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TAMPA—If those screaming auto dealer ads that startle you awake from your cozy late show couch slumber seem to be getting more outrageous these days—that’s because they are.

Flashy and abrasive advertising has been the one-trick pony of locally franchised auto dealers for decades.

“Hey,” the dealers assume, “if you’ve got the best price, you’ve got to scream it from Thonotosassa to Tarpon Springs, right?”

Wrong.

Here’s why…

While a shrinking segment of the car buying market will inevitably respond to brazen low price claims…the majority of consumers in Tampa Bay have grown up. And what they respond to today is a far cry of “No Money Down!” from the early days of local TV advertising.

Turning up the volume is a desperation move on the part of dealers who’ve always made their bones on “push” advertising campaigns, while the more marketing sophisticated dealers are quietly winning the battle for new car sales by employing customer retention marketing (CRM) campaigns that “pull” new and existing customers and keep them longer.

Any auto dealer competing in car happy Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties know that the majority of their marketing budget is spent getting new customers onto the lot. Yet a surprising number of them are willing to let those customers speed off into the Tampa Bay sunset after just one sale, hoping they’ll happen by again when the time comes.

Hope is a fine commodity, but it makes a lousy marketing plan.

Even Barack Obama’s presidential campaign left nothing to chance in selling their message of hope. A state-of-the-art Web marketing campaign was the backbone of their grass roots movement that marched its candidate straight to the White House.

The internet makes it easy and affordable for any size business to begin a dialogue with potential customers. Properly executed, those dialogues become lasting relationships that form an incredibly loyal customer base. And in these financial times when consumers are clinging tight to every dollar, repeat business is often the saving grace of a straining ad budget.

It’s as simple as adding a “name capture” field to your website, enticing customers to join your subscriber list with valuable information or coupons, and then communicating through a series of pre-written e-mails that are sent out automatically.

The savviest auto dealers, like AutoNation, who operate several AutoWay dealerships throughout Tampa Bay, (including AutoWay Toyota in Pinellas Park, AutoWay Ford of St. Petersburg and Autoway Honda in Clearwater) use the name capture model of communicating with their customers through their websites, and the results are measurable.

Gary Marcotte, SVP of e-commerce at AutoNation said in a recent interview with DM news that the name capture strategy “will allow us to increase our retention marketing at a time when most people are slashing advertising budgets.”

Hopefully, those “screaming ad” car dealers will form laryngitis just long enough to hear the winds of change blowing through their lots.

After all, implementing the changes that open the flood gates of customer loyalty is easy; opening the minds of business owners to change may be the bigger challenge.

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Written by Kevin Rogers.

Through Web Profit Professionals, Bonnie Boots and a select group of guest speakers teach internet marketing techniques for small businesses in Tampa Bay. Use the subscribe form in the upper right of this page to be informed of upcoming workshops and events.