Automotive Communications Council Open Mic Sessions

Jacki Lutz sits down with speakers of the Automotive Communications Council Conference at Auto Care Connect for a set of open mic conversations that get practical fast, from tradeshows, email marketing, data-driven content to AI and even a session on Executive presence, this episode covers everything keeping automotive aftermarket marketing professionals awake at night.

One stat stops us in our tracks: 73% of leads never get followed up after an event. We talk about how to prevent that with a clear post show strategy, a 48 hour first touch, and a nurture sequence that respects how people actually buy.

We also tackle the big shift hanging over every marketing plan right now: AI transformation. Search is moving toward zero click results and AI overviews, which changes what “visibility” even means. You will hear why branding now has two audiences, humans who remember a short list of brands and AI systems that choose answers based on the full set of available content. We break down what that means for SEO, answer engine optimization, educational content, and showing up on the platforms where people look for real signal.

From there, we dig into data driven storytelling for different audiences across the automotive aftermarket, plus email marketing that earns clicks instead of eye rolls. The line we cannot stop repeating: email isn’t dead, but bad emails are. We close with a conversation on executive presence that reframes leadership as preparation, listening, recovery, and the courage to be yourself at the table.

Learn more about the Automotive Communications Council at autocare.org/acc

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Transcript

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Theme And Quick Takeaways

Jacki Lutz 0:00

This year, it really feels like the theme is don't forget about the humans. Don't, you know, forget that you know, humanity still need needs to exist. Humanity is gonna be what makes AI successful, like to not forget the human part of this entire process.

SPEAKER_11 0:15

Social still is not catching up. So um kind of the overall takeaway is like email isn't dead, but bad emails are.

SPEAKER_05 0:23

You have to solve the branding problem for humans, can't forget about humans and relationships, and AI because it it's eating the internet in terms of traffic, where humans in terms of total usage are becoming an edge case.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

I think confidence comes from achievement, and achievement comes from being brave enough to stick your neck out and to try something and to understand that sometimes that something will work and sometimes it won't, and then just learning from that and having like a growth mindset.

SPEAKER_12 0:51

73% of leads are not followed up on after an event or trade show.

Pre Show Strategy And Audience Segments

Jacki Lutz 1:04

Welcome to Auto Care on Air, a candid podcast for Curious Industry. I'm Jackie Lutz, Content Director at the Auto Care Association, and this is Carpool Conversations, where we collaborate on today's most relevant power skills. We're all headed in the same direction, so let's get there together. All right, welcome everybody to our ACC open mic sessions. This is very exciting. Uh ACC recently joined Auto Care Association as one of our communities. It's they're the Auto Care, or I'm sorry, Automotive Communications Council, been around a long time. So we are uh featuring some of their members, some of their guest speakers today at AutoCare Connect in Atlanta, um, and doing some kind of rapid fire themes. So we're gonna be talking about trade show marketing. And I have Caitlin Fox with MDG. Welcome. Thank you. And Chris Feist with Denzo. And let's kind of walk through pre- uh event strategies, tips, what we should be doing on site as best practice, and then we'll go into like what we should be doing after to make sure that those leads get followed up with and everything like that. So, what should people be thinking about pre-events?

SPEAKER_12 2:22

Thank you. Um, so you know, my perspective where I where I sit, we are an event and audience acquisition agency. So we work with a lot of trade show organizers in order to get attendees to show up on site. We also do the branding and marketing. So our perspective is really broad because we work with so many different industries and so many different types of shows and events, but universally we see the same patterns arise when it comes to exhibiting and getting the most out of that exhibit experience. So when we look at pre-event, um, oftentimes exhibitors are just looking towards the event itself, right? It's like this big moment, it's tangible. There's like a booth, there's product, you can feel it, you can see it, you can smell it, all the things. But so much is lost for what you can do pre-event leading up to that moment. And one of the things that we encourage is setting up at least a content plan that starts 90 days before that event. And it's not necessarily 90 days of big campaigns, but it's 90 days of these very intentional touch points that start to talk to your audience about why you're going to be on site, starting to figure out your strategy for that presence on site. Are you going to offer something exclusive? Will there be deals? Will there be demos? Will they have access to a CEO for your company? All these things are things that need to be planned for in advance. So um, yeah, so starting, you know, to back out your communication strategy.

Jacki Lutz 3:57

What's Denzo do on the pre-event front?

SPEAKER_08 4:01

Well, it's so my role with Denso specifically is on the advertising and digital marketing side primarily. But um, my uh our team of 10 of us, we work really closely together for all of our campaigns, right? So our trade show manager, our trade show coordinator, uh, whether it's for our automotive businesses, either light duty or heavy duty, we also have a robotics division, we have a portable HVAC division. So we find our trade show strategy works as a framework with some of this pre-show activity that you're talking about, um, and at show and post-show, all that stuff. So there's things that are best practices across industries, but it's also you really got to focus on the audience at that particular event, right? So whether you're talking about Apex or you're talking about Heavy Duty Afterweek, or you're talking about Automate, which is a robotics industry show, one of the bigger ones in the country, um, they all have kind of a different approach, right? And so our pre-show strategy is really aligned to a the audience that's gonna be going as attendees. So us as exhibitors are thinking, uh, you know, how are we best going to interact with this audience? Who's coming? Is it a WD audience or a kind of an industry professional? Is it strictly B2B, or is there like a B2C relationship there that might be an opportunity for direct sale? Um that all plays into those communications that you're talking about. So for instance, uh we would do kind of like would we like to do a teaser uh announcement? Maybe you say 90 days? Is that what you said? That we should get started earlier. Yeah, that's a good best practice. Um we usually target about 60 days, but uh, you know, our sales team obviously says maybe we could start earlier, that'd be better. Um but that's just a really quick hey, we're at this event. Uh here's our booth number, maybe we have a flashy photo from the year prior if we've attended that event, just to kind of familiarize them. A lot of people obviously look at the exhibits, they become familiar with people who've attended these exhibits for a number of years. So we like to do that as a teaser, but then we take it a step further. If we've got kind of an activation in the booth, uh we're doing some kind of we do a lot of uh sponsorships with NHRA. So sometimes we'll have uh sponsored racers come into our booth and do autograph signing and things like that. So obviously that's gonna be a big announcement. It'll be a part of our pre-show communication. Uh but we do fun activities. Uh, you know, we're gonna we actually had a really great turnout at Hadah this year. Uh we did a cigar uh rolling and whiskey tasting pairing, which was really well received. Yeah, we had a lot of people at our heavy duty booth for that. Yeah, they loved that, the audience did. So uh but you have to think through those things too. Like, is that gonna get you the ROI that you're looking for, or is it just a fun event? Like, what are you really getting from that? Um, but obviously we want a lot of bodies in the booth space. Yeah. So that really helps.

SPEAKER_12 6:42

You know, who you're showing up for and then how you're showing up for them in that space. And we talk a lot about that in marketing, right? Like the persona of the people we're talking to. And to take it even a step further is we can often see exhibitors blanketing even that one audience persona and not looking at different messages for their current uh clients, their prospects, trade media, you know, how to all of these people want something different from your brand and they value something different from your brand. So taking a look through that lens of all these different segments within the audience and saying, okay, how are we showing up for trade? Like what do they, what are they looking for for us? Like they want a hook, they want a good story. Like, what can we give them? What do our current clients want? Can we give them access to something earlier, maybe on site, to make them feel like a VIP? So breaking it down even further and really connecting to that audience pre-event is going to be a great way to drive traffic.

Jacki Lutz 7:41

And it sounds like really having a very clear idea of your goals. Yes. Like, you know, is it a selling show? Are we trying to get brand engagement? We just want people to hang out with us and, you know, engage with the brand and making sure your team is very aware, which kind of brings me to, you know, I'm in my previous life. I worked for a supplier, we did all kinds of trade shows. Um, my teams were great at those. Um, but you know, prepping your team beforehand, I think makes a world of difference uh by the time you get to the show.

SPEAKER_08 8:08

Yeah, and you have to have those conversations with your leadership before you get there, right? I mean, marketing obviously just, you know, running on your own, doing your own communications is a huge miss. And and for like again, Apex for us at Denso is so much about those existing relationships with customers. Um, you know, it's not really a if there's opportunity to meet new people, of course, but so much of our team is really looking there to face to face with customers that we don't get to see. It's just such a great opportunity for that. And the leadership knows that that's our goal. That's our real solid strategy for that. Uh but then again, you've got different shows with different strategies, and that internal communication is where it all starts.

SPEAKER_12 8:45

Yeah. Yeah. I really like to tell exhibitors, pick, you know, three to five metrics, like how you're measuring the show, because there's so many different ways that you can look at a show. Is it awareness? Is it engagement? Is it sales? And of course, converting clients is the ultimate goal. We all know that. However, it's very difficult to do that, just one touch on site for the first time. And so I think that can be a hang up where I can often hear, well, we didn't get, you know, any sales from this show. But when you think about the show as an engine for so much more for the awareness, for the relationship, for the touch point, for the engagement. And then we haven't even touched on the way that you're able to amplify content through that throughout the whole year through your brand. Those are different metrics that you can look through that I think when you're going back to senior leadership and saying, was this successful or not? You have these metrics to say it was, because here's how we're measuring success. That's huge. That's key.

SPEAKER_08 9:46

Integration, yeah. Is integration to the bigger strategy is obviously the win there, right? So what we do in digital advertising and how we approach things on social. And social is also a part of that pre-show kind of uh activation, right? So it's not just maybe email campaigns. You're you're tying that into your old overall social calendar on what you're doing, Facebook, Instagram, wherever you are. Um but then also with website, right? Like we kind of will have a landing page for an event, uh, might be kind of intertwined with maybe a new product launch or a product focus. Um so it's it's very compartmentalizing contextual to the show. So it fits in the greater marketing story that we're telling. And I think, like you say, that's absolutely a part of the justification rather than what was the exact ROI on this one show that you spent $100,000 on. Well, you have to think bigger than that,

On Site Content That Lasts Months

SPEAKER_08 10:34

right?

Jacki Lutz 10:34

So let's think about how to tie this into like some on-site um tips and tricks. So what should people be thinking? So they just they did all the work you just said, they kind of ramped everything up, they're all set and ready to go, and now it's show time. What should people be thinking about?

SPEAKER_12 10:49

I if I had one tip or trick, and I'm gonna talk about this later today too, is to have one person identified as your content producer in that booth. And I I think it's overlooked in a lot of scenarios because you have salespeople, you have people who know the product, people who are there to meet the customers, but one designated person who is capturing content and video and customer testimonials, and all of those sorts of different assets and pieces can be used six months after the event. So I my tip is coming more for a longer-term marketing perspective. I'm sure you have more for on-site like engagement, but um that's what would be mine. I think and a lot of people, you know, we're resources are thin. Like I get it. I think it's a luxury to have a person designated, but the ROI on that one person will be tremendous for your brand if you can really think about it thoughtfully.

Jacki Lutz 11:49

Something for people to think about too is you can get those people on Fiverr, you know, like you know, locally to whatever show you're at, you know, and Fiverr, be like, I need a social media person or whatever, and they'll come. It's pretty affordable. Yes. And you don't have to miss a body. That's exactly that's a great point.

SPEAKER_08 12:05

And it we actually we miss that sometimes, you know. Some of the shows uh we could really benefit from that because we kind of almost think about it too little, too late. When we get there, we're like, oh, we should have. Um, and I think we've learned our lesson from that. So sometimes it works to have uh, you know, one of your associates on the team do that, but you're so busy, right? Like you're you're just trying to got a person that's manning the perception desk and taking care of lead scans and making sure that's just not Joe Schmoe getting giveaways and taking all your pens. And so you're so busy with all this activity. How do you capture good content from that show? Uh so we have actually found a couple of people that this is just what they do. They they are in the industry, they know the people, the players, the products. Uh and again, very affordable. So, I mean, finding those people isn't really that hard, like you say. Um LinkedIn has really served us really well for connecting with those people. Uh, we see their content getting pushed out on social channels and we say, oh, this person's doing some really good stuff. Let's let's contact them. They'd be good a good fit for us, right? Uh and again, the investment is minimal, pays dividends over like you know, long-term content that you can reuse in a lot of great ways.

Jacki Lutz 13:09

I think getting um some of the trade show attendees involved in your social as well will wildly expand it. So like if you can have something at your booth that would make them want to post something to do with Denzo, um, you can really achieve that goal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 13:24

And our partners also, it's it's really great when our partners come in. We try to schedule at least a time frame window that we know that they can stop by the booth. And if that content person is there, capture, you know, an im interview or something, excuse me. Uh that's a really great way to uh not only lift up that partnership, right, and take that those two brands together, uh, but it's just it I think people really enjoy that kind of engagement at the show, right? It's not just people standing around shaking hands. There's really great stories to tell there, there's really great partnerships to tell. And uh planning that is also part of that pre-show strategy too.

Jacki Lutz 13:57

So totally great. Yeah. So we got about three

Lead Quality And The 48 Hour Rule

Jacki Lutz 14:00

minutes left. So let's make sure we get to some post-show stuff. What to do after the show to make sure that all that effort we just had was worth it. So you want to get started?

SPEAKER_08 14:08

I can take a stab at it. Again, we've had wins and things we've learned from. Okay. Um I think that the biggest thing is, you know, our sales managers uh come back to us and say, okay, how what was the quality, right? You have a marketing qualified lead and then you have a sales qualified lead and really determining the value between these. Marketing might say, okay, the we think these leads were good. We got something great from this. But uh ultimately the sales team is like the one budgeting for this. So are we supporting the sales leads the way that we need to? Well, honestly, that's a conversation back and forth because it's up to the sales team to follow up, right? They're going to be scoring these leads. They're going to be telling us kind of the feedback of whether this was really like what was the value of this lead, right? And again, you can get so many people that just want a tchotchke or a giveaway. So they scanned a badge just to get something. We really have tried to hone in our activity on site to make sure that the follow-ups that we're getting afterwards are really the high quality that we're looking for. But again, it's a part of a touch point. So that qualification isn't just were they at the show and did they talk to us? Have they been on our website? Have they, you know, subscribed to our email, newsletter, things like that? What's the bigger, you know, or is it completely brand new lead for us? And then we can segment that out and really be make the best use of our sales team's time. So that's really, I think, the big takeaway from trade shows. Like they can now say this is a a group I need to focus on and not spin my wheels in my efforts. Uh so it helps the targeting, I think, a lot.

SPEAKER_12 15:32

I could not have crafted a more beautiful response than what you just said. I I mean, I don't think I have anything to add beyond that. Um, the only I can throw a statistic that we've seen and we know in the data and research, which sounds shocking, but 73% of leads are not followed up on after an event or trade show, which is just mind blowing. Mind blowing.

Jacki Lutz 15:58

But you know, I get it. Yeah. Like you, you know what I mean? Yes. Like, but it's I I mean, I've lived it. Absolutely. Like it gets in the way, things get crazy. And it's like you're building up to this thing, and then you get there and it just feels like, okay, I'm done. Yes, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_12 16:13

So, I mean, to echo what you said, the strategy, if you set it at the top, I think often it's, I don't know, not often, but it can be trial by fire. It's like we get to the event and then there's no strategy post-show. But if you take the time up front to say, like, what is our post-show strategy? And one of the rules of thumbs is 48 hours after the show, there is a first touch point. And then we move into a at least 10 touch point sequence from there that's spread out, you know, within time that follows the theory that you were explaining, which is, you know, warm leads, cold leads, like who we had a real intentional conversation with. Um, but yeah, it's it's it can get lost. And what we found is that it takes, we all know, well, we know this stat, it's like seven to 12 touch points to really make an impact on someone. But then sales leads often fall off after one, maybe two touch points. Like a salesperson will move on to the next. So having a nurture sequence, understanding, you know, how you're separating out your audiences couldn't be more critical.

Jacki Lutz 17:16

100%. I love that the amount of touch points just keeps increasing for us. It's 140 touch points before we get started now.

SPEAKER_08 17:24

Yeah, just never stop touching point.

Jacki Lutz 17:27

Well, thank you guys so much. This was a really great 15-minute segment full of really good tips for your members. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_12 17:33

Thanks for having us. It was

AI Transformation Without Losing Humans

SPEAKER_12 17:35

fun.

Jacki Lutz 17:35

All right, welcome to another open mic uh with ACC. And now we are going to be talking about AI transformation. And I have one of ACC's speakers here at AutoCare Connect, Aaron Rose with USA Today. Welcome. Thank you. And then I have Kate Johnson, one of our members with Clarios. To have you on. Thank you. Um, do you guys want to just quickly talk a little bit about who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_05 18:01

Sure. Um, I'm Aaron Rose. I work at uh USA Today, which is a giant organization that includes a marketing arm local IQ. We serve everybody from one truck chucks to multi-billion dollar brands like Walmart, and that includes several different auto divisions. And I'm here to talk about AI transformation and how that's impacting all sorts of different organizations.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Awesome. How about you? I'm Kate Johnson. I am the director of marketing for the Automotive Aftermarket US and Canada for Clarios. We are the global leader in battery manufacturing, low voltage battery manufacturing. Um and my experience, I've I've been with Clarios about a year and a half, and I come to the organization with 20 plus years of experience in the aftermarket, most of it on the agency side.

Jacki Lutz 18:53

And I love our topic, and especially I love that you're one of the guests because you can feel this. Um AI has been something I feel like marketing. I've been in my in marketing or some form of marketing my entire career. And it feels like back then it's like it always kind of feels like you're just a little bit behind. Remember like the social media days and like SEO days, website days, like all this kind of new stuff that you're juggling and trying to learn while keeping everything, all the other balls up in the air, you know, and then marketing is fun that way. Yes. Um, and then enter AI, and it feels like that times 10 sometimes because it's it's actually something that's integrated in every single thing that you do now. Um, so it's a huge elephant to eat. So I'm so glad that we're talking about this topic. And Aaron, do you want to give us just a little bit like a little quick synopsis of what you're gonna be talking about later today? Yeah. Get started.

SPEAKER_05 19:42

And it's wild because I feel the same way. Like I've been giving talks, and there's been all of these slides that we've had where it's look how fast things are progressing and they're always really impressive. But it feels unprecedented now at the speed at all that's happening. Whenever we talk to uh agencies and organizations, there's a lot of FOMO, maybe that you're missing out on the AI boat already, or fear about how AI is going to impact you, and that's what the topic is about. And the first thing that came to me whenever we were researching the topic, we started looking at other world-changing technologies. So the two big ones that absolutely reshaped the planet would be electricity and the internet. And what's interesting, it's not like those things got invented and then suddenly the world was transformed. It took a generation. Like electricity, just because you switch a steam engine to electricity, didn't change everything. It's still the same tooling. They had to completely redo all of the factories.

Jacki Lutz 20:41

I think that rewire all the houses.

SPEAKER_05 20:44

Right. Right. And then right, all of the infrastructure. And the internet was the same way, right? Like the internet gets invented, but it took 20 years before we really got the world as we know it. And I think what we're seeing is that consumers move faster than businesses do for so many reasons. And uh the bottleneck often is not the change. And what people are experiencing is that there are promises of what these models are capable of doing. So uh Claude's mythos is getting ready to be released at some point. Some people are saying it's too dangerous to be released.

Jacki Lutz 21:22

It's that's not what you want to hear. Right. It's uh that's alarming.

SPEAKER_05 21:26

It is a step change in terms of what it is capable of. It has found what are called zero-day vulnerabilities in every major OS. It is better than humans. And then when you look at the studies of are organizations able to leverage AI and get the productivity gains, no, oftentimes people are slower and worse using it. And it's because it's a new thing. You have to completely retool your process, you can't just plug it in and it solve everything. So that's the the starting point for a

Jacki Lutz 22:01

It's a fantastic message and it's one that I think our members are going to their ears are gonna perk up with it. So tell me a little bit about Clarios. How are you guys tackling AI?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Um as a global, massive global organization, um we are tackling AI um holistically, but we're also tackling it regionally because that is very important. Different regions are using AI very differently. Um Erin, you mentioned technology that changed civilization. And in the automotive industry, we have that similar technology and adoption, and it was Henry Ford and the automobiles and then the manufacturing lines. And as as a representative of a large global manufacturer, um AI is fundamentally changing how we engage in our business, how we engage with our customers. But one thing that it certainly isn't changing is the importance of relationships. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, yes, we may be deploying uh AI agents and we may be using AI to not only develop strategy and messaging and and make sure to check our blind spots, and we may be using it to speed up supply chains and look for vulnerabilities in the manufacturing ecosystem and prevent injury and help make better products faster and get them to our customers more quickly. But at the end of the day, people are an essential part of that process. So I really like to focus on that piece of it. AI is doing a lot when we think about the automotive aftermarket, we think about how many parts and how many companies and how many people are part of our industry ecosystem. When you think about the volume of good marketing material that we need to develop to support AI and support that customer journey, it's unbelievable.

Jacki Lutz 24:23

You know what I love? Um this is a theme I'm noticing. So last year at this conference, there was a lot of AI. Yes. A lot of how-to. This is how you're gonna do this. This is like, these are new tools you can use. These are all the cool ways that people are starting to use AI. This year, it really feels like the theme is don't forget about the humans. Don't, you know, forget that you know, humanity still need needs to exist. Humanity is gonna be what makes AI successful, like to not forget the human part of this entire process. So it almost feels like you can kind of see the adaption take place and like the learning taking place for the entire industry, which is kind of neat.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

One thing that that I I keep in mind is um especially with vehicle batteries. Vehicle batteries are essential. You need one in every vehicle, but it's not something that people think about until they fail or until something isn't working right. Why isn't my car starting? Why are my lights dim? Why is why why do I have indicator lights showing on my dashboard? What do I do about that? And now people will grab their phones and they will engage in a search. They may say, Um, why won't my vehicle start? Or what is the best battery for a vehicle with a lot of electronics? And that is where having great educational content to help people understand here might be the problem. And oh, if you need to keep jump starting your battery, you should go get that tested and then serve up locations where you can get that tested. And that includes retail outlets and repair shops. But ultimately, once you point the consumer there, it's still the business that has to deliver, it's still the humans that have to deliver to the other humans.

SPEAKER_05 26:20

Yeah, she brings up a a great point, right? She's talking about the consumer journey and the way people are engaging with search to ultimately find a solution to a problem. And what's interesting on the AI side is that there's a branding problem, and you now have to do branding for AI. Yes. And I'll unpack that uh a little bit, right? So I'm like wrapping my brain around what you just said. Yeah. So there's a one of the most validated oldest marketing studies goes back from the 60s. And it doesn't matter how many logos or brands of a specific category there are, like batteries. Really, humans know about four or five. So if we go and ask how many battery brands, we might know more in the industry. Most people four or five, and most people pick from that set. And for AI, it doesn't go to Google and search and pick just the highest thing. It is looking at the substrate of all of the materials and logically reasoning out what is the best choice. So then your brand needs to be in all of these places, which is what Kate talked about with all of the places that you need to have content. Are you the answer to that question authoritatively on all of the different surfaces? So you have to solve the branding problem for humans, can't forget about humans and relationships, and AI, because it's eating the internet in terms of traffic, where humans in terms of total usage are becoming an edge case online.

Branding For AI And Zero Click Search

Jacki Lutz 27:52

Which is it kind of brings us to a point that we wanted to make sure to get to, which is two, zero click is something that you brought up, which I would love to hear more about, and then the change changes that are happening in search and how to be effective there. Right.

SPEAKER_05 28:05

So there was this sort of great deal that we had with Google as consumers, right? Where you would go online, you would search, it would give you all of the listings you click, and then you would go to another site. It was diverting that traffic to other places. But now there's the rise of what is called zero-click searches, meaning somebody goes, they search, they get the thing that they need, and they don't go anywhere else. That is reported to be call it 65% of the trillions of searches.

Jacki Lutz 28:34

That blows my mind. It used to be you just want to be top of fold. Right. Ugh. Now you want to be the blurb at the top.

SPEAKER_05 28:43

Yeah. If you haven't looked at the search results page with fresh eyes, you should do that because it's AI overviews, which can push that number up to 85%. Yes. And then what's interesting, right, is that we know that Google makes most of its money from ads, largely pay-per-click ads. And that revenue has gone up tremendously. So if it's more zero-click searches and the revenue is going up, how is that possible? And it's two things. One, the total search pie is getting bigger. More searches are happening. And uh two, they are very carefully managing commerce-driven intent searches versus navigational searches, informational queries. So I have some interesting sort of uh one-person studies on various auto auto aftermarket parts to see when did it trigger Google shopping, when does it trigger an AI overview, and you can see that testing is happening there because they're doing that revenue balance. That's so interesting.

Jacki Lutz 29:45

I also notice a lot of the search results now. Um, if you do take the time to go past the AI blurb at the top, a lot of them are social. Like they found that search or that answer or whatever on a social post or on a social thing, and it's not always websites anymore.

SPEAKER_05 30:00

Right. It's the Reddit hack. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, because that's one of the it was a rise starting a couple of years ago where people would type in their thing and then add Reddit because that would be what felt like the real answer because real humans, the relationship piece was happening there. But we're seeing that trend now on other channels. So TikTok and video discovery is becoming a huge thing for auto, like both for the cars and the parts, because it's getting away from what people are calling uh the slop problem, right? Like you're trying to get to the authentic signal. And that's what our job as marketers is, is to find ways to give people that strong signal.

Jacki Lutz 30:41

Well, this sounds like it's going to be an incredible session. This is such a huge topic to unpack. And I feel like I just already learned so much. So I'm really excited for the members to hear everything that you have to say. Thank you so much for coming on the show and tell us a little bit about what you know. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Data Driven Storytelling For Every Audience

Jacki Lutz 30:59

Welcome everybody to another ACC open mic on autocare on air. And I have with me Taryn Sodi. Welcome.

SPEAKER_07 31:07

Thank you, thank you.

Jacki Lutz 31:08

And Rob Tinson. Why don't you guys tell me a little bit about yourselves, real quick? Rob, why don't we start with you?

SPEAKER_06 31:12

Yeah, thanks for having me, Jackie. So, Rob Tinson, uh, been in the aftermarket for over 20 years, uh, mainly in sales and marketing roles, and uh recently started my own company, Aftermarket Ready, in November. And uh what we're doing is a lot of digital marketing. Uh, we're involved in a lot of motorsport, so a lot of content creation, um, but really just trying to you know help brands in particular, uh bridge that gap between some content that they're getting, but also uh particularly what we're gonna talk about today, you know, the type of content, the type of stories that resonate with technicians, WDs, or consumers. So um yeah, working hard in the entrepreneurial uh space. So loving it.

Jacki Lutz 31:49

It's awesome. What about you, Tieron?

SPEAKER_07 31:51

Oh well, uh I'm a founder and CEO of Conceptual Minds. Uh I've been in the industry for about 15 years now. Started off in uh tires, uh mobile tire installation. Uh, was involved in a uh venture uh backed startup and uh now doing my own thing, kind of like Rob, and uh have been doing this for a few years, full service marketing organization that caters to auto repair facilities, more of a B2C, you know, uh play. So yeah. Yeah.

Jacki Lutz 32:16

So you guys compliment each other perfectly for this topic.

SPEAKER_07 32:19

I know.

Jacki Lutz 32:19

Which is data-driven storytelling. Yeah. And Rob, you spoke to ACC yesterday on this. Why don't you give us a little summary of what you talked about?

SPEAKER_06 32:29

I'll start with the best part standing room only. Yes. I mean, it was awesome. The only thing I did was start a little bit early, so I had people shuffling in. But this was near and dear to my heart. And when ACC came and said, you know, we would like for you to consider, and they threw me the topic, and I said, I kind of wrote this over the past year. It's part of my my business case. Uh and so really it's it's uh it's not too heavy lifting. Data-driven storytelling sounds complex. It's taken all the data that we get, whether it's telematics or it's POS data, you know, any type of category management data that we're able to gather, uh trend lens, you know, things like that, the factbook, which I know comes out uh next month. Yeah. Uh it's taking all of those things and the data that you're able to get and translate that into the right message. And I always broke it up into three, three buckets, arguably four, and I didn't present on this yesterday, so you're getting a sneak peek. The three buckets are are your technician, your shop. Your messaging needs to be very specific to problems that they're having, and you need to be the solution. And so we talked a lot about how uh AEO, which is answer engine optimization, how you can make sure that your content is optimized for AI search, because so many people now are jumping on Chat GPT, saying, I have this problem. My mechanic did the same thing. He gave me a four-page report on a BMW uh trouble uh code, and uh I was blown away. I said you're using ChatGPT. So it's it's it's how do we take um how do we take uh arguably some of that data, translate it into stories? The other channel is the WD. We know that buyers really want to have turns on inventory. They want to know that product's not gonna come back. So you give them failure rates and you start to market to them on some of the pain points, some of the needs. And then the third, and this is kind of where it's a perfect segue to Taryn, the third is you know, the consumer or the enthusiast. Depending on your product, you might be a performance product or enthusiast-driven product, but could just be a consumer product, wiper blades, for example. Um, you've got to find the right pain points. You've got to make sure that your content is optimized. You're using certain data to be able to say, hey, you know, it's perfectly okay to be replacing your blades every other oil change, and here's why. You know, those types of things. So um it's it's catering that type of message. Uh, and I thought it resonated. I, you know, at standing room only, like I said. So people must have been interested. I'm getting a lot of buzz as we're walking around saying, hey man, you know, put that online. We want to see that presentation. And so yeah, it was cool. It was right up my alley. Um, and I'm not a data nerd, but I'm a I'm a I'm a nerd in terms of know your audience, know what their pain points are, and use all this data. I didn't I didn't make it up. The data is there to support it.

Jacki Lutz 35:16

You know what I love about it is you don't usually think of data and store, like you think of storytelling as creative work, data as like boring work, right? So as a marketer, blending the two together um sounds a little bit intimidating, and uh, but like it works so well because it's like why can't these two things live together and complement each other?

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Yeah.

Jacki Lutz 35:39

And, you know, and telling that story using data is is like the most concrete way to do it. It's less of the fluff, right? Yeah, it's like this is facts.

SPEAKER_07 35:49

It's offer it offers affirmation. Yeah, right. Really what it's all about, you know, we all have a lot of opinions, and the greater amount of time we spend in an end industry, you know, we feel like we become more confident in that area. And um, I mean, my running thing is look, I'm uh I have a lot of opinions. I've done this for 15 years, but I'm wrong 50% of the time. Right. So that's where data really guides and it allows us to make sure that um, you know, we are confirming what our thoughts are, what what our hypothesis is, and really be able to navigate, you know, the changes as you learn more about your audience, more about your customer, what have you. So I just yeah, absolutely right. I think they both really need to live together nowadays. I think historically we've not had enough uh data available to actually tell the right story. But now there's an overwhelming amount of data, and now it's really about what is the most important and how do you synthesize to make sense of it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_06 36:39

Yeah. And I had I had laid out, and I'm I I probably need to connect with Taryn because I think there's the framework that can be broadened to how do shops like you're doing, how do shops communicate to what is arguably a very frustrated consumer coming in? It's unexpected repair and all that. And I laid out a framework, and it was starting with, you know, the search. Like, okay, you know, and and I recommend brands do this. Go on AI and search all the things that are related to your product. See who, see who comes up. And it could be, it will surprise you what comes up. So, you know, own that content, own, own the the solution to the problem that's being searched. Don't allow somebody else to own that. So you as a brand, make sure your website's optimized and blogs. And then it was okay, insights. What am I learning from this data? And then it was the story. All right, I'm learning this from the data. What is the story? What's the messaging? Um, and then it, you know, you're you're looking at uh tracking that, you're looking at behavior, and then it becomes a flywheel. All right, if I learn that I had X amount of clicks here, then it's working. Maybe I didn't have as much clicks, so maybe I'll look at it as like an A-B test. Um, but it's using all of that data that you're using, uh ultimately getting from all of those insights and those clicks or whatever your call to action is using that to kind of fine-tune your next campaign. So it's very much a flywheel approach, which I demonstrated yesterday. So it's pretty cool.

Jacki Lutz 37:59

So what are the bigger challenges for implementing this kind of mindset?

Local And Regional Messaging Plus A B Tests

SPEAKER_06 38:05

Um I hopefully from from my standpoint, it's aftermarket ready. Yeah, you know, I don't think there's much, but no, it is. If you're always ready, you don't have to get ready. You just um yeah.

Jacki Lutz 38:14

That should be your new slogan.

SPEAKER_06 38:16

Give me a call. Yeah, are you aftermarket ready? Yeah. Um no, it it's it's a challenge. I lived the challenge. You know, for 20 years, being part of a couple companies that we had the pleasure of working for, um, I lived it. And you know, one of the frustrations, it arguably it's bandwidth, it's it's um it's regional knowledge in a way. Um, you know, global organizations a lot of times have central marketing teams that could be based out of Europe. They want to kind of push out content, which is awesome because you know, there's larger marketing budgets maybe at a global level. They want to push out content, but is it regionally appropriate, right? Does it resonate? I mean, certainly with where you are in terms of communicating to a consumer at that shop level, um, you really do rely on like even regional specific content, like what's going on in your backyard. So um I lived it and um you know really started my business as a result of kind of trying to find that solution to what I thought was a problem. So, Jackie, it's it's it's bandwidth uh in some way. Um unfortunately in marketing and marketing budgets are the first to go whenever business is tight. Um it's it's knowledge of who the actual customer is. Who are we trying to get our message to? Who do we need to influence? Yep. Um it's that type of knowledge. And then it's um it it's it's it's a little bit of um, you know, maybe it kind of blends in with the two, but it's a little bit of just staying up with the times. You know, I think organizations are um in in a lot of ways, AI is is scary for a lot of companies. And so, you know, if you're not utilizing those tools with the right protection around it, which some companies just are saying we're not going to allow those to be used, um, you're not tapping into what is arguably, you know, the platform where technicians are searching a problem. So it's a little bit of they don't have the right tools. Um, and so that's where I I think a little bit of the gap made me comfortable starting my business and filling some of that gap.

Jacki Lutz 40:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 40:12

And from my perspective, I'll echo a lot of the same that Rob is saying. Um, you know, uh from our perspective, it's more of a localized information, right? Because when we are actually marketing or advertising our customers or shops, most of the customers come within five miles of the shop. So it's uh it's a different kind of a challenge, right? You know, you're basically it's a hyperloc. And then it's really about, you know, knowledge in the industry. Um, in you know, not a lot of the small to medium-sized players don't have a big marketing team, if any people on staff often, right? So who is the subject matter expert? Who has the information? You know, what is the story you're even trying to tell? Um, you know, I kind of reverse engineer with our clients often, right? You know, we basically say, hey, what is the story you're trying to tell? Because there is a lot of data. Number one, what does data mean? What is what is it telling you about different KPIs? What value do they serve? And then more importantly, what is the message you're trying to create? Um, and then taking those hyper-segmented data sets and really doing something with it, right? So whether it's price, you know, um I'll give you an example. We had a customer who was um, you know, wasn't sure if the price was right in the marketplace, right? So doing doing a lot of data analysis in terms of looking at the pricing of the parts, what is the actual part pricing? What is the pricing in the competition with the competition has? And then ultimately, you know, taking some survey data to say, hey, what is our customer complaining about the price? And what does that data set tell to really figure out whether the pricing was aligned with the market and whether they're competitive or not? Right. So so yeah, so it's just, you know, the and sometimes it's overwhelming. And I think it's more important to just break it down to one or two pain points or areas you want to target and really focus on those and go from there. And that kind of makes it bite-sized and digestible, which was, you know, which is a big thing, I think, for uh, you know, shops at least. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:58

The regional specific stuff is big because um, you know, I mentioned like, you know, globally it's very tough to manage like a North American market, but within even North America, you know, you've got seasonality, you've got different temperatures, different parts are being replaced in different areas. Um digital can get really fine-tuned. Digital can be really fine-tuned. Um, so use that as a strength to say, hey, in this market, air conditioning is gonna peak. Whereas we're just talking about San Diego, you know, maybe it's not peaking really, it's always kind of peaking, like maybe it's different than where I am in the Northeast. So the regional messaging, I think, is key. And I think it's too. I think a lot of what you're doing is it's important for brands to have that type of content relative to the category that they're in, the product that they're in, and think all the way down to the consumer so that the brands can kind of funnel that information through their distribution networks, down to the shops. Shops can use that as a way to kind of like break down that barrier when they first come in. Yeah, recommended services, those types of things. Like it's normal that this part is failing. Parts are meant to fail.

SPEAKER_07 43:02

Totally, totally. And A B test can help a lot, right? And I uh, you know, one of the things that I often see, sometimes it's like, hey, I we think this is the message we want to create and we want to send out into the marketplace. And it ends up everywhere in all the marketing channels, but maybe you haven't reconfirmed uh, you know, whatever the hypothesis was there, right? So I think you know, you could spend literally 500 bucks on you know social media and do a bunch of A B testing, and you'll very quickly know what is the right message that's resonating with your consumer. So digital and social, you know, can play a really important role in actually testing your messaging and taking that data to really identify where to go. For example, you know, we do social media, Google ads, direct mail, TV, radio, all kinds of campaigns, right? But what's the easiest way to know what message is going to resonate? We take a $500 budget, we create three or four ads, you know, we see what that data is telling us. And once we have confirmed that we have a strong message or whatever the strongest message is, then we will implement it everywhere else and go spend a you know a couple hundred thousand. Dollars because we now have supported data that says, yes, this is likely to resonate with the consumers as you're going into the marketplace. Right. So yeah, I can totally play a really good role in really understanding which channel has what value and where you don't need to go and spend hundreds or thousands or millions of dollars. You know, start really small and you can learn a lot about you know what you're trying to do in your career.

SPEAKER_06 44:20

So yeah, I think I think some of that data, uh some of that data, Jackie, that we're able to get now, AI has helped a ton. You know, and when I talked about bandwidth, I mean uh I'm able to do way more in a responsible way with some of the AI tools that we're using. You know, different things like maybe a company didn't ever think that it's important for us to be part of blogs and Reddit content. Like, how do we get in the middle of that? How do we become part of that conversation? And so um thankfully there are AI agents that can become part of those conversations, represent your brand, and then you take all of that data and you say, We were way wrong. This is what people are talking about on this BMW forum, you know, for this particular and then you can become real surgical and start to target that problem with your solution to that BMW audience, for example, on Reddit.

SPEAKER_07 45:11

Totally, totally. If we have another minute, what I would love to you know share is um, you know, just even on the technician side, right? Uh or you know, a service advisor side. So what we've noticed is you know, there is a gap in sales sometimes, and people are not fully informed in um, you know, what their what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, how they're doing on the phones, you know, with as you mentioned, some of the AI technologies that are coming out. There's some new ones, you know, in the industry that are just early stages. Now you can actually look and evaluate how well somebody is selling on the phone every time they do it. So I, you know, you can actually take this data in real time and say Taryn absolutely sucks at selling tires, right? You know, but he's good at uh oil changes. Well, Taryn needs more tire training, right? So how do you get them to the tire training part of it? And you know, that data is really helpful because now, you know, as an owner as an organization, you can really quickly tell at scale which employees are, you know, who what their strengths are, where their weaknesses are, where they need help, you know, and how can you quickly train them? Because listening to phone calls, you know, for a thousand people in an organization, you know, that's not possible. You know, there's just a you know, bandwidth is always going to be a problem. But if you can find out in real time that information, that makes it really helpful. And that's a story you can tell internally, you know. So it's not just the exterior, you know, consumer, it's the internal customer where you're like, look, here's an opportunity for making our team better. Here's how you can make it better. Oh, you're really good at this. Please go help Rob, you know, in in in this area. So I think there's a lot, you know, that the data can do for you with your customers, internal and external. Yeah.

Jacki Lutz 46:39

That's fantastic. This is a really good conversation. Hopefully, it just gives enough of a taste for people to get curious on their own and start looking into this and start how to implement it on their own team. So thank you guys so much for coming on and sharing your insights.

SPEAKER_07 46:52

Hey, thank you for having us. Yeah, we really appreciate it.

Email Marketing Basics Workflows And Hygiene

Jacki Lutz 46:56

All right, welcome everybody to another ACC open mic. I have Chris Messer on with Endeavor B2B. Welcome, Chris. Thanks for having me. Great to have you on. And you're on the ACC council.

SPEAKER_10 47:08

I am. Yeah, I've been a council member for a few years now. Serve as the membership subcommittee leader.

Jacki Lutz 47:13

Oh, so so awesome. Good position for you. Yeah. Um, and then I also have Morgan Mulgrew with High Road Solutions. Welcome. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yeah. And you just spoke at the ACC conference. Yes, I did. Email marketing, which is our topic today.

SPEAKER_11 47:28

So, do you want to just give us a little summary of what you talked about? Sure, absolutely. So, my focus uh today was um email marketing, best strategies for aftermarket. Um, so felt like it was a uniquely challenging audience uh to come here and kind of talk with. They they are talking about, you know, people with different purchase histories, different usage, different ways that they are actually interacting with the organization. So, ways that people can use email marketing to meet their customers where they are, tell them what they want to hear, and then eventually make them take action, which is really what we are trying to do is see conversions and things like that. So I spent about 45 minutes uh talking with folks about kind of the basics of how to make a good email, kind of the structure, having strong CTAs, things like that, and then kind of progressed into more advanced uh ways that you can kind of uh communicate, um, things like workflows and uh you know how to make things automated to make things more efficient. So we really kind of covered a lot of things in a lot of in a little bit of time. But yeah, it seemed it seemed to go well and it seemed to be something that people um actually needed to hear and and I think people were able to have some nice takeaways and and and learn something, which is the goal for me, obviously. Yeah.

Jacki Lutz 48:43

And is email marketing still one of the you know top marketing tools?

SPEAKER_11 48:50

Yes, it is. So there are so many others. Um I did mention in the presentation social, paid ads, all these other ways that people are making touch points. But especially in the aftermarket industry, um, there is a people are checking their emails. You are getting reminders for things. Um, so email still does have a very high R ROI compared to the other elements. Social still is not catching up. So um kind of the overall takeaway is like email isn't dead, but bad emails are. So making sure you're putting the right message together so that people are going to respond, react, and kind of do what you want them to do.

Jacki Lutz 49:27

Yeah, maybe Chris, you can add some color to this.

SPEAKER_10 49:30

Well, I mean, email marketing is only as effective as the creative and the messaging, but not only that, it's having the right audience, right? And you talked a little bit about this, didn't have enough time to go into deep, you know, breath of information. But having great list hygiene, making sure that you're collecting good first party data, and making sure that you're keeping that up to date. And Jackie, you asked about um how effective email marketing is. It if it's still effective, of course it is, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it. But it's part of the daisy chain of making sure that you have an effective omni-channel approach, whether you're reaching out to distributors, the end user, you know, people that are throwing away the box and actually installing the part, consumer marketing, whatever it might be. It's one of the tactics. So um I think, you know, Morgan, you did a great job of in a short 45-minute time period of time talking about A-B testing, journeys, automated sequencing. Um, and it was kind of interesting. We're in a room full of marketers. And how many hands were raised when we talked about A-B testing?

SPEAKER_11 50:26

Like, uh, not as many as I was expecting. I actually was taken aback a little bit um when I asked if folks were using A-B testing. I almost felt like I had to go back and give a definition um for a couple folks. Um, but I also felt like the people that were doing A-B testing might have been doing a little too much of it when I was saying kind of pick one thing to focus on. People were like, oh yeah, that makes sense because a lot of our tests, we don't know if they work or not. So um being very concise and very focused in in those in those A-B tests.

SPEAKER_10 50:56

But well, and you need a constant, right? So you can test two different subject lines and then pick a champion from there, but you can't change the subject line out with the imagery out and the other messaging out and the CTA out.

SPEAKER_11 51:07

Because then you don't know what worked and what didn't.

SPEAKER_10 51:09

No, and depending on your list size, like you know, you could do multivariant testing, you know, eight-way different testing, but you have to have a sizable list to be able to do that. And and depending on what your market is, who you're selling through to, what the the size of that list is, you may just not have the ability to do that. Yeah. The other part of it is it is is it takes time and resources, right?

Jacki Lutz 51:27

That was gonna be my point. I mean, I can imagine marketers like, what, so I have to do two emails?

SPEAKER_10 51:32

But it's not two emails. You know, two subject lines. Same.

Jacki Lutz 51:34

I mean that's if you if you don't know the information and you're sitting in that audience and like I'm not gonna do two email.

SPEAKER_10 51:40

And if you've got a you know a list size of let's say 10,000 engaged individuals, you take 20% off the top, you test 10,000, or I'm sorry, a thousand and a thousand, and whatever the champion is from there goes to the rest of the 8,000. If you can improve your click ratio by even just a small percentage, it makes a huge difference on the end up on the capture.

SPEAKER_11 51:58

So yeah, and that was kind of one of the, you know, I threw a ton of information at them in a very small amount of time. And I even talk fast and I still, still could not get everything out. Um use another 15 minutes. Yeah. I know. All right, now we're gonna finish the presentation. No, um no, but making things, doing small changes can make huge impacts. And that was one of the things. Like I'm throwing all of this at you, but some of you are already doing some of it, and some of you are not, or some of you haven't even touched this. So take a small step, and it can have a huge difference in the way that email performs. So, you know, someone came up to me after and said, Well, you gave me so many different things. Where should I start? Well, start with how much time you have to actually review it. Do you have 30 minutes? Do you have an hour? Do you have a week? What, what are you tasked with? Um, and then kind of taking the smaller steps from there. Um, biggest one that I think is super important is being able to be personal, like use personalization. Um, even something as simple as first name name, last name, and the make and model of my car is going to intrigue me more than hey, shop our brake pads because we have them. Um, so having having it be clear and personalized was pretty much what I kind of really wanted to hit home with. Um, make the people feel like you know who that they that you know who they are and what they want.

Jacki Lutz 53:11

Are there a lot of differences in the approach to email marketing between B2C and B2B?

SPEAKER_11 53:16

Yes. Um, I think just because actually one of the one of the um women here approached me after and was asking how can I apply this to B2B? Because I am trying to sell to a distributor, not necessarily the consumer. Um, and we are already doing stuff in terms of personalization, but we want to go one step further. Well, they can't really go one step further without making it a person level, like a customer level. So, other than things like, you know, demographics or seasons or things like that, it is very difficult to make it even more personal, to make it feel like it is you're talking to the person, not the company. Um, but there are little things that you can do to make it feel like, hey, we know your company. Um, here's the things that you purchase. We think you might be running low on it. Um, or it's summer and people need, you know, more of this or something along those lines. Um, you do have an opportunity to do some personalization and B2B, it's just it's a company, not a person. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 54:15

I think part of the challenge with that too, though, is there's so many marketers that all they have is an email address. And if that's all you're capturing, wherever it is, at a trade show, at a form fill, like you have to capture that first party data. You need the name, you need to try to find the vehicle that they're in. You need demographic, firmographic, you know, the seasonal information, everybody has it. We know, you know, it's approaching summer. Um, but if you're not collecting that first party data and you're not managing that in the correct warehouse or correct environment, you don't have the opportunity to take those actions and to be personal with it. So and I think we miss that oftentimes. If we're just capturing an email, uh frankly, it's it's not worth anything. It's hardly worth anything.

SPEAKER_11 54:53

Hardly.

SPEAKER_10 54:54

Um and you ask about the difference between B2B and B2C. I mean, the the tried and true tactics that Morgan was talking about earlier today, they apply you know ubiquitously across whether it's B2B or B2C. There's a lot of different things that you can do once you start getting deeper, and especially with sequencing and testing. If you're in a consumer market, you might have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of email. If you're selling through a distributor, I mean, look around the room. Maybe you have a few hundred, maybe a couple thousand max. So it's very different. I think you need to be targeted in either approach, but very specifically targeted when you're doing it in the B2B fashion.

Jacki Lutz 55:31

Yep. Agreed. And what are the most important metrics to be measuring?

Metrics That Matter Clicks And Conversions

SPEAKER_11 55:36

So I know everybody always says open rate um is the most important. It is not anymore because there is a lot of inflation that comes from those metrics. Um, a lot of times with my accounts, I tell them to kind of focus on the click-through rate. Um, and also conversion rates are really important. You know, did they actually do what we asked them to do? That I mean, that's the tried and true one. Like, did they actually do it? But, you know, checking the click-through rates, um, a lot of times in email marketing platforms, you can see like kind of the heat map where you get a lot of where people spent most of their time. And so that can also help you with email structuring. Um, but reporting-wise, most folks are kind of getting away from the open rates because people are like, oh my gosh, they're so high. But that's not really that accurate. Yeah. Um, so most people are starting to focus on the click-through and the conversion rates as what they are mostly trying to report on at this point. Okay. Yeah, I think the conversion rate, if you can get to the one's the most important, but it's if you can get it.

SPEAKER_10 56:29

And it also depends on what your initiative is, right? You talked a lot about buy buy break parts or whatever. And that may not be the call to action when you're talking to a distributor, but at a consumer level, absolutely. So it depends on what that conversion really is uh uh quantified as at the end of the day. And sometimes it's just branding and awareness. Like you just need to have that brand in front of them. That impression. Yeah, that impression. And that might be your ultimate uh benchmark.

Jacki Lutz 56:53

This is all very like very rapid fire, great tips um to add on to your session.

SPEAKER_11 56:58

For those of you who didn't get all of it, yeah. I'm just kidding.

Jacki Lutz 57:01

Yeah, so um, but for anyone who wants more information like this, ACC is a great place to go, full of marketing communication professionals in the automotive app market specifically. It's an amazing organization, and now it's part of the Auto Care Association, so it's really fun to be able to support it. But thank you guys so much for coming on and sharing your insights. Yeah, thanks for having us, thank you so much for having us.

Executive Presence Confidence And Reframing

Jacki Lutz 57:22

All right, welcome everybody to another ACC open mic. I am so excited for this conversation. We're gonna be talking about executive presence. And I have Georgianne Dickey with NTN Bearings. Fun fact we ran ACC together back in the day.

SPEAKER_09 57:36

We absolutely did.

Jacki Lutz 57:38

Uh Georgianne was the COVID president. I handed things off to you just in time.

SPEAKER_09 57:43

Wow, what a title. COVID president. It really sucked, but sorry, bad time.

Jacki Lutz 57:48

Yeah. And then Kathleen Long with Yelp. Welcome. Thank you. You've been on the show a couple times now, so you should feel right at home.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

I do. Yeah.

Jacki Lutz 57:57

Um, and then you just did a session for ACC yesterday on executive presence. Do you want to give us a little summary to get us going of what you talked about?

SPEAKER_02 58:05

Yeah, so there's a couple things. One was about just general executive presence, which I shared with the group yesterday that this is like the last topic that I ever thought anybody would ask me in particular to speak about. Um, and so I told a colleague once upon a time, and I feel like I've been living this ever since, that I wanted to be so competent that it didn't matter. Um, which has happened. Um, but I also think we're in a period of reframe around that. Um, and the second thing I talked about was particular, because this was for ACC, was how to bring marketing to the exec table. Because a lot of times people think of this as a department where they can sort of quote unquote push in their orders, yeah, like make this cuter. Yeah.

Jacki Lutz 58:50

Um, you know, it's like a supportive role.

SPEAKER_02 58:52

A support role, right? And so, and we tend to undervalue support roles when we think about what belongs at the exec table. And uh arguably only support roles should be at the exec table because an exec's job is to support the organization. Um, so that's one thing. Um, but then the second thing is is that marketing means like it's the ing, the active part of market. And so if you don't bring your market or your customer to the table, like what are you even doing? What's the point? Right. So um, so we talked a little bit about you know how to do that um and how to really represent your market from you know a few different uh standpoints at the executive table. And again, how to like be yourself, have the president presence and the confidence to just really presidents. Yeah, yeah, have the presents, um which is the confidence and the presence together. Yes. How to bring that together um to really own who you are in that conversation and your unique talents and and all of that, and to not be afraid to do that, which I hope by being a little bit strange um and being myself, that I create room for other people to do the same thing. That's my goal.

Jacki Lutz 1:00:05

And I think that it does. Um, and you know, like I just did a session uh Monday on personal branding, and and I in in that exercise, I always do one about we we do an exercise to find your personal values. One of mine is inclusiveness and not necessarily in the DEI sense, but the way that I try to interact with other people is to make people feel like you can do this too. Trust me. Like if I can do it, you can do it. So, you know, talking about flaws and failure tends to come out of my mouth more than I'd like. But it's for the same thing. Like you're putting words to think of what I what was in my brain all this time is that I think there needs to be more of what you're talking about, more, more executive presence that makes people feel like they can look at you and be like, Yeah, I can do it too.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:50

Like, yeah, I mean that's what it looks like.

Jacki Lutz 1:00:52

I can do it too. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

And there's room for me because oh, there's this person, and maybe I'm not exactly like them, but I'm my own person. And now there's room for that. And we don't need to re refine or restrain who's at the table. We need to make bigger tables.

Jacki Lutz 1:01:07

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:08

I love that too. That's fabulous.

Jacki Lutz 1:01:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:10

And, you know, to to just dovetail into that a little bit and what you were talking about about being vulnerable and maybe talking about your failures. You know, executive presence for me growing up through my career, I've been in the automotive aftermarket for almost 30 years now. Um and so I had some history in the way that it's evolved, and you know, this is my this is my journey. And I was always under the impression that the executive presence was the person that dominated the room. It was the person that was as polished, um, set the orders, and we listen and and we follow. But that evolution, I think, to your point, Kathleen, we need more people at the table because what I view as executive presence today is someone that isn't dominating the room, but listening to the people in the room and is able to take all of that in and make sound decisions based on all the information coming in. And I also truly believe, and Jackie, you are fabulous at this. If I don't know something, I'm gonna ask. There is no embarrassment in saying, you know, I've not been involved in that before. What exactly are you saying? What exactly are you wanting? And starting a back and forth conversation. I think when you become an executive, you feel that, oh, I need to know all the answers. I cannot pretend like I don't have a solution at the ready. But that's where your team, other folks within the organization, it's all about listening, asking questions, and being confident, not with the loudest voice in the room, but that you're able to make a decision when you get all the information. So um just that's a really great point.

Jacki Lutz 1:03:03

Cause I think maybe the the common, you know, thought is that an executive has all the answers, but that that's not a skill, right? That's just knowledge or experience or something like that. What the skill is, is when you don't have the answers, but you know how to go find them. Correct. You know how to go ask the right questions. That's what's gonna make you stand out and become a better executive and a better leader is when you can find the answers, not just sitting there and having them all.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

Yeah. And the part of the confidence you need to hold as an executive is having confidence in your team to do the right thing. Yeah, that's right. Right. And to draw out of them, you know, the answer, the talent, the skill to go execute that because you can't do everything yourself. Um, and I think it's also having the confidence sometimes to reframe the narrative. So one of the things that I shared yesterday is that there's a code sometimes at certain executive tables where people will question each other to find out where you went to school, which after 30 years in a career, who cares? Right. Um they'll also, you know, do this thing like to just understand like who you are in your community.

Jacki Lutz 1:04:11

It's almost like a pecking order is taking place and you level up.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

You know, it's a very um elitist kind of little activity that goes on. And it is designed to A, see if you belong to the club. And it's B designed to make anybody who's in the room who doesn't belong to that club feel excluded. And so I realized a long time ago I was never going to belong to that club. I went to University of Nevada Reno. I was on the 15-year plan. Took me 15 years to get my four-year degree.

SPEAKER_09 1:04:43

You know what? Excellent. Took me seven or eight. I don't remember anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

It took me three and a half, but I mean, but yeah, so I, you know, and I majored in general studies and philosophy, which has nothing to do with what I do for work, really. Um, and so, you know, I realized that conversation was never going to serve me. Yeah. And so when it comes my turn to do that, I completely change the narrative and the story and the what that we're talking about. I just refuse to participate and I refuse to feel diminished by that because I know I have so much to offer. Um, and I'm not going to let that define my worth. And I will even say sometimes if people really press that point or really, really want to know where I went to school, I'm like, who cares? Right. I'm I'm almost 51 years old. Yeah. Like it does that literally doesn't matter anymore. Right. Um, and so I think we have to have that courage a little bit to put ourselves out there when we are unique in these ways so that we can get different voices and different representation onto executive tables by telling stories in different ways. How do you become more confident? I think confidence comes. From achievement and achievement comes from being brave enough to stick your neck out and to try something and to understand that sometimes that something will work and sometimes it won't. And then just learning from that and having like a growth mindset. And eventually you wake up one day and you're like, oh, right. Like I thought I did. I yeah, I should feel pretty okay. And that's because I tried and I succeeded. Like, you know, I trained for a marathon and I finished it. Um, and only one, and I thought maybe I would never need to do it again, and now I'm flirting with the idea of doing it again. But I would have never had the confidence to do it if I hadn't tried it. Yeah. Right? You you get confidence from achievement, it's not something that you just kind of grow into or that you could talk yourself into or whatever. Um, and that comes from trying and then also sometimes failing.

SPEAKER_09 1:06:49

Yeah. I agree with that too. And you know, and in order to get those achievements, I prepare, prepare, prepare. It's all about preparing and being solid in my knowledge before that achievement comes. And then when the achievements come, you're like, wow, okay, prep preparation, know your stuff, you know, and control what you can, kind of control what you can, but definitely be prepared.

Jacki Lutz 1:07:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:19

Unlike me today.

Jacki Lutz 1:07:21

Yeah. Well, none of us. That's what open mics are for. Yeah. But I think of like, you know, I uh Monday they had the five for five, the yang um five for five. And I love that it's my favorite session of Connect. I just love going because I was that person once who was that terrified me more than anything to go on a stage and talk. I would rather talk to a room full of strangers than just like a few of my friends at a straight stage, right? And this is like getting up in front of a hundred of your peers and talking for five minutes is terrifying. Um, but I don't know if those, if those, you know, I want to I want to say students, but they're not students, the the young professionals um realize what they just did because like that is a step towards what we're talking about, like the reps, right? Absolutely being scared and then doing it and doing that like multiple times, like it starts to feel less scary, and then you find something else that scares you. Do some reps, you know, and that's how you are really gonna build the confidence. That's the skill again.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:19

Absolutely. And to Kathleen's point, it's about courage too. Having the courage to put yourself in the position to try something you haven't tried before, you do it more often, you get that skill, you become better, you achieve, you take on the next one. The courage to reframe that conversation, that is fabulous. I love that you said that because it is really hard to reframe norms. And to do that, I just applaud you. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:49

And then sometimes it's about, you know, so you're talking about preparing up front, super important so that you come armed, practiced, right? Right. Like you should never try to, for example, to run a marathon if you hadn't trained at all. That's wild. Right. Right. So you've got to do the training, the preparation, all that. And then I think sometimes people forget about like the aftercare. And that's why I like sports metaphors because we learn through our body um things that we're trying to train our mind to do. Um, and so afterward is also important. That's like the recovery period. Okay, I just did this speech on stage, this five for five, for example, right? And then what did I learn? What well, what would I do better next time? How could, right? So that we really soak in what we just did so that it becomes part of us. And then again, like building that seed of confidence. Then the next time it's a little easier, and the next time it's even easier and so on. And then we still have bad days. I, you know, I did I do a lot of speaking. A year ago, I your clothes were falling off yesterday. My clothes that was actually fantastic. I was sort of happy that happened. Just a scarf, just a scarf. Just a scarf. Yes. I wasn't even gonna give it away. It wasn't Janet Jackson level wardrobe malfunction. You know, we we didn't get there. Um, but but you know, I'm happy for those moments because actually that's where people really connect or bring some interest to what's going on in the room. Um, but I still have bad days. I I did a speech one time and I was just like, this was probably the worst speech of my career. I could not wait to get off the stage. I forgot what I was gonna talk about. I rambled, I thought incoherently for like 15 minutes. Do you know? Afterwards, they asked me, they were like, that was so great. Can we have you back? I'm like, what are you talking about? You should see me on a good day. I was like, that was horrible. But I of course I didn't say that because I'm practiced and like not talking down about myself uh to other people. But um, you know, so we all have times where something just hits and we're like, eh. Yeah. And then other times where it's like, ah, that could have been a little better, right? But you just kind of you learn to just dust yourself off. Exactly.

Jacki Lutz 1:10:55

And I I think too, I'm sorry, but I think too, like what you said is so important to debrief it. Like that debrief moment is important. And sometimes you just you're building up to a moment that you wanted to try something new and you did it and you just feel like you're done. But to like do that debrief,

Preparation Recovery And Real Leadership

Jacki Lutz 1:11:10

but also in that debrief, give yourself some kudos, you know, like don't just like focus necessarily on like okay, all this kind of stuff, this could have gone better, this went good, whatever. But also overarching, I did the thing. Like, if if you got got up on that stage and then you fell and decided not to finish, you know, and just got back off the stage, and like the fact that you got on the stage to me is like still that's that's the bravery part, like it is that's something to celebrate.

SPEAKER_09 1:11:38

And you have to forget because we all are our own worst critics, right? So we're down, oh, I could have done this different, I could have done that different. I had a speaking, um, I was speaking to a crowd of people, and it was in the midst of COVID, and we were first together for the first time, and I had a coughing fit on stage that I could not control. And the whole front row is like, oh my gosh, it's COVID or whatever. And I felt awful. I was trying to recoup, and I just like I could not even get out of my head. It was awful. The whole rest of the presentation went not as smooth as I had hoped. And I was invited back to give another one on the an updated topic to the same group two years later. So you were infectious. I love it, exactly. So, you know, sometimes things don't go right and they may not, but you go, you, you do your best, you recover, you that's where your confidence comes in. Right. Yeah, but it was uh I did not um go on the next um the next time I did it, I did not go on stage easy. I was very nervous, and I started out to the folks and said, You remember me? I'm the one that coughed on you guys last year. And I broke the ice and got through it. But I typically don't have issues with doing things like that, but because that one little mishap happened, I was a nervous wreck to go on stage again. I started getting a little jittery, like just don't do it again, Georgie Ann. And you just talk yourself out. A little fight or flight. We all make mistakes, like you said, or things happen that are out of our control. And the best we can do is to your point, give yourself grace when you're done. You got up there, you walked up there. That is a very intimidating thing for a lot of people. Yeah. And additionally, in an executive kind of presence within your own organization, to be able to get up and speak to your teams or your departments or your organization. Um, folks are looking to you for all the answers. And I do remind everyone, you know, I'm here to listen, hear, I'll give you everything that I know, and we can get this done together. I am huge about collaboration as well, but I've just rambled a little. So I'm gonna dial it back. Don't do that.

Jacki Lutz 1:14:06

It's a fantastic.

SPEAKER_09 1:14:07

Are you gonna start coughing? Yeah, like where's the water? That was it was pretty bad. It was pretty bad.

Jacki Lutz 1:14:13

Muter Mike. Uh well, thank you guys so much. I feel like we could have really tackled this for a very long time. This was an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you guys coming on and sharing your insights.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:23

Oh, thank you so much for having us. This is great. This was a fun combo, too. I'm here for absolutely to happen again.

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Jacki Lutz 1:14:30

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care on Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so that you never miss an episode. And don't forget to leave us a rating and review. It helps others discover our show. Auto Care on Air is proud to be a production of the Autocare Association, dedicated to advancing the autocare industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and its initiatives, visit autocare.org.