Episode 13 – Sivia Sasa, Internet Sales & Marketing Director at Mac Haik Ford Lincoln

In this episode, we sit down with Sivia Sasa, Internet Sales & Marketing Director at Mac Haik Ford Lincoln, for one of the most refreshingly honest conversations in automotive marketing. Sivia breaks down what 30 years in sales — including 18 in auto — have taught him about strategy, culture, vendor relationships, and why most dealers still chase the wrong metrics.

Topics we cover in this episode:

• How Sivia climbed from Internet Manager to Director — and how the role has evolved
• Why holistic marketing beats chasing KPIs or “silver bullet” tactics
• The real ROI behind email to past customers (and why tracking doesn’t show the whole picture)
• Why buying leads is a desperation play — and what to do instead
• The hidden power of consistent social advertising, even when it’s not on your dealership’s page
• How Mac Haik creates an authentic culture employees love — and why that matters for marketing
• Using customer data, loyalty, and cadence-based marketing to drive predictable sales
• How to get more value from your vendors (and not get sold fluff)
• Why video doesn't need big budgets — just real people and a phone
• The truth about Google ads vs. social ads for today’s dealers
• How the parts department contributes to dealership stability and branding
• Why “doing everything a little” and “a few things really well” is Sivia's marketing philosophy

Sivia also gives candid takes on branding vs. lead gen, why dealers overlook their best audiences, and how to market effectively even in a tough economy.

If you want a no-BS blueprint for running smarter marketing without wasting money — directly from someone who’s lived the role for nearly two decades — this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

We are on a mission to talk to the 100 leading marketing minds in the automotive space. I'm Andrew Street, owner of Dealer OMG. Matthew Davis here. Why are we doing this? Well, we like automotive.

We like marketers, and we like retail automotive marketers. Our goal here is to give you the insights into what these leading marketers are thinking, planning, and doing.

For this episode of a hundred marketers project. I sit down with CBS salsa who works with Mack hike for Georgetown, just north of Austin. And they sell more Fords than anybody in the city and more parts than anybody in all of Texas region for Ford and Lincoln parts. He's a stud he's best known for keeping his team focused, keeping the store calm and making sure that customers walk out the door, feeling respected by his team for people looking for a smooth operators, This is a good conversation for you. This is my conversation with Sevia Salsa and Ashley Kilbarger, the marketing director for DealerOMG. I'm Andrew Street. This is the Hundred Marketers Project with Sevia Salsa.

You've been more or less with Mack Hike for years and years now. and I'm sat in a few different chairs. Give us a little bit about the background in Otto and maybe like how your mindsets evolved over the years with your role. Well, maybe the easiest way to follow along is chronologically, right? So I'm probably, and this will date me, you know, probably thirty years into the sales industry. And of that, eighteen of them have been in the automotive space. Well, with Mack Hike, I started off as an Internet manager. All right. So that's the day to day crack the whip. Make sure you have a team of salespeople that are responding to leads, et cetera. And then slowly we morphed the dealership itself into a You know dealership Internet dealership to where every manager now should be able to do what an Internet manager used to do, which is you know assign leads check on that oh and i'm more more into strategy and more of the marketing chair. The unfortunate part is a lot of dealerships. don't have you know that kind of uh longevity in my chair so the person is you know some dealerships like oh that's the internet dude he knows how to fix cell phones you know and and other places you know it's like uh you know i i liken it to if i am now an architect right Whereas before, I used to be the guy that poured the concrete and built the frame and so forth. And so sometimes you'll have a discussion and someone, oh, I have a buddy that, you know, he's really good with Internet advertising, Internet stuff. And they'll come in and talk your ear off about social media campaigns or they'll come in and talk your ear off about reputation management. You're like, that's great, you know. That's one. And usually I just nod. I was like, oh, wow, that's that's that's really great. You know, glad to have you on board or glad to talk to you. I'll probably be picking your brain when it comes time for us to review that part of our strategy. You know, please close the door on your way out. So but that's so now I'm more interested in moving, you know. tens of thousands of eyeballs off of the general internet onto our site and our cars and getting that converted somehow into leads. I'm not necessarily, you know, making sure there's a good follow-up process. All of that goes without saying, but it's more, you know, set the strategy. I'm not the IT guy, but I also have to understand all of the different components. So when my boss gets hit by, you know, hit up by people that are pitching all kinds of products, I can tell them, you know, oh, that's just, a radio company trying to repackage themselves as an internet company. Those guys, it's the same three guys. They used to sell us TV commercials. Now they're trying to sell us streaming, OTT. But they're still wearing the same suit. They still have the same tie. I mean, I know these guys. So some of it just comes from experience, just being there a long time. I think I'm happy where I'm at because I am the internet sales and marketing director with the MacHike group. I am specifically assigned to the Ford and Lincoln store in Georgetown, Texas. However, I consult with our corporate office and I help out with some of our other stores when they need advice or training. But the reason why I kind of like that is there are some big groups out there with a thousand stores that when the decision is made on high that this is the reputation company that we're gonna go with, every store has to follow in line, right? Whereas Mack Hike, you know, we're a regional player, we have like a dozen, a couple dozen rooftops. So each store is still able to kind of go their own way. And then we get to talk, you know, hey, how much do you get charged for reputation management? Or has anyone used these guys? Oh, yeah, they're a bunch of goofballs, you know, go ahead and cancel, you don't want to use those guys. So there's that diversity amongst our stores. And I kind of like that. I trust somebody within my organization more than I would asking outside of my organization for advice on that kind of stuff. So anyway. Yeah, dude, it goes so far. Like it goes a lot longer to have somebody that you know that sits in your chair or like a really similar chair. within the organization who's getting some success or failures or getting overcharged or something's too good to be true that you can try out. But it sounds like from my observation, like you get a fair amount of autonomy to try out things that you feel like would be good for your store, provided your inventory, your staffing, your parts department, your service department. and still have like the greater network of the dealer group to be able to have as a sounding board. And with like the creative stuff, it seems like as far as like other people that are in your role with marketing, you don't seem as focused on just having this metric be volume of leads or EDP views, but something more holistic where I'm not like with other, you know, with platforms to say like, let's just keep people on this platform to engage with our dealership on social or on OTT and not as focused on you know some vanity metrics is that right to say absolutely um you know i think when it comes to measurables right there are some dealerships that the person's been in my chair and the chair that ashley was in uh for like a month, right? So he has to prove his worth to his boss. So that's the person that's sweating it over the metrics, right? The KPIs, the performance indicator, whatever you want to call it, right? Oh my gosh, how many leads am I getting? Are they worth it? Or I don't want to say poorly run dealership, but a dealership that doesn't have a big margin in terms of profits. So they have to watch every penny that they're spending in it. And when that guy misses and spends, you know, three thousand dollars or five thousand dollars on something that doesn't deliver, you know, it really sticks out like a sore thumb. So I like the word that Andrew uses. It's holistic. Right. If it if someone is healthy, it's a lot easier. to experiment, right? So Andrew, I want you to stop eating vegetables, right? And don't sleep more than three hours a night. so people might be like oh my gosh you know that's that's horrible andrew's gonna die not really because andrew is still exercising he still takes his vitamins he still does all of these things correctly you know that you know just trying out or changing a couple of things it doesn't mean he's gonna die well some dealerships they're on life support and so they're looking for a magic bullet and you know so they're staring at that thing if they're spending all this money on this one silver bullet Uh, and then when it works or does that, those are the people that are sweating it. I like to think like, you know, that saying no public, you know, is bad publicity, right? All publicity is good publicity, right? Same thing with us. Uh, everything is branding. Yeah. Even stuff that you don't think is branding my cars being on auto trader, that's brand. Well, really, but you don't have any banners, you know, floating around and you don't have any TV commercials right now. That's all right. My car is being on cars.com. That's branding. Right. An ad that's running around on social, that's branding, even if it's not intended to be. So I just make sure that, you know, I do some branding. I do some lead, you know, generating or a lot of lead generating on our own, off of our site. Then every now and then when we go crazy, we might buy some leads, but we really don't want to do that. We hate buying leads. Those are the worst converting things in the world. I don't care how great people say they are. So I'll step off my soapbox. no it's interesting uh because i considered that route before is just like trying to generate leads and nurture leads and sell the leads to dealers and seeing if i could have a better mousetrap than than some dealers could and so when you're buying leads is it just cold leads in the market that you're handing off to a sales team if or your bdc Well, that's the thing, right? I mean, if there was a place where you could buy good leads that convert and they, you know, they're, you know, well-rounded individuals that are going to buy from you and great. I mean, you know, I'd spend all my money. I cancel everything and just buy those leads. The problem is, you know, there are dozens of people trying to sell you leads, right? And even some might sell you good leads for a couple of months. And then it just starts getting more watered down because they still have to produce so they have to keep sending and eventually you know the well dries up and you start getting crap so. i'm glad you didn't go down that route like I said if you know it's kind of like I could be the world's greatest. Who are the guys who sell houses? A realtor, right? If you could just send me people that are qualified and want to buy a house, right? So if you show me where those people are, I'll be the world's greatest realtor. Well, duh. I mean, that's the secret sauce everyone's trying to figure out, right? So it's... if you buy leads you're to me personally you're you're in desperation mode no matter how the lead sellers are going to tell you you know you're doing a good job you just need a little incremental growth you know you just need a little spark and we're just going to sell you you know this little package so you can get another twenty car deals next month it's below me it's bogus don't you know you might as well take your money just throw it out your car window as you're driving down the freeway so anyway you will sell something i mean don't don't get me wrong if you buy a hundred leads i'm sure you'll you'll sell three or four cars out of it but you'd sell the same three or four cars by picking up the the phone and calling your current customers and asking them how they like their current vehicle and would they like to trade out of it you know i mean that's that's the same amount of time and it's free you know so what do you guys do with like the with your past customer list is there a type of marketing towards past customers that you've enjoyed or you found success with So you ever heard the saying that what's old is new again, right? So, I mean, everything just cycles in fashion, right? That bell bottoms were new and then they were old and now they're back in fashion. It's the same thing here. Email, right? Email campaigns, I hated them. I gave up on it after a while because they didn't work. You send out a thousand emails, five of them get opened, You know, the rest are spam blocked, et cetera, et cetera. And but dealerships love it because it's something you can measure. You know, how many did we send out? How many got open? How many clicked on it? How many of those people showed up and bought a car? All right. You know, we spent ten thousand dollars, sent out a million emails and we sold, you know, twelve cars. Great. Well, how do you know how many of those would have bought from you anyway? Right. Or how do you know if you spent that ten thousand somewhere else, you would have made more money. So I totally just stopped with the mass emails we used to send out two or three times a month. You know, happy Halloween. Here's ten thousand dollars offering. But there's the caveat. About five or six years ago, I saw that we were getting benefits that we could not track. How is it that I'm getting this much activity around my cars and yet people aren't, you know, the website's not showing these people on my cars. The cars.com auto trader, they're not showing that many people, you know, looking at that same vehicle and then, you know, bouncing over and eventually winding up on our car, you know, you cookie people and so forth. And this will be my one little grain for whoever's listening out there. It was residual benefits we got from our monthly email campaigns that goes out to our customers, right? And I don't care if you call it data mining, I don't care if you call it loyalty, retention, whatever you call it. People were sucking that thing up and reading it in unbelievable numbers. And then I thought to myself, well, I do the same thing, right? I don't read the mail or whatever, but if I get a once a month email from my bank, right, that tells me, here's your balance, here's everything you did if you want to look at it, Here's how much you owe on your mortgage. Oh, and by the way, if you want to loan twenty thousand dollars for Christmas, we're offering, you know, two percent finance with no payments till February. Oh, crap. You know, I might look into the same thing was happening here. People wouldn't read it. But if it says your monthly statement about your three year, you know, your let's just say a four to one fifty. People read it. Here's how much you owe. Your next payment is due on this day, blah, blah. And by the way, if you're interested in trading in, here are some offers. Well, those people were clicking on the cars, clicking on the offers, taking a look at the cars. But they weren't on our website, technically. So Google wasn't tracking it as visitors, as any of that. Yet I'm seeing this many people were clicking on the car or printing out photos. And so I realized that that's the kind of email campaign that I need to send. Ignore all the others. Just make sure that someone is sending out a monthly report to my current customer or previous customers, sales and service. And so that's the kind of email I'm into now. I could care less about the send it out to a million people and throw it at a wall and see what sticks. So anyway. I love that. I mean, that's like the best audience to be able to advertise to. It's getting back in front of customers. And these people, you don't need to introduce Mack Hike for Georgetown. They know who we are because they purchased from us in the past. And so now whether it's email or SMS or even like uploading those audiences into social, Like our philosophy has always been like, there's never a time where you should stop advertising to your past customers. Unless maybe they moved to Anchorage, now they can fall out of like the geo-targeting. But let's keep the cadence back in front of them. And even if it's not them that's gonna buy the vehicle, we're in their mind we're going through their feeds we're going into their inbox and maybe their family or their neighbors or somebody's looking to trade in a vehicle and they had a good experience with our dealership in the past and we're reminding them about it or reminding them to come back in and continue doing services with your vehicle so do you feel like that's been helping to to uh boost loyalty I think it does. So that's the branding that I'm talking about that also leads to lead generation, right? Versus seeing it as two separate entities. You know, I'm either going to make a commercial that says, hey, we're your warm and fuzzy hometown dealer. Come, you know, we like to give out turkeys on Thanksgiving. That's great. You know, or, you know, buy now to get ten thousand off. Click here and fill out this app. Right. A lot of people think there are two different things. But to your point, If you just keep up a cadence in front of the same audience, whether it's on social media, whether it's via email at home, they're checking there, eventually when they are in the mood to buy, right? Then they're going to notice it. You know, you never notice houses or cars until you're in the market for a house or car. And you're like, oh, crap. You see it everywhere. Right. If I want to buy if I want to buy a new pair of shoes, I'm not a shoe guy, but just I'm trying not to be sexist. So I'm trying to say a new purse. If I was a woman looking for a new purse, but all of a sudden you notice all the other ladies purses that they're wearing, you know, you're like, oh, crap. You know, you never you never notice it. That's the kind of, you know, double where you get the best of both worlds. I'm a firm believer in shoot for the stars. And if you miss, you're still hit the moon, you know, or you'll still get into the stratosphere. So, yes, it would be great if they bought a car after seeing this right now. But if not, at least I got my name in front of them one more time. It's the same reason why whenever someone walks in and says, Hey, I've got a site. It's called Fat Hairy Guys That Love Cars.com. It's got a bunch of cars. You want to put your car in? Sure. They're like, how much is it? Ninety-nine bucks a month. Oh, yeah. No brainer. How much is it? A thousand dollars a month. For the right price. Because to me, the more times your car is out there in the universe, the more lures you have in the water, the more chances you have of accidentally bumping into a buyer out there. So, you know, auto trader, are they good? Yeah. Cars.com. Yeah. So don't ever ask me for advice because I'll say yes to everything. You know, somebody says, Hey, should I be on car gurus? Absolutely. You should be on car gurus. Should I be on a Carfax? Yep. Absolutely. Now where I, you know, hang my hat and hopefully, you know, if my boss ever thinks about firing me one day, he'll watch this podcast. You'll realize, oh, I need to keep this guy around where my specialty is figuring out how much that is worth, right? It's a no brainer. You should be on autotradercars.com, used car, you know, but should you be ten thousand dollars deep a month or should you be two thousand dollars a month? You know, what's a good spending? So that's where I kind of come in, try to save the dealership some money and realize. So to me, the basic packages are no bearing, you know, the two thousand dollars a month, whatever. Now, if you want to start buying all of their little add ons, knock yourself out if you can afford it. But if you can't, just buy the basic packages so your cars are out there. That's your branding that's out. And then if you actually do some actual branding, like Andrew came and shot some video with our parts department and all our sales staff, that stuff like, you know, now they get to see, you know, good looking, well spoken, well dressed salespeople working Mack Hike, not just a bunch of hooligans, you know, and here's a cool video that's on there. So Again, it's it's they go hand in hand to me. Branding and sales, you know, lead generation should go hand in hand. Don't ever buy leads. It's crap. And I know I'll get assassinated in the parking lot for saying this from all the lead sellers out there. I'm sorry. My apologies. But yeah. Well, something you guys are doing is working really well. Cause it's here, it's November fifth while we're recording this, and I've talked with a lot of stores who've had some slow months. We're right on the heels of like the EV tax credit going away, some shakeups with inventory. What do you think it is? Say it in your own words, like is business going pretty well looking back at like October? I think business is going very well. It's, I hate to keep using the same analogy, but, you know, because we're doing so many things right, you know, that even if the, the stock market crashed for a week, we'd still sell cars. Even if Republicans and Democrats all died today and a libertarian took over as president, we'd still sell cars. Because we have, like you said, we're marketing to our previous customers. We have a loyal fan base. We also have a robust fleet department. So they're going to sell to commercial buyers even when retail buyers aren't buying, you know, we have a parts, it's, it's a conglomeration of all those things. So then if one piece falls off where, Hey, all the other stores are saying that their lead count is, is off this month. And I'll look at ours and I'll say, yeah, it's probably down by a third. Okay. You know, and then they're like, Oh, aren't you panicking? No, because you know, we're, we're, we're still on track to be, you know, within you know, ten or so percent of our goal. So to me, that variance is great. So long as, you know, it's not spiking up or down, it's just kind of waving right around there. That's good. So that's it's doing everything to do everything at least a little bit and then do a few things really well. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I think one thing that you guys do in a unique way is is have a vibrancy and a culture at the dealership and at the parts department where you've been there for years and have bounced around a little bit and come back and find a home and, you know, some purpose and meaning in the work you do, you find meaningful. And it seems like that, like walking around the parts department, Ashley, it's like three football fields, massive operation, and everybody I met that works in the parts department Loves their job. And then you see dogs running up and down the hallway. You're like, where am I? This like Narnia or what? There's dogs, there's people, they're smiling. You're like, what's going on here? Yeah, they looked really happy. I went through the film footage and they all genuinely looked really happy to be there. I need to get all those clips and just share them with you guys, just so you can hear what people are saying about their role. Cause I was just taking it to splice up for social ads, but it's like, and this, these people love what they do and they get twenty five thousand steps a day and they're all geared towards the same thing. And that's shipping forward OEM parts quickly and getting them out that day and getting them overnighted to places around. Well, also, to Andrew's point, I've never I assume people are happy to work at our dealership. I mean, they seem happy, but I don't I'm not everywhere. You know, we're spread out over twenty acres. You know, we've got the parts department down there and then we've got, you know, fourteen acres at the main location. So hearing it in person, you know, I was like, great. And then Andrew and I had them had. say like everything all at once because we're like hey we may not be back to film for another nine months so we had this poor lady in front of the camera and she had to say like hey you know, happy Halloween from the Mackay Pork Parts team. And everybody's like, yeah, woo. They're like, all right, now we need one for Thanksgiving. Hey, from our family to yours, this Thanksgiving, happy, you know, and then we did Christmas. I think we did Easter. And so the point I'm making, if whoever's watching this, you know, to the millions who are watching it live and to the billions who will watch it in perpetuity, you know, in reruns, you don't have to spend a lot of money. to highlight your dealership. The people are free, right? They're smiling, they're there. You sell beautiful vehicles, that's free. You store parts in huge warehouses that will blow a lot of people's minds if they saw it. You just have to be creative and put a lens in front of that. Don't think like you have to hire a professional TV crew. You know, we used to have it where you filmed a video. They would show up with the big old hunkering camera and they would put signs all over the dealership saying, be quiet, make everyone sign a disclaimer and all this. And they would charge like ten thousand dollars. And now I'm like, you know, so a lot of dealerships are turned off when someone says, hey, would you like to shoot some new video or would you like to shoot some footage? Well, now it's social media. It's turned all of that on its head where. Just go out there and film your dealership. Get your name out there. It's free. The person will smile and talk to you for free. So anyway. Yeah, in my experience too, it's not... you wouldn't doubt keep filming. Like you don't have to publish it. You don't have to run ads with it, but sometimes it's good and it comes out great. And if the audio is not good or what they say is not great, you can use that as B roll footage with music, just a smiling person at the dealership that looks friendly. And then instead of having the, you know, all the drone footage and the walk arounds and high end cameras, But shooting with your phone and shooting vertically where you can transition that into a lot of different types of ads for mobile works better. Like it gets better engagement and better quality traffic versus it really coming across an older dealership advertising mentality versus this one's much more personal. So I think you guys are doing a forward thinking job of adopting you know, those types of processes. And as good as Andrew and I are speaking, we can never ever, you know, speak our way into somebody believing that we are a twenty five year old bubbly sales person, you know, sales dude, sales gal out there, you know, filming it and then they see it. And I'm like, you know what? I do work with a lot of great people of all, you know, all ages, all sizes, all ethnicities. You know, all you have to do is hold a camera in front of them and someone out there is going to, uh, you know, zone in on that person and say that person, you know, I connect with that person for some reason, you know, uh, those are real people that sell cars and parts at Mack height. So anyway, So how do you guys do that? How do you, how do you guys like rally the team and. Like if you're doing a new marketing push, is there ever times where you need to like grab some of the staff and be like, Hey guys, here's something we're going to start pushing this month. And like, I know we've launched a lot of like bilingual or bilingual, just Spanish advertisements and things like that towards people who use social platforms in Spanish. Has that been pretty seamless for you guys to fulfill? I think it has to do with, and I know, I don't know if you guys are sports fans, but you know, a team will hire a coach and then they'll say stuff like, oh my gosh, you know, he's changed the culture. You know, she's changed the culture on our volleyball team. They, you know, everyone looks different. They're happy. And, um, it does have to do with the culture. So I think, unfortunately, this will not work for everyone listening to the podcast. If you have You know, if your dealership is like down in the dumps and needs a reset, like you need to fire half of the people and just start fresh. I mean, I'm sorry. I don't know how to help you. But if you have a dealership like I would say most of the dealerships out there where people love going to work, you know, yeah, they have their good days and bad days. But for the most part, you love your coworkers. You want to you want to help them out. You want to help out the dealership because you want it to make money. So you have a job. I think all you have to do is ask. Like Andrew said, we asked when we were going to do the Spanish language team, people that we would refer leads to if we had a Spanish speaker or phone calls, we just sent out an email. Hey, anybody out there speak a foreign language? We're specifically looking for Spanish speakers, but if you do speak another language in case we have a customer that mean my mind was blown you know people like i speak four languages you know we have people that speak korean ukrainian i mean at our dealership and i was like wow you know i really work with a diverse group and none of them had any problems i was like would you mind if we had someone that needed your help to try that matter of fact people were volunteering you know some people when it comes to shooting videos like andrew said if we said hey uh we're gonna push this it's a food drive ford really wants us to you know bring it home we need a couple and people are just like you know there are people out there who like to be on camera who like to and why not let them you know do both you know help the dealership and do what they love so they'll there are some that will volunteer to be in every video if you let them and they're well spoken and why not you know it seems like you do a lot from your desk to get a lot from the vendors that you guys are working with. And you have a good relationship, it seems like, with a handful of them. Do you have like a philosophy that's helped you really tap into and get the most out of the vendors that you guys are partnered with? Yes. I mean, like I said, do everything just a little bit, right? And then just do a few things really, really well. If someone says, do you have Spanish ads out there? Yeah, we have Spanish ads. Do you have ads for people that have bad credit? Yeah, we have. Do you guys do things to help with the community? Yes, we do things to help. Matter of fact, you know, here, go on our Facebook page. You'll see that, you know, we donated to this. We participated in the marathon leader. Oh, great. And so people are like, oh, so that's, you know, but CVA, what do you spend most of your time doing? And so that's where I would say, okay, the strategy that I need to concentrate, I need to make sure that there are enough people seeing our ads and our cars on social media, right? And then some people are like, oh, well, I'm good at social media. My cousin is a great influencer on social. You need to hire him, right? What do you guys do? And then some people will show us how cool the other dealership social media ads are. And I'm like, look, man, that's great. To me, that's just sizzle, right? I'm talking about the steak. I need ten thousand of the right people in my neighborhood, in my backyard to see while they're scrolling through. Right. An ad that says in the market for a good deal on a new Ford. Right. Mack Hike is your local dealer. And then underneath it. there's a bunch of carousel cars that show my inventory because that's the star of the show. That's all I need. And so people are like, well, I don't see that on your Facebook page. I was like, I know. Why would I put that on my Facebook? It doesn't show up on your Facebook page. It shows up on their Facebook page. And people are like, well, how do you know it works? I was like, that's the beauty. Ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, Google, and I know there's a Google guy out there who's probably going to join the guys who sell leads and killing me in the parking lot. But Google will take every penny you have. You want to spend a billion dollars, they will spend it for you. They have that kind of reach. And so Google used to tell us, fifteen years ago, give us your money. We're going to put it out on AdWords. We're going to put it in front of the right customers who are doing the right kind of searches. And so we would pay ten thousand dollars a month, whatever your Google ad budget is. And at the end of the month, they're like, yep, it worked. They're like, how do you know it worked? Well, look, this many people, you know, and you're like, well, how do I know those people bought? And they're like, oh, well, you know, that's more on you, not us. But, you know, and then I was like, how do I even know they're the right people? How do I you know, this is before a lot of the cookies and the following people around. And so you kind of had an empty feeling like. Man, did I just waste one hundred and twenty thousand dollars last year on fluff that, you know. So we had a dealership, one in our group. Actually, several of us were told by the CEO years and years ago to drop Google. And we're like, what? You're crazy. We're going to remember that. And you know what? Much of us did. Some were braver than others. Most of us just did it for like six months. Some went for like a year or two years. and didn't skip a beat. And that told us that a majority of the people that found us on Google were looking for us anyway. Yeah, there was some incremental growth in there, people that we wouldn't have reached, but we gave a hundred and twenty grand. I'm sure we could have found a way to reach that many people by some other way. So I'm not saying cancel your Google subscription or whatever. I'm just saying it's not the end all be all that people think. Well, with social media, though, And AI, it flipped everything on its head because now when Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or wherever it is that your advertisement says, we're putting it in front of the right people. And like Andrew said, at a cadence where we're repeating it, you know it works. why do you know because it happens to andrew and ashley and cv all the time you're talking to your loved ones about a vacation and next thing you know vacation ads pop up it pops up on your damn tv on the ott you're like who is listening to me is you know uh is it the uh gemini or whoever you know it's the little speaker in my house is it my phone you know is it apple with through my it's it's everyone so at least You can see then that at least your ads are being served up to the right people. I don't care if a priest or a judge or whoever says they're holier than thou. Facebook knows that you look at hot rods for, you know, twenty three hours a day or, you know, you're looking at people on vacation, you know, in their bikinis all day long, whatever it is. And so they're going to serve you hot rod ads and bikini or whatever ads, you know, to do that. Right. It's actually going to the right people. I'm not too concerned about. The leads and the lead count. So having someone fill out a lead form on Facebook or Instagram or somewhere, I mean, that's great. I'm more just send them to my website. Just be the hook that gets them started. My website is the mousetrap that has my name and has all of the buttons, the call to action buttons. And so once you get on my site, it's like home. And so I don't care. You know, you don't have to justify how many leads that you're the people you're sending to me are going to generate. You don't have to justify how many cars they're sold. If you could just show me that, you know, five thousand people visited my website after seeing an ad that Andrew Street and dealer OMG served up to them on social media. I know how much that is worth to my business. How much? Well, I'm not gonna tell you. Andrew's listening. He might double the rate that they charge me or something. I don't know. Yeah, you said, ten thousand dollars to come by and shoot videos? I'm undercharged dramatically. Only a hundred of that was the management. Ninety nine hundred was just buying Google ads, I'm sure. Totally. Well, man, I like the attitude you have. towards vendors and just towards the industry in general. And it seems like what you're doing right now is working. And in a tough market, you guys are still able to move a substantial volume, not even counting like the world class parts department that you guys are operating and shipping parts all over the place. I know you've got your hand in their marketing as well. I guess if you say anything, like, is there a way for people to connect with you or just follow you on social media or anything? Uh, I mean, I, you can friend me on, uh, on Facebook if you want, or you can friend me or just call the dealership and ask for, you know, uh, the, uh, the, What's a nice, not-too-insulting way to describe myself? The husky-built Polynesian gentleman from Hawaii, the Samoan guy that looks like Brad Pitt and The Rock had a baby. But the baby is kind of built like Danny DeVito. I don't know. but I hope I'll talk to anyone. I'll give anyone advice. I'm not one of those. I'll get you right past the gatekeeper. Yeah, exactly. Once you do that description, they're like, Oh, you know, yeah. Okay. Yeah. The Foxy Samoan. Yeah, man. Hey, I can't thank you enough for, for the continued work we're doing together and also for your willingness to hop on and talk with us. You're welcome. Anytime. So thanks for going easy on me. I thought you were going to ask stuff like, you know, If I were hiring a marketing director, how much should I pay them? Yeah, a lot. Double, because they're going to do more than just marketing, by the way. By the way, anyone out there who hires for other dealerships, in case I get fired, just give me a call for giving this interview. Always. Hit me up. All right, guys. Well, thanks for having me on.

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And if you know somebody or you're somebody that's a sharp marketer in automotive, please reach out to us. We'd love to feature you on the show. Reach out to Ashley at Dealer o m g dot com.