With most automotive dealerships focusing only on new car sales specials this Black Friday, Tier10’s strategy takes a different approach as it shifts its clients’ main Black Friday focus to service marketing, which is commonly overlooked and ignored during this heavy retail time of year.
“We think that this time of year is one of the best opportunities to increase and conquest service business,” said Scott Fletcher, vice president of client services and partner at Tier10. “While everyone is focused on selling new cars, the market is in high demand for service and maintenance as customers prepare for the most heavily traveled time of the year.”
Implementing Tier10’s Black Friday strategy starts over a week prior to the most frenzied shopping day of the year, according to Fletcher. An estimated 43.6 million people will take trips of more than 50 miles during Thanksgiving weekend, according to AAA, so starting the service specials early encourages consumers to have their car ready for wherever they may be driving. Then on Black Friday, you continue to provide and market service discounts and incentivize the consumer with additional specials or accommodations.
“To play off of the great retail environment Black Friday has created, you open up the service lane earlier than normal and provide discounted service to those that get in early,” Fletcher said. “In some cases, it even makes sense to offer a shuttle service to the mall, so while their car is being serviced, customers can kill two birds with one stone.”
It’s not as if Tier10 is looking to ignore Black Friday sales outright. The agency maintains a holistic approach that once a customer is in for service, he or she will be presented with Black Friday sales specials or an opportunity to upgrade into a new vehicle. An active service customer is seven times more likely to purchase from that same dealership than a non-active service customer, according to market research. Therefore, by focusing on service specials, Tier10’s clients are setting the stage on Black Friday for the final week of the year, when manufacturers are very aggressive with year-end incentives for consumers, creating one of the best automotive retail weeks of the year.
“We feel it’s about hitting the right audience with the right message at the right time,” Fletcher said. “Thanksgiving and Black Friday are very opportunistic times for our dealers to conquest service business and ultimately grow their active database.”
