counting!).
The example that always comes to mind for me is vehicle tagging. We think of vehicles as what our clients sell, and we sell websites, digital marketing, SEO advertising, and consulting. The subject matter of all of those things generally comes back to inventory or services, and it can be easy to forget just how important inventory is to our client base! Better yet, how important that inventory is to their customers.
It frankly surprises me that other agencies haven't implemented these mechanisms for clients with inventory-based businesses.
One of our RV clients on the west coast was the unfortunate victim of a giant hail storm about two years ago.
They had a mixture of new and used RV units that were damaged by massive, fist-sized chunks of hail.
Aside from there being dents on the RV exteriors, most of the units were completely okay, but they couldn't be sold as new or as undamaged. All of the RVs had to go, and at a discount, no less.
The tricky thing about this type of sale is that some of the units were new, some of the units were used, and they were all from different brands and of different types. They had nothing in common except for hail damage!
What’s a dealer to do?
With a dynamic search like most people used to, you can type in motorhome, and it will show you every unit that is a motorhome. In this instance, where the RVs had nothing in common except for hail damage, it's harder to automatically group those vehicles.
In our experience working on other platforms, sometimes a grouping like this can actually mean putting every single vehicle on a page manually, which is so 2002. What our proprietary tech is able to do, is to easily facilitate vehicle tags that have no bounds.
For this sale, it didn't matter if a unit was new or used: we were able to go in and tag it with “hailsale”, sort of like a hashtag (#hailsale), and create a page that filtered every unit that hail damage applied to. There were no restrictions on if those vehicles were new or used, etc.
This was relatively quick for our team to implement and easy on the tech front when it came to sorting all of the RVs, which allowed a fast turnaround time on our end.Better yet, it allowed our RV dealer client to get the inventory that they wanted out front and centre as fast as they possibly could. Not only does this save everyone time, but it also makes better use of their marketing dollars, as the funds that they would have potentially paid another vendor to manually produce an entire page with vehicles would be astronomical compared to having a small piece of their FlexDealer retainer dedicated to this sale. This savings allows for an increase or re-allocation to the advertising channels of choice.
When clients are doing their initial platform training and onboarding with us, we’re asked questions that revolve around inventory. When we answer these, our clients are often surprised with how simple the answer is, as well as the fact that it's even possible. Another inventory-based example that I think of is the fact that they can sort their inventory in many different ways. Common sorting can be done year up/year down and in other, similar ways. I sincerely hope every vendor on the face of the planet is able to offer a baseline sorting mechanism. We can take it a step further and do model year first model year down, as well by how new that piece of inventory is to their whole inventory, allowing dealer to show aged inventory first, and in many other unique ways such as by bunks/length (in the instance of RV dealers), brand, and more.
In short, little features can truly make an impactful difference, even against other more flashy offerings. When it comes to choosing a website provider to work with, I encourage you to not only seek out partnerships and relationships that are valuable and trustworthy, but also ones that meet very simple needs.
You shouldn't be hit with incredible roadblocks for things that are simple.
Every dealer should have a marketing partner in their corner that caters their strategies and technology to the best interests of their customers. At FlexDealer, Relationships of Trust, is one of our core values, and we continue to see why each and every day. Choose a partner that means it and your dealership will grow.