Unified. Determined. Supportive. Those are a few words that come to mind when I think about Nissan’s dealer marketing strategy. The auto manufacturer has gained revenue and market share in the U.S., with the goal set at 10% U.S. market share by March 2017. They are gaining on this goal faster than expected, and after partnering with them for almost a year, I know why.
In mid-2014, Nissan reached out to Promoboxx to find a way to align its national marketing content with its local dealers. The automaker produced great content, but by creating alignment with local dealers, they could ensure the life of its content extended down to its dealers and local consumers. Nissan swiftly implemented Promoboxx, for its easy-to-implement dealer digital marketing solution ahead of other major digital projects like their designated website provider.
Nissan realizes how important it is to get an entire organization involved in a platform if they truly want it to succeed with their dealer network. They didn’t just use their retail marketing team, or their digital team, or their sales team to get the word down to dealers about the importance of local digital marketing. They leveraged all of these groups. And guess what? It worked.
Nissan focuses a tremendous amount of internal resources on regional marketing, in addition to national marketing. Nissan has many layers of rep support, from local dealer operations managers, to contest and incentives managers, to sales reps, and field reps.
While Promoboxx works closely with the national marketing team to launch campaigns including vehicle launches and sponsorship campaigns (The Voice, Wounded Warrior, etc.), Promoboxx also works closely with Nissan’s regional marketing team to implement a sales and marketing rep strategy down to its dealers. We know that dealers are far more likely to get onboard with a new strategy or program if their rep tells them to do so, but we also know that reps won’t talk about a new digital platform if they don’t feel comfortable and educated on it.
How do the reps get on board? Promoboxx has a team called Divisions that is solely responsible for rep involvement. The Divisions Team runs dealer webinars, attends rep events, provides one-pagers to reps and equips them with a Promoboxx enrollment link that they can easily send off to their local dealers.
Outside of rep education, the other crucial piece of the puzzle that Promoboxx’s Divisions team helps improve is dealer contact information. Promoboxx ran Nissan’s dealer list through a filter prior to launch and found that many of the local dealer contacts were invalid or missing. Divisions worked with each rep and regional managers to make sure that Nissan’s dealer list was complete and valid by the time launch occurred. This process only took 2-3 weeks and was hastened because of Senior Management’s focus on obtaining clear dealer data in advance of the launch of Nissan’s “Digital Retail Marketing Program,” i.e. Promoboxx.
On the sales rep dashboard, reps receive regular updates on which of their dealers are engaged with the program.
Example of Sales Rep Reporting Summary
In advance of launch, Promoboxx worked closely with Nissan to align the brand’s content creators (digital folks, social folks, national advertising) with the communications and sales teams to tee up dealer communications that would come from Nissan corporate, Nissan’s reps, and from Promoboxx’s invitation system.
Example of Promoboxx Email Invitation
Launch occurred in early December 2014 and within the first 7 days of launch, dealer activation on Promoboxx had exceeded the goals set by Nissan for the 6 month mark. At the 3 month mark, Promoboxx was seeing over 80% dealer platform activation across Nissan’s entire dealer network.
Here’s what those stats look like today:
“This is so easy. I just login once a month and it goes on auto-pilot.” – Corbin Eckert, Royal Nissan
“I’m liking this so far! So, basically what you just helped me set up saved me from hiring someone, right? And it posts automatically, sweet!” – Steve Growe, Suburban Nissan of Troy
Based on the early success of Nissan’s program, it is clear there is a competitive advantage to supporting your dealers with digital marketing materials and striving for cross-team collaboration. Nissan, we tip our hats to you and wish you continued success in reaching your market share goals!
With Promoboxx, you can invite all your dealers to easily promote your brand online, in a way that highlights their local dealership. Promoboxx helps your independents highlight their store branding by co-branding all manufacturer content to each local account, then making it very easy for them to promote this content across important digital channels.
