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Your Dealership Needs its Own Magazine
by: Brett Stevenson
Publisher of Dealer Marketing Magazine
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With the advent of quick, full-color digital publishing, businesses across the country are starting to explore publishing their own company magazines. You have undoubtedly seen publications from your local hospital or college, but soon you will start to see magazines from other merchants and national companies. When we talk about self-published magazines we don’t mean ad flyers full of ads like a catalog. We’re talking about magazines that have actual editorial content, in addition to the ads. The reason for the content is to draw the reader into the magazine to read the articles mentioned on the cover. This combats the tendency for people to simply throw away direct mail without even opening it.
In the world of auto dealers, this can be a brand new effective marketing tool that your competition does not have. Imagine a cool glossy magazine arriving in someone’s mailbox with a title on the front that says, Cool new Gadgets For Your Vehicle.
Inside is an article talking about all the great add-ons like DVD players, satellite radios, GPS tracking, or sport racks. The reader gets inside the magazine to read the article and also finds great articles about the vehicles your dealership sells, full color photos of the vehicles in action, coupons for oil changes, ads for special service offers, and special car sales you are having. In short, you have created a marketing vehicle (no pun intended) that none of your competitors are in that gives you a longer time span to tell your dealership story. Having your own dealership magazine makes your dealership look big time and professional.
Distribution of the magazine to both your customer list and other consumers can be done via direct mail, insertion in your local paper, or by renting magazine rack space at the local stores where other auto-oriented publications can be found. Best of all, unlike the newspaper, or other publications, you won’t be grouped on the same page as your competitor – your competitor is nowhere to be seen because you own the magazine.
Craig Stowe of Automotive Consultant Group (ACG) is publishing custom magazines for a number of dealerships across the country. Using the title Showroom Insider, Stowe is helping dealers develop both the editorial content and advertising for the dealership within the dealership’s magazine. “It gives the dealer a chance to rise above the clutter and really stand out in their market. It also creates excitement within the dealership because we often feature dealership employees. When a customer walks into the showroom holding a magazine and points to a story about a vehicle and says ‘I want this SUV,’ my dealers get excited,” says Stowe.
One of the most attractive features to most dealers is the price of publishing the magazine. In most cases, it costs about the same as a normal direct mail campaign.
For more information on publishing your own dealership magazine, contact Craig Stowe at 1-800-735-5213 or email him at craig@acgnola.com.
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