Special events with celebrity appearances at the dealership

The simplest way of promoting your car dealership and getting bodies on the lot fast is with a celebrity appearance at your dealership, and that will work, but the real magic happens when you couple it as part of a unique event. This also gives you access to all the “event calendars” in your local area, because the media is always looking to list and talk about all the local events. You can even get the local news station to come to your dealership and film the event. This type of exposure multiplies your advertising many times and gets you reach in a local area that it is just impossible to buy, as well as giving you much needed boosts via social media.

What type of event should you create for the best results?

Here are some ideas with actual examples where dealerships have pulled off these events successfully, and dramatically impacted not just their bottom line, but their PR and reputation with the local community as well. All of them can be done without a celebrity of course, but add a celebrity and it makes a huge difference

CREATING AN EVENT AROUND A GIVEN CELEBRITY

We usually do not recommend this for many other businesses, because, what happens if your celebrity is not available? For car dealerships that do many events and have an ongoing need to have several different celebrities, taking advantage of some of these long term relationships really pays off. You first have to know which celebrities you have that live locally, and they don’t have to be A listers, former sports players for the local team, former or present beauty queens, or B or C listers can work just fine. Generally with the B and C listers, they want the work and are much reliable, and you can build longer term promotions around them.

Here is one example- remember the “Dukes of Hazzard” tv show back in the 80’s? John Schneider, known as Bo Duke in the show became known to the Franklin Sussex car dealership after his agent purchased a car from them, and if gave them an idea. They wanted to get him to visit their dealership somehow. They created an event called the Daisy Duke look alike contest, where people brought their cars that looked like the car in the show. John Schneider stayed at the dealership all day, signing autographs, talking to fans, and admiring and judging the winners. It was a great success.

Many celebrities who were in TV shows that are still remembered but not popular now may live in your city and with a little cleverness you can create a theme around what they were known for similar to the above. It will take you much further than pure advertising ever will. Can you get a celebrity to fly in? Of course you can, it just costs a bit more.

ROI FROM ADVERTISING VS EVENT FOR CAR DEALERSHIPS

Almost all dealerships have to worry about getting the absolute top return they can from all their advertising, and the better ones always have their eye on what advertising source generates the best cost per lead and has the ultimate ROI. There is a point however, where you have optimized and maxed out a given advertising channel, or some other dealership is willing to outbid you past the point of optimum ROI. There are lots of channels, literally hundreds of places where you can buy advertising. You have television, direct mail, email, search advertising, SEO, social media, content marketing, video marketing, direct media buys, the list goes on and on.

How do events fit in?

Many events like this don’t just serve a straight dollar for dollar ROI advertising proposition, but they help the dealership in many ways, and they greatly assist a lot of your advertising efforts. In search advertising, Google, Bing, and others are measuring how long people stay on your pages and the overall user experience compared to your competitors to determine the cost you will pay per click. In social media, the user engagement, likes, and shares also determine the price you pay for your advertising and how many people even see your social media posts. With other advertising networks, if you are paying a fixed cost and you get more clicks, usually the ROI will be better. Any organic visitors you get that are interested in the event, you can remarket which also helps your reach.

Ultimately though, the use of a celebrity at an event for your dealership gets you something that no advertising can buy at any price- credibility.

No matter how much you spend on advertising for your great giveaway, or amazing new sale, the truth is people just don’t really believe it. They are looking for the “catch”.

Credibility and authority in your community, being a dealership where people come for different great events, being known by the local news media as a source of interesting things to report on, these not only make you stand above the majority of dealerships but also help you with employee loyalty as well. This sometimes isn’t directly perfectly measurable, but an atmosphere with loyal employees, being known as an important part of your community, a place where people can go even when there is no “sale” going on, this translates to a more stable dealership that weathers recessionary periods much better than other dealerships.

Celebrity endorsements are an important “secret weapon” that will help you accomplish this.