Nissan Leads the Way to Dealer Marketing Alignment [Interview]

To call Nissan’s approach to dealer marketing robust would be an understatement. With support and alignment as the foundation, Nissan’s tagline “Innovation that excites” has proven to truly be a top-down strategy.

By building both award-winning cars and their dealers’ digital marketing capabilities, Nissan has honed efforts in the name of a consistent brand experience for consumers.

We recently had a chat with Erich Marx, Director of Marketing Communications at Nissan, to learn more about their approach. Erich has been with Nissan for over two decades, with a notable track record in communications and strategy success across multiple marketing disciplines. In his role, he is charged with directing all consumer-facing communications on a national and local scale.

Erich Marx, Director of Marketing Communications at Nissan

Are you the “voice” of Nissan? Sounds like a big responsibility…

While I would love to take all of the credit, I am merely one voice among many that are responsible for consumer-facing messaging and new vehicle marketing here at Nissan. My team and partner agencies work collaboratively across numerous stakeholders. We want to ensure that we are communicating our brand promise as well as the features, advantages, and benefits of our vehicles as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Nissan has a great national dealer network – what sort of marketing support does the brand give them to be more successful?

We support our dealer network in a number of ways. We co-market with dealer groups on a larger media market level, as well as co-fund their local marketing efforts. We also share assets with our dealers via a digital library that we make available to them, as well as via Promoboxx, to ensure that they have access to branded content that we produce in volume.

Can you speak to the importance of aligning dealers to the national brand messaging your team helps create?

It’s important to us that our brand looks and feels aligned and that our messaging is more consistent to shoppers no matter where they are consuming our content. Ultimately, we are looking to elevate the game of our whole dealer network, and offering support through a tool like Promoboxx has been a great win there.

Example of dealer promoting Nissan content through Promoboxx:

Example co-branded Facebook share

Once clicked, the post takes consumers to a co-branded landing page that highlights both Nissan and the dealership:

Example co-branded landing page

How did you initially become interested in a solution like Promoboxx?

Example Local Ad on Facebook

Back in 2013, Nissan was looking for a social content sharing tool, and a representative from Promoboxx happened to contact me. Timing is everything! The more we investigated, the more we saw the potential benefit. We have been partners for 2+ years now, and our dealers are thrilled with the capability and access to our assets.

Do you look at other brands for ways to support Nissan dealers more effectively? Are there any you admire?

We are always looking to innovate and seek new tools to help us connect our brand with our dealer network and, ultimately, our potential customers. We like to be first (and often are when it comes to digital), but are more than happy to be a fast follower if another brand has innovated ahead of us.

What are your top marketing goals for 2016?

To continue growing our brand and market share by satisfying the needs of our customers (both dealers and Nissan owners). [Note: Nissan was recently highlighted in an article on NewsWhip for their outstanding social media presence – among the most engaged nationally in the automotive space. With such passionate fans generating and consuming Nissan content, extending their exceptional marketing efforts to the local level has proven to further reinforce the brand’s mindshare with repeat and soon-to-be Nissan owners.]

Thank you, Erich, for taking the time to speak with us and sharing your insights into the importance of dealer support and alignment!

Looking for Tier 1 to Tier 3 Digital Marketing Alignment Success? Promoboxx can help.

Aligning national digital marketing efforts with that of dealers can be challenging. For an easy-to-implement, brand-funded solution, leading auto brands like Nissan partner with Promoboxx, ensuring that their content extends to dealers and reaches local customers.