Partner Article

Swansway doubles marketing team

North West based, family owned and run motor retailer, Swansway Group has doubled the size of its Marketing team in the last 6 months.

Director, John Smyth explained, “In the past motor retailers have had a reputation for fire-fighting marketing, being wholly reactive; we recognised that the days of sticking an ad in the local paper or shoving a blow-up gorilla and a windy-man on your forecourt and waiting for the sales to flow are long gone”.

“Today the routes to market are many and varied; websites, social media, CRM systems, customer and prospect email, PR and community engagement; we can now monitor and analyse what works, find out what doesn’t and build meaningful relationships with our new, used and service customers, as well as potential customers and the wider community”.

To do this Swansway recognised the need to substantially grow its Marketing function; thus six months ago the team increased from just two staff to five and the results have been exceptional.

Anna Ling, Swansway Marketing Manager, commented, “By effectively doubling the Marketing function, the results we’ve managed to achieve have been outstanding; purely by implementing an automated CRM programme across the group, sales conversion levels have increased and the programme’s delivered a 36% service booking rate from the customers we’ve contacted”.

The increase in team members allowed a number of key areas to be focussed upon, not least the group’s websites; Anna explained, “New websites have been built for all the centres across the group, this has produced a 45% increase in website visitors and a 57% increase in enquiry volumes”.

Perhaps most importantly, Swansway recognised the need to engage with the public via Social Media, bringing on-board a Marketing Team Member, dedicated to this burgeoning communications area.

Anna added, “This is the area where, having the focus of one dedicated team member has really shown exceptional results. In just six months Francesca has worked tirelessly increasing social media fans by 67%, social media referral traffic by 632% and putting Swansway firmly near the top of “100 Most Influential Dealers on Twitter” list”.

Results such as these mean Swansway have said a fond farewell to the windy-men and waved goodbye the giant inflatable gorillas of yesteryear; John Smyth added, “They had their place and their time, but, our latest results prove that as customers become ever more sophisticated, motor retailers need to communicate with them in innovative and engaging ways.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Ling .