Strategic and Tactical Lessons for Digital Strategy
This session, originally presented by C-4 Analytics on the Digital Dealer platform, draws surprising parallels between competitive bobsled racing and successful digital strategy. COO of C-4 Analytics and former World Cup skeleton athlete, Jeff Johnson, shares the strategic and tactical lessons he learned on the ice and how they apply to the challenging, icy track of automotive digital marketing.
A successful digital roadmap is not just about technology; it's about clear goals, strong leadership, and an unwavering focus on performance-based outcomes.
1. The Value of Clear, Bottom-Line Goals
Like a high-performing bobsled team, every member of your digital team must understand the goals and how to achieve them.
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Establish Priorities: You cannot "boil the ocean." Break down your overall strategy into phases (e.g., 30-day and 90-day sprints) and prioritize actions that yield the highest value out of the gate.
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Fact-Finding and Vision: Your strategy must be built on facts and differentiators—not just free coffee in the waiting room. Drive a vision that considers all four modalities (informational, transactional, experiential, and social) across both the online and offline experience.
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Process Efficiency: In a 30-day marketing window, you can't lose time. Your process must ensure rapid execution, from updating specials (Week 1) to deploying creative (Week 2), and prepping for the next month (Week 4), all to avoid losing precious time on the track.
2. Data is Meaningless Without Actionable Insights
Bobsledding is a sport of gravity where the athlete's only job is to stop losing time after the initial push. Digital marketing is similar: your process must constantly look for ways to avoid losing time and money.
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Activity vs. Performance: Stop getting consumed by activity-based metrics (clicks, page views, time spent). While these are tactical, they are meaningless if they don't lead to productivity. Shift your focus to performance-based measures that tether directly to your sales, share, and profit margin.
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Walk the Track Backwards: Don't start mapping your process from the beginning (budget and channels). Start at the end: How many sales do we want? Work backward to determine the required close rate, show rate, appointment rate, and then finally, the necessary clicks and spend. This drives your media channel allocation, not the other way around.
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The Biggest Lever is Human: The largest area of inefficiency for most dealers is the human process between Leads and Appointments. Investing in better coaching and process efficiency in the BDC/sales teams can save significantly more money than cutting ad spend.
3. Observe and Adapt: The Contingency Plan
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Off-Season Work (Off-Ice Work): Every system, from your CRM to your website, must be utilized to its fullest potential. Rather than changing a system that is "good enough" (the sled you threw 20 feet), fix the process and use the existing tool to the best of its ability.
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The Opportunity Fund: Allocate a portion of your media budget to a contingency fund (an "opportunity fund"). This provides the flexibility to strategically capitalize on unexpected market trends or competitor moves as the month unfolds, rather than being restricted by an iron-clad budget.
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Observe the Competition: Constantly watch the competition to understand their pricing and presence. Use this observation to differentiate yourself and play to your strengths, ensuring you are doing what is necessary to gain every possible fraction of a second (or sales) advantage.
Watch the Full Webinar
For a deeper dive into these topics and to hear directly from Rob Stoesser, Vice President of OEM, C-4 Analytics, and Jeff Johnson, COO of C-4 Analytics, watch the full webinar below.