Car Guy Coffee Podcast: Brewing Solutions with C4 Analytics: Elevating Automotive Marketing feat. Art Pier & Luke Jonas

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Let's brew!

Hey, what's going on, Car Guys and Car Gals?

Welcome to the CarGuy Coffee Podcast.

We're excited for a fun brew with you today.

And we're talking about some marketing that moves.

That's right.

And marketing that moves matters today with the way

that the digital disruption is going on right now

in automotive.

It's crazy.

It's actually happening across the world,

not just in automotive.

Well, we're talking automotive today.

And man, we're going to bring some dynamite today.

We're going to bring some C4 analytics.

We're going to talk about some really amazing things

to be able to bring you solutions, right?

And that's the big thing.

We're not here to brew.

We're not here to percolate problems.

We're here to brew solutions, right?

And so we're ready to brew some solutions

with two dynamite solutionaries ready to bring it.

Yes.

And with that, we are going to talk

about some of the things that you have probably

been trying to iron out, especially

inside of the wide campus, which

is figuring out marketing, marketing strategies, marketing

techniques, and also understanding

how marketing has literally evolved,

much like our customers have evolved,

much like how we're evolving, how

it is that we communicate and take care of those

that have need inside of our community, of our product.

So has our marketing.

And we want to talk to some awesome individuals

about that today.

But we are having fun.

C4 analytics has brought you this brew today.

And we want to make sure that we get as many car guys

and car gals involved in this fun as possible.

So help us out.

Tag a car guy.

Tag a car gal.

And share, share, share, share, share, share.

Let's get this out there again.

We're bringing dynamite with C4 today.

And we're ready to just bring you guys some solutions.

When we're brewing solutions, we like to brew with the best.

And that's what the quest that we're on.

We're on a quest to brew with the best.

When we do that, we bring you guys some really dynamic stuff.

And today, we're going to talk about a few different points,

some great ideas, and some solutions that

can really take your dealership to the next level,

or your business to the next level.

That's right.

And we have some awesome individuals

that are ready to brew up with us.

So we're not going to make them sit in the back

too long, everybody.

We want to make sure that they jump up on here,

because you're used to seeing us.

We want to make sure that you hear from more people

that are making things happen inside of the automotive industry

than maybe you just haven't heard of.

And we're so thankful that C4 propped up

a couple of these awesome guys to come out here,

brew some solutions with us, and talk to you.

So please, make sure that you do give them some love.

If there's something that you have a question about,

please make sure you drop a comment.

Make sure that you reach out to us.

Let us know.

But you can go to CarGuyCoffee.com

if there's any of the other brews that you want to get

and you want to find out how it is that you can team up

with us to take your business to the next level.

Let's do it.

Let's brew.

Let's have some fun.

But right now, it's time to welcome in some awesome C4 power

packed, ready to explode individuals.

First, we're going to bring in the one.

The only Luke Jonas brother.

This is up in here.

We got another Jonas brother?

How do you do?

There's the fourth Jonas brother.

Right here, Mr. Jonas.

What's up, Luke?

How you doing today, buddy?

Good.

What's going on, guys?

Oh, man, ready to bring some dynamite with you, man.

And excited.

And we also brought one of your partners.

This guy's got a really cool name, too.

I love it.

Straight up could be like, could be like almost like a wrestling

name, almost.

RPA!

I like it.

Let's go.

He's like, come on.

Let's go.

Let's do it.

Let's go ahead and switch up that screen.

We all appreciate you all jumping in with us

and taking some time out of the day.

Where are you guys crawling in from, Luke?

I'm calling from Beverly, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.

Oh, wow.

Beautiful area, man.

Beautiful area.

Good food out that way, my friend.

Great plan.

I'm in two ocean.

I'm located about 45 minutes southeast of Baltimore.

So I'm calling in from the eastern shore of Maryland

on Kent Island.

Oh, yeah, it's got both of y'all got great food around you.

It's toast in the house.

It's toast in the building.

Yes, we love it.

We appreciate you all.

Right now, we, Lou and I are actually

in a beautiful Lincoln, Nebraska, right now,

having a great time out here with a couple of our dealers

that we absolutely love.

People who are looking for some dynamite inside their stores.

So we're excited to be able to get some information

from you so we can go share it with them.

So this is going to be a really awesome interview today.

I'm pumped up about it.

Welcome, guys.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

So thank you that you guys are here.

But for those that don't know or know too much about you,

help us out.

Lead the way, Lou.

Let us know a little bit about what it is that you do

and what C4 does for the industry.

Sorry, let's see.

So I am the VP of analytics and reporting at C4.

I somehow have been here for almost 12 years.

So I've witnessed the journey of C4 from the 38th employee

to somewhere over 275 now.

Yeah.

And quickly, just my team, we essentially

power the reporting and the analysis

that the rest of our client services team does.

We provide that last line of defense

for the really challenging analytics questions that

arise, identifying, diagnosing where

the weird bot traffic's coming from,

and trying to fix it, filtering all that stuff out.

So we do a lot of that and power our reporting platform

and manage a lot of different relationships

with our various vendors.

And Art and I, I've spent a lot of time

working with the stronger partners

and helping get the cool data insights that they have

available in front of our clients.

And then C4, quick 30-second elevator pitch.

We're in a league of our own.

We're extremely high-touch boutique, full digital scale

solution.

And we've been doing that since day one.

Started with basically telling a dealer like, hey,

you might want to consider not spending

$60 grand a month in radio.

I might be exaggerating a little bit.

No, you're not.

We worked at a dealer that did $100,000 in radio a month.

Just so you know.

This was years ago, but we know what you mean by that.

You're doing what you're saying.

Yep, it's crazy.

And that was 2009.

And the founders, Justin Cook and Mike Weiss,

they went to this dealer and were like, hey,

there's this new thing called Google Ads or AdWords

at that point.

And we think we can maybe get that cost down for you.

And maybe decrease your CPA and how much you're selling

cars for.

And of course, the rest is history.

So C4 is the full scale, like I said, full digital solution.

And we're very service focused.

I'm sure we'll talk about it a little bit.

I don't want to overshadow our introduction here, too.

But we invest in our people, and they

manage every facet of our partner's digital sphere

and all the touch points that we all know

that customers are using all the time.

Yeah, that's us.

We appreciate that, Rob.

That was a really good drive by.

I appreciate you.

That's them in a nutshell, if you see awesome powers.

This is me in a nutshell.

You guys know what I'm talking about, right?

But that was you all in a nutshell.

And I appreciate that, man.

All right, we're going to pull you up.

But folks, I want to drop this video really quick

so you guys kind of get a little bit more close.

I love that.

It's just amazing moving, right?

I love that a lot, and we appreciate that.

And that basically broke down what you said there.

And I love that.

That's why I wanted to show that video really quick.

But, Art, man, let's introduce you, brother.

Let's tell everybody a little bit about your history

with the company and what makes you feel like C4 is where it's at,

why it's going to the places it's going.

Yeah, I'm pumped to be here, guys.

Thanks for having me.

My name's Art Peer.

As you guys said, I'm the VP of Media Strategy at C4.

It's a fancy title for a not-so-fancy guy.

I grew up in auto, so I have a background in it.

Mom, dad, and son calls on the automotive industry

some over 35, four years.

And I've worked in every industry that was an auto as well.

I come from tons of different backgrounds,

but how I came into C4 was really,

how do we tell the full funnel story

and how do we have full funnel marketing?

Because I think dealers were operating in silos of,

my paid search does this, my social does this,

videos over here off on its own island.

And the only way I know if it's working or not

is if I turn it off and see if my sales go down.

What I've really worked on the last two years

since I've been here is how does video fit in?

And I'm sure we're gonna talk about that today.

And then how does it help push people into the funnel

and get them down into the dealership?

So I work with the VP of Paid Media, Trevor Spiro,

and we work on how do we create a plan

that allows us to create demand and then capture it

and then turn it into sales.

And then show you how it's working

from a dealership perspective.

I love that.

You guys are just trying to bring light

to a dark area, right?

Somewhere that people are just like,

I love what you said there.

You made a really good point.

Somewhere that a dealer would have to turn off before

to find out if it was working or not,

instead of really having true data, real analytics,

analytics that explode in front of you.

It doesn't matter too, right?

Let's give them metrics that matter

from a business KPI standpoint for their dealership,

not my impression rate went up 2%

or there's a 480% ROI on your campaign.

It's like, those aren't real metrics.

So let's give them real metrics.

And as somebody who's been at a spot in the store,

met multiple times where I had to know those numbers,

that stuff does matter beyond measure.

It takes away a lot of stress when you know exactly

where your money is going

and what kind of project you're bringing from it.

Not some fluffed up number

that somebody's just trying to make you see

or assume is where it's coming from.

So that's dope.

I'm really excited about that.

Yeah, so marketing has been dealing

with some real disruption inside of the digital world.

And with that, there's a lot of also just cool new things

that are out there, right?

Trying to make sure that we're communicating

to our customers concerning what it is

that they're looking about

and communicating to them where they are.

There's so many different platforms,

so many different ways.

Have you ever been at a gas pump, folks?

And all of a sudden an ad just shows up

and starts talking to you

while you're in the middle of pumping away, right?

And then you're like, whoa, how are you following me?

What is going on?

How is this chasing me down?

This is crazy.

But being able to actually speak to the customer.

And let's talk a little bit about the EV journey, right?

And about how customers are actually starting

to get some of the information that they're looking at.

In Google data, there's maybe somewhat of a newness

to being able to really connect the data around EVs

to the customers that are looking for it.

And you all are actually starting

to break some barriers down with that.

Who wants to take the lead on some of that info?

I can not kick it off, Art.

You can be the color guy.

Oh, yeah.

Like you said, there's a lot there.

And I think one of the ways

that we've been the most successful in cracking that

is like you said, meeting the customers where they are

and where they're looking.

And a lot of that is just, they're searching

because they don't know, depending on where you live.

Like, again, West Texas or Mississippi somewhere,

where there isn't as much of an infrastructure,

but the OEMs are still pushing allocation for the EVs.

People are just like searching.

Like, hey, what's the range that I can expect out of an EV

or what's the typical service maintenance needs

for an EV, et cetera, et cetera.

And so a lot of that has really been on the organic side,

really working with Google EEAT,

trying to build authoritative content,

getting into the AI summaries and stuff like that.

And that's been, I think, one of the bigger,

obviously there's plenty of email marketing

and stuff like that that goes hand in hand

with kind of that educational journey.

But I think that's one of the,

at least one of the main ways

that we've been really successful

in helping our dealers capitalize on that.

It's a renewed, easy interest and educational journey

that consumers are on.

Education's huge and being more of a point of contact

for information rather than just product

is also how a dealer should be able to do themselves

as that authority.

Heck yeah.

Yes.

Is there anything on that?

Yeah, can't just be like, buy now, buy now.

They have to know about,

and this is something that's, this is not nice.

This is something that's completely different

than an internal combustion engine.

So we have to like, we have to educate them first.

And Luke touched on search,

like how do we get them to search?

We've got to show them the vehicle some way, right?

Through video or, so we have to create the demand.

And then they can, then we have to educate them.

And that's what gets them into,

okay, maybe I can shop for this.

Maybe this is something that I can have, right?

This isn't like some scary thing

because I'm not going to know where to fill up.

Funny story, like I was trying to,

I got an EV maybe last year as a rental

and I was trying to charge it,

but I didn't realize that you can't use

the Tesla charger on a non-Tesla

because it was a BMW.

I had no idea.

So you have to learn all these things to understand them.

And I think that's what we do best, right?

We create the demand and then we educate them

using with our dealers.

We educate them on art.

You can't charge a BMW EV on a Tesla charger.

This doesn't work.

We've been there before.

Side note, we traveled quite a bit.

We stopped at a rental place

and I'm not the biggest EV guy.

I don't know much.

I'm not against him.

I just don't know much about him yet.

I've learned that you got qualified

through the JV power and associates

on Rockhead.

Shout out to Rockhead and JV now.

So I learned a lot more over the last few months,

but at the same time, I didn't realize to your point,

we were driving, I can't remember what model it was.

Was it a Tesla?

It was a Tesla.

We went somewhere that didn't have a Tesla charger thing in it.

So it was like, how do I charge this

and turn it back into the rental company?

So even not as an owner,

but even just as a person who's renting one,

it was one of my two here.

And so that being said, the education part is massive.

Being able to educate our customers

and letting them feel comfortable

about decisions they make

without really forcing them to, like you say,

don't buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.

Let's learn, let's educate,

let's get you comfortable first.

Let's make sure that you know exactly what you're getting into

or what you're not getting into.

That's not something that fits your lifestyle, right?

We don't want it to go into a lifestyle where you buy it

and then you regret it so much

and then you put your fingers at the dealership and say,

hey, why'd you make me buy this car?

You knew this wasn't good for me.

So that's massive.

Can I add another, just another element too?

And it's also helping on the dealer end too,

because obviously, but like service,

that's a whole realm now that's different.

Like with ICE, we all know what the service is

and we know what your service manager is dealing with.

You know what the problems are.

You know how to work with that.

Now it's like customers have no friggin' idea.

What do I need?

Do I ever need service?

And obviously, yeah, you do need service

and, but it's just a little bit different.

So it's also educating them,

no, you still need to be going back to

then communicating on behalf of the dealers

with email cadences to be like, hey, reminder,

you're still gonna need to get your motors checked out

or whatever it is.

But like that, just keeping that,

we don't wanna lose those customers

because of a lack of knowledge

as lifetime value customers.

Like we were so tuned to on the ice side.

So it's just like another point.

I love that.

That's good stuff.

And the thing is you can quickly lose

a customer's attention

and you can lose anybody's attention.

You can lose my attention right now

if we're not speaking about relevant stuff

to what it is that we're talking about.

And that's a customer's side.

Just like any one of us,

take us out of automotive for a moment.

You are losing our attention

if it doesn't concern what it is that we're interested about

or we wanna learn about.

But you also intrigue us when you give us little nuggets

and little pieces and little different ways

to be able to consume some education

and also help demystify what it means

to be involved inside of jumping into the future.

Which is what we're talking about, right?

We are literally in the future

talking about electric vehicles

and how they're impacting us.

And it's not slowing down from the moment.

They're not flying yet though.

So that's, I've been waiting for that.

I've been waiting till the morning

to start to move back and forth in the future and back.

But at the same time, it is.

If that happens, I'm traveling a lot more.

That's what's gonna happen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're gonna send me on the road a lot more.

That's right.

We're gonna need to fly over there real quick.

Very quickly, quickly.

But it is, the future is here

and it's coming faster than we anticipated

in a lot of ways.

I do know that the mandate changed a little bit,

which I think is good,

especially for our country,

our infrastructure's a little different.

We got a lot of work we need to do

to be able to make sure that it's available to everyone.

But local resources are blowing up.

You're starting to see local businesses

add charging ports to their spots,

superchargers and all these things

because they know that it is gonna happen.

They know if they have those there, people will come

and maybe have a cup of coffee,

maybe while they're waiting,

because there is time.

There's a little time involved

when it comes to up five, 10 minutes.

Full charge could be all night, right?

It just all depends on what you're really doing

and where you're trying to go.

So the more we can educate them on how to do it,

where to get it

and actually the tools to help them find it,

it's massive.

That right there alone will make them come back to you.

That right there alone

will make them ask even more questions.

My favorite thing was to always in sales

was to always talk to somebody

and then get them to start asking questions.

When I knew they were asking questions

about something, I knew I had them, right?

They were interested.

And when they're interested, I'm interested.

And being interested, remember,

people find themselves inside of whatever social channel

that they're in, absorbing and consuming information.

Some of it's random.

Some of it's a dance that they'll never do, right?

Some of it is all of this other random information,

but every here and there, they're gonna drop in

and if a digital piece of content is present

after they consume while they're in the middle

of their scroll, it's very important.

Just like on YouTube, just like on social media channels.

What is it that you guys have been leaning in

or seeing work for some of your clients

and making sure that they're present

where other people are digitally present?

Yeah, it's that beautiful segue.

I'll keep it in the EV kind of sphere,

but, and I'll touch a little bit

on kind of arts wheelhouse here,

but just thinking about the, in the social context

and like the digital tidbits, like reels.

It could be like someone already,

someone, maybe that consumer already saw,

they did some searches like,

yeah, EV, huh, cool.

And then the dealer pops up with the organic pages

that we've optimized for.

They go to that website, they go to that landing page,

they learn a little bit about it,

cool, whatever, I'll go do my own thing,

go hang out with my friends now.

And then remarketing, follow up with a nice little,

hey, did you know, tip on the BMW i5 or whatever.

And just like a fun, fun content in a reel,

that's just like quick consumable content.

That's just like one example of many kind of

follow that person around

by with kind of one-to-one communication essentially.

And he building that momentum until their final,

I like, oh, maybe I will check out

that arts BMW down the road or whatever.

There is, and it's not about,

it's about being there all the time.

When we preach to sell people that we train

inside dealerships is that your social game

should be a daily game.

It's not something we just do sometimes.

It's something that we do daily

because of the instant gratification

that people have with their purchases even now today.

When they make a decision,

they make a decision in that moment.

When they make that moment decision, they want it now.

Right?

So if you're not there, if you're not in that place

where they remember or where they can reach out

to a press a quick button,

they're going to find the person who is.

And even if they know you,

I've seen people who know people in our business

but they were just there and they hit a button

and they, and somebody reached out to them

and did a hell of a job.

And that's what we want with the type of data

that we get from people like from C4, for example,

the kind of stuff that you could bring sight to people

knowing when to do it, how to do it

and what's effective.

That can really be a big deal to an individual sales person.

Right?

All the way to the, all the way,

dealership, all the way funnels down.

And when you can be able to give that data to your team,

they're more confident in most,

and the biggest thing is they're more likely

to put out that type of information.

They're more likely to give you educational stuff

that gets people encouraged, right?

So that they're so empowered to come in and say,

look, I know what's up, I'm ready to buy it.

I want to buy it from you.

I want to buy it, I want to buy it from you Luke,

whoever, and that's powerful.

One of the things that we do a lot is we target folks

with ads, like we match the audience

to the content they're consuming

and then lastly to the measurement.

So like for EV shoppers, we want to show them EVs

that we have on our lot.

So with 79% of people holding their phone

while they're consuming television

with connected TV right now,

we can show them the vehicles

that are actually on their lot currently

and it's updated every day.

So we dynamically show them vehicles

that they've already showed interest in

based on like our audience data.

And then we go back to measurement.

Did we get them to search?

Did we get them to go to the site and take action?

Not just two second clicks on the site, right?

And then lastly, did we get them

to actually move metal for you?

Did we move metal?

So we can actually measure using our partners

like with Polk sales and other partners that we have

actually measure if the vehicle is actually moved

from that campaign.

So does somebody see an ad, take action, right?

QR codes, huge by the way, we need QR codes.

Leave them on your video the entire time.

Don't just flash them for five seconds

because I don't have enough time to get action.

So leave them on the entire time

and then show the vehicles that you have on the lot.

Put them on, show them dynamically.

And so we do a lot of wide buy type messaging

with our CTV campaigns, but then dynamically overlay

put on top of here's our inventory.

Like here's what we have.

And then we match the audience to that.

So SUV, truck, whatever it is, we match them.

And then from a measurement perspective,

did we move them or not?

That's what it really comes down to.

That's as a dealer, that's how you're gonna measure us.

Bingo.

You really see performance in the eye of the beholder.

Like that's what it really is.

For the world's okayist guy,

I gotta tell you, you're pretty good, dude.

You're pretty good.

You know what I'm talking about.

I'm pretty mid.

I'm pretty mid to be honest with you.

It's a big deal, right?

You're pretty mid.

I love that, just pretty mid.

Six, seven, six, seven.

You're crushing it, man.

What you just said there is so true.

Here's the thing, people go to your website,

they're gonna click hypothetically,

they're gonna go and they're gonna click,

one car because they don't wanna put themselves

as a lead on the five that they liked.

So there's that one vehicle, but it's a type of vehicle.

It may be a price thing, maybe a SUV, it may be third row,

whatever it is, we wanna make sure

that they don't just see that one,

that we know that, hey, we have others available.

You have options, sir or ma'am.

And when we can give people options,

they tend to pick something.

And that's the biggest thing.

When we hit them with one thing

and it doesn't go their way, it's over.

But if we have options,

then they tend to go different directions,

they tend to have ideas.

But the idea is to isolate those options to one

eventually, right?

If you're a good sales pro,

you should be able to dynamically walk them right

to that one vehicle that works perfect for them.

But again, the options and being able to put that

in front of them until they are ready to say Fred

or Lou or Art, hey, I wanna talk to you, I'm ready to buy.

I think you made a point about options there too.

It's like, they have options for dealerships as well.

Right?

So we need to be there at a consistent frequency

you said about being on to on it all the time

that you need to be around.

So they need to be like,

the OEM creates demand for the OEM,

but we at tier three need to create demand for our brand.

Right?

And so if we do that, like we're there,

then they see us consistently,

then they're like, all right, that's the place I'm gonna go.

Now I need to pick out which option of vehicle.

And that's the great moment that we love.

That's how we're gonna get performance.

Yeah.

And that's interesting, I'm listening to all this too.

I'm gonna try to like distill this point a bit,

but I think one of the things that C4, we've always done

is been almost like,

we pay attention to not just the demographics,

which we have like just an insane amount of demographic data

and all the data available to us

from millions of different sources

and the partnerships we've built over the years,

which enables us to really drive more sales,

share and have it cheaper, more efficiently.

But it's like this one term that,

I don't even know if it's a real word,

but psychic graphics.

So it's kind of like what we're talking about.

It's kind of like what we're talking about.

It's not just, hey, okay, medium household income

and this zip code, okay, target them.

It's more, okay, now what has the journey

of this one customer bin like art?

If he likes outdoorsy stuff,

then here's what he's gonna look for.

Oh, maybe he's an Outback customer.

So then it's following that sort of not just based

on this kind of single data point,

which we see a lot of times a lot in the industry,

but like really that journey of the evolution

that art's gone through to then be like,

oh, wow, you're right.

I do want to freaking out back and et cetera.

So it's following that journey.

So it's like high funnel, mid funnel,

mid to low funnel, and then you all do your job

and reach out to art quickly

once he's submitted his lead as quickly as possible.

That's right.

And part of building that audience,

part of building that audience is talking to the dealer

on a consistent basis, right?

And we do that before.

You, we literally are a service based company.

Like we talk to the dealers

because we know that they know

which bridges people won't go around

during which days there's traffic.

Like those matter to you being able to purchase a vehicle,

right?

If you're not gonna drive past a bridge,

even though that zip code is only a 10 miles away,

but there's a tunnel and a bridge

and you're not gonna go through that,

then we don't need to target that area.

So if we don't talk to the dealers

and understand their demographic,

like actual demographic data,

you can't build that audience that Luke was talking about.

Build the audience based on like our data,

but then also the dealer's data.

So like consistently talking to them on a weekly basis,

knowing your account manager, like an understanding

like they know each other, they trust each other.

That's huge in this business.

That matters.

And communication breeds trust, right?

And then the walls of mistrust come down

the better the communication gets.

And this is why it is so much of an art,

not funding me, but much of an art

in being able to make sure that we are touching the customer

at with again, with relevant information

about what they specifically searched about

and bringing a message to them.

But like you said, you speak to your dealers

on a weekly basis.

So as boots on the ground, often this week

we're in a whole other part of the country.

Like we said earlier next week,

we're gonna be in a whole different part of the country.

But across the board, we have seen something

be pretty consistent.

And maybe you can tell us some of the best practices

that some of your dealers have been doing.

But sometimes all of these efforts that we're doing

are not known by the person

that is actually communicating

face to face with the customer.

So like you said, a lot of the times

we could be conveying our message to the clients,

to the customer, to the community,

to a person that wants a specific vehicle.

But that message hasn't necessarily trickled down

to a salesperson where before they only had

to be a little bit familiar with the one commercial

that was being posted on a certain channel

at a certain time of the night or a certain radio ad.

And they knew that was what's gonna be played all the time.

Now, sometimes your salespeople don't even know

that this is happening until they're the ones

getting targeted, right?

And saying, hey, I was recently looking at this car

and be like, I was looking at it for a customer.

Why am I?

I look at 700 cars today.

Yeah.

But what are you guys doing to help make sure

that down to the ones that are actually communicating

and actually closing the loop on the marketing

are actually speaking in tandem with what's going out

the first time the customer starts engaging.

So I can, I'll grab it, first at least.

So obviously there's a number of lovers here.

I think, again, it really goes back

to that engagement strategy, that weekly discussion,

which we, if we can effectuate it,

we will get as many stakeholders as we can on those calls.

So oftentimes we'll have like when the group

of like the sales managers, the marketing folks

and say like the service manager,

when they all get on the call

and it's sort of like this like committee environment

where we're touching on all of the profit centers

that typically results in that,

just naturally results in that message carrying down.

But yeah, one of the main, one of the biggest things

is ensuring, and this is just a tip again,

what's a great question is ensuring that,

hey, the salespeople are familiar

with all the specials that we're running this month.

It's hard to do that

when you're just using a like a flashy product

that's dynamically generating all of these specials

just like by using the incentives

that were released on the first.

No, it's like you make some custom desks,

some custom deals, go to the market smart

and then share that with your whole sales team.

So they know, and if we talk about with art,

the GM of this dealership, the fictional dealership,

if we're talking to art and we're like,

hey, this month we really think

that you should consider running this special

or this offer like spring into savings or blah, blah, blah.

It's truck month again

and whatever that specific offer is gonna be,

tell your people.

And then the last thing I'll add on that too

is we also just to ensure that processes are consistent

and there's no issues with piping or anything like that.

We also mystery shop our clients too

so that we can then come to them and say,

hey, by the way, this was a great response.

Here's the text that was sent.

Here's the email that was sent.

Here's the voicemail recording, all that stuff

so that they can then either look,

it looks like art actually didn't get the note,

there didn't get the memo.

That's what we were running this month.

He didn't mention it in the email, et cetera.

So it helps that quality control, helps that process.

And if there are challenges from there,

we also offer this kind of like consultative services

because we've been doing that type of stuff for so long

that we'll be like, here email templates you can use.

Here's a good cadence for a follow up and stuff like that.

So we help as much as we can on that side as well.

Hopefully that answers.

I think one, for sure.

And I think one thing that I do myself

as I was building out our video program

but really as I was like getting into C4

was I started, and just like you guys are,

I started going to the dealership

and going and being there with them

and getting an understanding of,

like I just visited a client out in West Virginia

and shout out to Pam who's worked there for 40 years.

Like she, yeah, shout out to her.

She worked there for, she's a Steelers fan though.

So unfortunately I'm a Ravenous fan

so she doesn't like me too much.

She likes me a little bit.

And there's tons of stories just like this

where you like go into the dealership

and get an understanding of who they are.

And that helps you like empower your marketing

a little bit more.

And I think that's something that we also do.

We encourage everyone and I can do myself

like to go and get inside the dealership

and get an understanding of who they are,

who their salespeople are, who the service manager is,

who their service folks are,

like get an understanding of who they are

because then you can talk about them

in a much better way rather than,

okay, we're on a screen

and we're gonna talk about your social metrics

for five minutes,

like that you're getting with a lot of different,

our competitors to be honest with you.

Yep.

I love that you said that

and talking about who they are,

what they want, what they're concerned about.

And it also flows very well for a salesperson,

especially when it comes to their confidence

when they understand how much information

this customer has probably already digested

about this particular vehicle of interest

and how their interest is at a high level at this point.

By the time they're probably speaking for them,

we've already sifted out a whole lot of sell me on this car

or sell me on this concept.

And that has made sales so much different,

but part of the overall evolution of the customer

that we've been seeing happening,

which actually is making things easier for us

and a little less salesy.

We're marketing in a way that makes the industry

have to be less salesy.

And that's something that I think a lot of car guys

and car guys will appreciate.

And it is actually very inviting to people

that are considering even coming in automotive

is how precise all of this digital communication

and these techniques have been

to making sure we're talking to the customer

about what's relevant to them.

Salespeople, your confidence should be at an all time high

when a person is even connecting with you

about what it is that you have on your lot.

You guys have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I couldn't, that was awesome,

but I think it is interesting.

It's like this distillation of this evolution

of the worldwide web and the ability

that customers now have to do their research.

And if you're setting yourself up in the right way

to be a part of that journey,

then naturally the salespeople, when those opportunities come,

those opportunities are like,

I know I want the metallic gray, super outback.

I'm a super guy, maybe that's why I keep using

super references, but you know what's,

and so this really natural nice sort of evolution

that's taken place.

And the other thing is it works so perfectly well

with our kind of like mantra,

which is sales up, share up, cost down.

And because if you're, if you're,

instead of just spraying and praying,

like doing a whole bunch of like broadcast

or whatever else, you're actually dialing in

to finding Art Peer, who's interested in this and this.

And in three days, he's gonna buy this car.

You're able to do that cheaply

and you can reduce that cost per sale

because you're targeting so well

and you're knowing the audience

and then you're driving them to a place

where you optimize for conversion.

So then Lou, the sales guy, like the lead comes in

and Art says, hey, I want this,

I can be there on Tuesday.

And you're like, great, I'll help you out.

And how important is it that you see

that a dealership doesn't or takes the time

to customize it to them, customize the strategy

to their store?

Cause I can say, I can be up in Massachusetts

and have a Honda store and say, man,

the Honda store over there in Nebraska is smashing.

They're killing it.

They're number one in volume.

I want exactly the same thing that they're doing.

Give me their package.

And then you have to have the, hold on a second.

Whew.

Yeah, that's right.

You gotta use your data.

You have to use your data.

So looking at your sales by zip reports,

looking at your pump and pump out reports,

looking at your market master reports

and understanding who your audience is,

but also who your competitors are.

And then diving into the data

and seeing your impression share

versus your competitors

and who is actually competing

the same keywords that you are.

So every audience, and I think I've heard this

like a million times,

but every dealership is a snowflake.

So we have to get in.

We have to understand who you are,

who you're trying to talk to.

What are you trying to say to them?

And then we'll figure out all the tools

because there's tons of them.

We'll figure out the right tools

to build you what you want.

Because every, if you want a house,

you need a hammer, right?

If you want to dig a hole,

you don't need a hammer for that.

You need a shovel.

So like we have to figure out which tool is there

or which set of tools or mix of tools

is the right tool for your dealership.

Get an understanding of the audience

of who is gonna be talking to them.

To go back to your last point too,

one thing I wanted to mention was

I think from a sales perspective,

I know I'm shopping for,

and now I'm gonna get pitched a bunch,

but I'm shopping for a third row, right?

With a nice big screen

and captain shares in the second row.

And so if I'm shopping for that

and I come to the dealership,

I want to talk to somebody

who's super knowledgeable about that product.

Because we can get them interested.

We can get them to like that car looks pretty,

but when they get into it,

let's be knowledgeable about all the features,

like maybe like I know in the 2025 expeditions,

they have like self-driving almost now.

I just rented one.

So like understanding how that works

and all those things, that stuff matters.

It goes back to like how it used to be,

like do the features, options, benefits, walk them around.

That's the key.

Don't skip steps at the dealership

once we've gotten them in.

Like they're gonna be ready to buy

if you can walk through those options with them.

That's such a good point, though.

And that's something that we lost a couple of years ago

when we had the shortage of inventory.

Everybody was just buying because you had it.

So a lot of ourselves people have lost that touch.

Our leadership even lost the touch

on how to manage that and coach that.

And that's a big part of what we train on these days too

is we train on walk-arounds,

even doing virtual walk-arounds for customers now

because people want their pace all differently.

But the more we practice on that,

understanding that it's not just,

hey, this car has this,

you got to also give it the benefit.

It's a feature benefit

and make sure that you're understanding it

and being educated and understanding your product knowledge

is more important now than ever

because the technology has changed so much

in the last five years too.

It's not just the inventory's back.

It's the fact that it's so different

for the self-driving, all the things,

dynamic cruise control.

I can keep going on in different features

but we're gonna get more and more.

Wait, you see five more years.

Gotta stay up on your game.

I love that we talked about every dealership to Snowflake.

You said it dead on.

Every dealership, it's not even auto groups.

Not auto groups or Snowflakes because they are

but inside of an auto group,

every dealership's a Snowflake too.

They have different leaders, different people,

different brands, they have different locations,

different data.

So it's important that we look into that

and know that, hey, you just got to do the best

that you can with what you have.

And if you guys go out there

and maximize every opportunity,

your salespeople will be better at what they do

but you still have to keep them

on top of what product knowledge is.

So it's not just always technology working for you.

You do have to have people working for you

because C4 can bring you guys 100 leads.

They can walk in your door right in front

but if your team does not know how to help people,

you're gonna just waste your time.

So it's all the way around but I'm gonna tell you one thing.

As a salesperson, as a leader,

as anybody inside of a store,

if I have great leads that has great data behind it,

I'm really excited.

My team should be excited and they will be.

They'll be more likely to call,

more likely to reach out,

more likely to step up their game

to be able to be ready for somebody

to show up with the EV question

or any type of new technology.

So as we up the capabilities of our technology,

as we upgrade what it is that we do

to communicate with the customer,

we stress to you all heavily,

upgrade how it is that your individuals

utilize the opportunity they have

with the attention of the customer.

All of this is a big fight to make sure

that we keep the attention,

keep the eyes of the customer

and keep them lead to your desk,

lead to your dealership,

make sure that we don't let that muscle go dormant

or go dead by not being the best

at what it is that we do.

We know the vehicle,

we know the information about the vehicle

and if we don't know it,

figure it out, learn it and guide them

because at the end of the day,

when all of the marketing is complete

and they're face to face with another human,

you want a professional

that knows what they're talking about.

So if you've been targeted

in a super awesome technological way,

make sure that the person that you're talking to

or you at least want the person that you're talking to

to help guide you in this new investment

that you have in the same type of manner.

So we do definitely encourage everybody

to be consistent out there.

But speaking of being consistent out there,

we wanna make sure that you all do

consume this information and also make some moves.

So we got a little call to action for you all

and it will be on Art or Luke to say

how it is that you can get a hold of them

and find out a little bit more

or see what it is that you can do

to get a demo with these guys.

Who wants to take that?

And I wasn't prepared for this question,

but yes, c-4analytics.com.

You can read all about us and submit a lead

and we'll get back to you quickly.

Can I just add one last little piece here too?

The other tip I wanna send out to the audience

is know your market too

and make sure that you're having this,

you should be reviewing your market data,

like your market share by zip, pump in, pump out,

all of that stuff on a regular basis

with whoever's running your digital strategy.

If you wanna increase your share

and do it in a cheap, cost-effective way,

that should be like the number one thing.

And if they're not asking you for your OEM reports

or getting any of that registration data,

then that's probably not the right partner.

That's why I meant it.

And then for sure.

And for me, you can hit me up

the world's most okayist guy on LinkedIn, right?

Or you can find me at my wife and her friend's coffee shop.

It's called Herbal Brew Bar.

It's on Can Island.

You can find me there.

I love that.

I love that you've got coffee in the blood.

That's what I'm talking about.

We're all here.

We gotta have you guys out for a coffee, man.

You guys gotta do a live show there or something.

Both yours in Bruin Solution,

so I'm sure that's what's happening over there

at the coffee shop.

I love that that you go there and you have family there.

That's amazing.

Cheers to that.

Shout out to that.

If you're in his area, you're involved more,

go check out that coffee shop.

Get you some of that stuff, right?

But what I gotta say is that folks,

if you're looking to get your showroom exploding,

just filled up with just dynamite customers

that are ready to buy, reach out to C4.

They're gonna make sure that it happens.

I'm excited about teaming up with them.

We've been teamed up with them

for this past month and a half

and just really learning a lot about what they're doing.

What I could say is that

they're bringing it to the next level.

We've known this company for years

and we know what they've been doing.

We've been seeing them grow in the market

and we've seen what they've done with dealers.

I highly recommend them.

One thing we know for sure about this company

is that they're 100% CGC approved.

And we wanna make sure you all recognize

that they are 100%.

That's right.

That is the stamp of approval, everybody.

They are Bruin Solution.

Nice.

Folks, get out there.

As streaming has become more,

people don't watch cable television anymore.

It's not radio anymore.

It's about stream TV and inside stream TV.

You could be reaching your customers when they're watching.

They know when it's happening.

They can make it happen for you.

They can explode their living with your data.

So let's go.

Let's go.

We appreciate you taking the time

to spend with us today.

Car Guys and Car Guys, Art and Luke.

Thank you so much for taking the time

to hang out with us

and upgrade your quality of this brew.

I am Lou Ramirez, the Car Guys.

I'm Brethren Arts subprime hero.

And you've been Bruin Solutions

on the Car Guys Coffee Podcast.

We're so thankful that C4 Analytics

is bringing you this brew.

Make sure that you do check them out on the podcast.

Reach out to them.

If you do like this, make sure that you comment.

Ask them a question.

If you want us to help them get to you

about something that you want to brew, let us know.

We got your back.

We're all here to brew solutions for you all.

But Art, Luke, thank you so much for tuning in with us.

Again, Bruin Solutions out there.

And keep enjoying all that great brew on the heat.

Car Guy Coffee Podcast: Brewing Solutions with C4 Analytics: Elevating Automotive Marketing feat. Art Pier & Luke Jonas

Oldsmobile Intrigue

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