Creativity Keeps Service Bays Busy

2020 has been quite the year. Every new day seems to bring a new challenge. Still, that doesn’t mean we hang our heads. It doesn’t mean we give less of ourselves to our family, friends, communities or clients. In fact, it means we should give more. And I’ve seen many of you do just that. 

You’ve put more hours, more thought and more energy toward our mission. That commitment and resolve has helped many of our clients reach their goals despite the pandemic. What I’ve also seen is that there is still plenty of opportunity to grow our clients’ business even further. 

Parts and service departments account for roughly half of a dealership’s gross revenue, yet 75% of aftermarket auto repair (a $300B industry, by the way) is handled by independent repair shops. So, concentrating on fixed-ops can pay huge dividends for dealerships. Audi Lakeland, part of the Qvale Auto Group, which owns and operates 15 dealerships across the US, recognized that opportunity for growth. With that in mind, Paul Gomez, Audi Lakeland’s GM, and Joseph Pitchford, its service manager, recently asked us to help.

We’ve talked about many of our core values in relation to our clients’ success stories, and though every one of them was integral to the outcome we achieved with Audi Lakeland, Creative Innovation is the one that really stands out. Creative innovation is all about solving challenges with smart, tailored solutions. It’s not simply art for art’s sake. There’s a method to it all — and it was on full display with Audi Lakeland. 

Initially, we were going to do only SEM for the Florida dealership, but we realized there wasn’t much service-related content on their current site, so Nikki and her team recommended that we create new landing pages for the dealership to improve their conversions and rankings. Paul and Joseph were both on board. 

Harrison, Tyler and Matt worked on an SEM proposal while our creative team got to work. Dan, Andy, Emily and Allison, in particular, devoted long days and late nights to create 16 brand new landing pages that will help convert more, improve ad relevance and boost quality scores. Andy and Emily designed each to mirror the corporate Audi brand, including the colors, fonts and button hovers. The pages reflect Audi Lakeland’s brand, but blend seamlessly with Audi’s corporate brand standards. Allison customized the copy on each page to not only convert better, but to help with search results, too. Dan coded each page with schema markups, geo-coordinates and more that all link back to the parent site (which also helps with page rankings). Dan also set up a tag manager on all the pages, so we can track everything down to each button on each page. Again, we aren’t merely creating aesthetically pleasing things; there is thought, strategy and purpose in everything we do. 

It goes without saying that Audi Lakeland made a wise decision to revamp their service pages. Not only do the pages look and function better, but people who service their vehicles at a dealership are three times more likely to purchase or lease again from that dealership. So, it’s a great way to increase revenue in both the short- and long-term. 

Before I let you go, I want to thank each of you for never losing sight of our or our clients’ objectives. And while there’s a good chance 2020 hasn’t been anything like you expected, if we remember to think creatively about the challenges we face, much like our team did with Audi Lakeland, there’s little to stop us from achieving our goals or helping our clients achieve theirs.

Stay safe, stay healthy and stay tuned.