Caroline Murray on creating engaging ads for car dealerships

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Caroline Murray is a Performance Manager at Dealer OMG, an online marketing agency with a focus on advertising for car dealerships. Caroline works with car dealerships around the country to create hyperlocal ads on Facebook and Instagram. Brian Bosche talks to Caroline about working in an industry that's being forced to innovate, how to create engaging ads on social media, the best ways to report performance metrics to clients, and what marketers in other industries can learn from local car dealerships.

Full Transcript:

Brian Bosche:
Hey everyone, welcome back to creativeBTS. This is your host, Brian Bosche and today I am so excited to bring on Caroline Murray, who is a Performance Manager at Dealer OMG. Welcome on Caroline.

Caroline Murray:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited

Brian Bosche:
And be easy on her audience. This is her first podcast. Right Caroline?

Caroline Murray:
That's right. That's right. I'm ready though. I'm ready to go?

Brian Bosche:
You're going to do amazing. This is super easy.

Caroline Murray:
Thank you.

Brian Bosche:
So if you just want to give, to start off with the podcast, just a little bit about your background and experience in this place, because I don't think a lot of people see people going into car dealership auto marketing. I come from Detroit. I moved to Seattle from Detroit, so there's a lot of automotive marketing there. But we'd love to just hear a little bit about your experience and background.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, so my whole family has worked in advertising. It's been an influence my whole life. My grandfather, Robert Moke was actually one of the original illustrators for the Doublemint twins.

Brian Bosche:
Wow and family.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, he was a madman. He was a madman. He worked on Madison Avenue. He was a big influence in my life. And my mother as well has her own greeting card company. She's won 23 LOUIE Awards, those creative awards. So it's been in my life forever. Growing up mom would be like, "What's a good joke for Valentine's Day?" And stuff when I was a kid. So I ended up going on and I studied advertising. I got a degree in advertising from Texas State University. And then while I was there, I was like, "I got to get an internship." So I started working at American Heart Association doing just organic posting, organic content, just general stuff. And I fell in love with social media. I was like, "Hey, I guess I'm pretty good at this. I'm going to keep doing this."

Caroline Murray:
So I went full-time after college. I ended up actually working in home improvement, which is really random. I was doing marketing for Home Depot and stuff. And I was working in house at one place doing their organic. I just kind of got bored after a while and my best friend, Lia Camp who works at Dealer OMG now actually told me when I was complaining to her about being bored. She was like, "Hey we're hiring." And I was like, "Oh really?" She would always tell me like about what she was doing and her fun car dealership clients, all the creative and I was like, "Man, that sounds really fun. I'd love to work there." So I just applied and I ended up working the job and the rest is history. I started in January of this year, right before the pandemic. So that was really interesting. But I started and I've loved it ever since. I'll be here for a while and I've learned so much. Yeah, that's how I got into... Honestly, my friend just hyped it up for me and I was like, yeah, I want to do that. Let's do it.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. So what does performance manager mean? What's your role specifically?

Caroline Murray:
We're kind of a Jack of all trades. We do the creative and we do the analytics. So we work primarily in Facebook and Instagram and we make what we like to call thumb-stopping content. We make fun creative videos of cars and stuff. And it's all social media. So we'll make those campaigns and we'll analyze it throughout the month and we also are the ones who will report to the clients at the end of the month and tell them and show them how things are going, what we can do to improve. So we're constantly analyzing, optimizing and going from there every single month. We do it month to month. So yeah, we kind of do everything, but its a lot about it.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. And so your role is... all right, what sort of analytics can we pull for our clients? How can we keep them up to date on how they're performing? So that's your side of the business.?

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. And I'm also creating things too. So it's fun and it's almost easier to be involved in the whole process too. So I'm fully aware of what's going on month by month. We're working in Facebook and Instagram, which I'll talk about later. Like Facebook has so much power with their technology and their analytics. You can get into getting creative, not just with like graphics and stuff, but creativity with targeting people and utilizing customer lists and things like that.

Brian Bosche:
So Dealer OMG, Online Marketing Group, but I love the OMG as the call out. It's very, very fun.

Caroline Murray:
It's fun. We love it too.

Brian Bosche:
Talk to us a little bit about how big the agency is how many people, what type of customer or client you focus on specifically? Just give us a general sense.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. So we're a small fish. We've been in business for about eight years and my performance management team, there's about six of us. We're actually all female too. It's an all women team. It's really awesome, really empowering, great team to work with. But yeah, we do a lot of creative day-to-day stuff. Since we're so small, we do everything.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, and is it for car dealerships? Is it dealerships or what's the actual like client focus?

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. Our client focus is car dealerships. We have a few random other ones from friends and stuff, but we focus on car dealerships and we work with, like every type of dealership. Do you buy here? Pay here is franchises. And even I personally, I work with some higher end luxury like Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Aston Martin. And those are a really interesting client-base too, because they're so different from regular franchises, like Ford or GMC and stuff like that.

Brian Bosche:
So you're working with those auto brands themselves or the local dealerships. I have very little background on how these dealerships work.

Caroline Murray:
Yes. We work with the local dealerships. We've got dealerships all across the nation, but we work with the dealerships themselves and then the bigger brands will send us like manufacturer videos and incentives and we can then have the power to tweak those and give it a little Dealer OMG flare. Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
So the dealerships work in partnership with the different automotive brands, but they're not directly your clients.

Caroline Murray:
No. Yeah. So I'll work with like, Mac Haik Ford, Lincoln, Georgetown, is one. And we have Mac Haik Ford Jackson up the Mississippi, and we've got buy here, pay here It's like Paradise Motors up in Lansing, Michigan. We've got all kinds of random places all over and we do a lot of research and we are variable versed in how to work with each type of store because each store is very different and each consumer is so different. Someone buying a Ford is so much different than someone in market for an Aston Martin. So we've got to do a lot of research and be well-versed in those consumers and their demographics and all that.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. It's hyperlocal too so there's so many different audiences you have to manage. We can dive into that because that must be incredibly hard rather than just more blanket campaigns. I'm curious on how much creative leeway do a lot of these dealerships have for their own marketing. Is there other guidelines that the automotive brands put on them or can they just go for it with you?

Caroline Murray:
A lot of them just go for it. It depends. The fun part about dealerships, like they'll give you the incentives that you have to use like doing 0% APR for 72 months. That's something that the big manufacturer comes up with. But the dealerships themselves, they get super crazy with their promotions and that's what I love the most about the dealership industry is that the power of the promotion and the sales event is that something we can do that a lot of other industries I've worked in can't just do. When there's a sales event happening, you can get so creative. Like my favorite local celebrity that we work with Scott Elder, he does this campaign, it's called the Nickel Pickle Sale where basically he dresses in a big pickle suit and he's like, "Oh, I'm in a pickle. I got to get rid of all these cars."

Caroline Murray:
And then the nickel part is you pay five cents for a down payment. And that was inspired by coronavirus and payment troubles and stuff too, which has been interesting since I started during the corona times. I haven't really seen an average year in the auto industry. This year has been very competitive about coming up with the best promotions and the best prices for people struggling right now. And it's been really fun though. The creativity is just like, the sky's the limit. People have come up with some crazy stuff.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. So a pickle for a nickel. A nickel for a pickle is that...

Caroline Murray:
Nickel for a pickle. The nickel stands for sale.

Brian Bosche:
Nickel for a pickle. This is an industry that not a lot of people think of when they go into advertising or marketing. That is a hilarious example of working with a local celebrity.

Caroline Murray:
It is.

Brian Bosche:
But what are some of the other things that you've noticed in this industry that are really exciting or people may not think about with these local car dealerships?

Caroline Murray:
Well, first of all, a lot of automotive used to be on TV. When you're watching TV, you see car commercials all the time.

Brian Bosche:
Oh, yeah. Still do in a lot of business.

Caroline Murray:
And you still do, but on social media we found a new way to break through that generic car driving through the dirt was some stuff on the screen. We take those manufactured videos and crop it like our bread and butter, that full screen video. The four to five ratio with a vertical thing that takes up the whole screen is more like an immersive experience. We focus on trying to make cool videos like that. We'll make it our own, zoom it in, put some cool music and some fun copy. It makes it just a lot more thumb stopping like I said earlier when you're scrolling through and you see that take up the whole screen. It's a pretty car people will stop and look at it and that's what we focus on. It's our specialty.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. It's just like with all of these different dealerships and all of these different regions and cities across the country. And is it just the United States typically?

Caroline Murray:
We're just in the US, yes.

Brian Bosche:
Just in the US. So it's all like a Lansing, Michigan car dealership is going to be a lot different than one in Southern California.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly.

Brian Bosche:
Having lived in both of those areas, there's very, very unique needs, especially depending on the dealership. So what is it like trying to build out strategy for all of these diverse types of dealerships in these different cities?

Caroline Murray:
At first it was difficult, but now that I've worked in it for a few months now, you get to know each industry and we have strategies for each type of dealership. We have a lot of third-party data targeting that is also our bread and butter. Like we have access to things like DMV records. We can target people down to being in the market for a used car versus a new car, or like a new Ford Fusion. We can get down to the make and model. We can get down to super specific things and that's a really special part of our targeting along with our creative that makes for just a great campaign. So I would pay a big tribute to our Polk Auto. It's called Polk Automotive, just our third-party data.

Brian Bosche:
So you get actually to hyper target based on their needs. So at least you have that as a basis structure and template.

Caroline Murray:
Yes. It's super relevant, everything that we're doing. So we at least know that, and Facebook has so much power with targeting. Like I said, we can get creative in different ways. Like with creating new audiences with customer lists. You can scan a customer list in Facebook. It'll scan up to 2,000 different demographics and psychographics, and it'll create a lookalike audience of profiles with those similar interests and those lookalike audience, they generate sales and they work, and they're awesome. And you can get creative and generate lookalikes of people who viewed your marketplace listings. Lookalikes of people who looked at your Facebook page. Part of our day is thinking about how can we use these things to target different people and get creative like that.

Caroline Murray:
You can target people who looked at 75% of your video, because it's rare for people to look at more than like three seconds of a video in social media people have short attention spans. So we've got to get creative with that too. Catching people's attention in that short amount of time that they're just scrolling.

Brian Bosche:
Do you have to do really targeted, you'd mentioned the local celebrity. I just went to my hometown in Bozeman, Montana and there was the dealership, the owner and his son and his grandson were all in the commercial together, like on the golf course. So how specific does it need to be for each of those areas? Like do your videos need to be set in those different locations? Do they have to have people there?

Caroline Murray:
It doesn't matter as much. I do think it has a better personal touch if you're in that area, because we don't usually target too far around.

Brian Bosche:
The nickel for a pickle.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly. We don't target too far around. There are people who will drive quite a few miles if there is a particularly good deal on my car, but with Facebook, you can do location radius up to like 50 miles, like 25 to 30 miles is probably as far as I would go. I don't know how far I drive for a car, but stuff like that with the videos too. I think it's fun to have a personal touch in general. That's what I love about social media and the videos that we make versus like Carvana and stuff. Just like, "Come pick up your car." We have that personal touch like, "Nickel for a pickle, come visit me. I'm fun and hilarious." It gets your attention in a different way, I think. It makes people laugh and it's fun.

Brian Bosche:
So you brought up all of these different competitors, like Carvana and there's so much innovation in the car space. Zipcar, even anti-purchasing where you just rent or it's an easier ways to do that. So what are some of the challenges that you see in this industry overall, not just for marketing, but for this industry specifically?

Caroline Murray:
There's definitely a big competition with Carvana and Vroom and those places that promise the not having to go to a dealership and spend five hours sitting there. But ever since coronavirus started, there has been a huge shift in automotive that I've noticed. Ever since March hit, every dealership everywhere has been offering, "We'll deliver to your house. We don't care where you are. We'll bring it right to you. Complimentary delivery. It's all free. We will do that." Everybody's jumped on it now. So we're doing pretty much everything Carvana does and I think we have an advantage because we can offer that and be more fun to personal [crosstalk 00:13:58] advertising.

Brian Bosche:
I mean, you get a pickle.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, we get a pickle.

Brian Bosche:
Those local celebs, the local owners can combine with that.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly. Nothing beats that personal touch, in my opinion. It's just so funny and it makes you smile. Some people get annoyed. It's Facebook, there'll always be those people who are like, "Get this off my feed." But in general...

Brian Bosche:
It's unavoidable.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, exactly. In general though.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. It's amazing to hear that COVID forced a lot more innovation in auto industry.

Caroline Murray:
It did. It caused quite a shift too. When it first started, we were worried for a while that the car industry might plummet. Who's going to buy a car right now with all this stuff going on. But we got creative with it, doing all these 0% deals. You don't have to pay a dime for months and all this stuff and we combat it with some great creative of some cars. We tried to stray away from that cheesy like, "We're here for you as a brand." Because that got old really fast.

Brian Bosche:
So fast.

Caroline Murray:
I noticed overnight, all these brands started doing these, "We're here for you."

Brian Bosche:
In these trying times.

Caroline Murray:
In these uncertain times.

Brian Bosche:
Buy a car.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly. No one wants to hear that. We just like shied away from saying that at all and just for like, "You know what? 0% for 84 months. You don't have to pay this for a while. If you need a new car, don't worry about it and we'll deliver it right to your door." All that stuff. But it caused an interesting new problem because it actually worked really well. I had a few dealers who had better record months, like year over year, this month than they did last year during COVID times, which is really fascinating. And not everybody. Like some people did really struggle, but a lot thrived. And then it caused a problem with inventory shortage because a lot of factories have shut down in the past few months, and I have a lot of dealers even still it's about to be November and we still have a shortage of inventory. So now we're trying to figure out how to combat that.

Caroline Murray:
We've done a lot more like trade-in type videos. Trade-ins have always been available at dealerships, but we're pushing them a lot more now and trying to get creative with that with some cool videos being like, "Do you own a Toyota?" And putting some graphs like, "Due to a national shortage, your car has never been worth more." Which is true. It's true because they need stuff on their lot and they're going to do anything to get it. And that's what I love about car dealerships too. My clients are like super hungry to sell. They're ready to do anything to get it going. I was going to say my favorite thing that I worked on in COVID this year was my client over in Houston at this place called Fred Haas Toyota. They're like a huge Toyota dealer. My client had this idea to do this promo called Rodeo tickets for rides. So here, the Houston Rodeo is like a huge thing that happens.

Brian Bosche:
Oh yeah. My in-laws live in Houston. It's huge.

Caroline Murray:
It got canceled, of course, when COVID started. And my client had this idea, he was like, "What if we use Rodeo tickets for a down payment?" And I was like, "Okay, I'm listening." So we made this promotion thing that said, "Rodeo tickets for rides." And I made this design of a cowboy riding and I wrote like, "Save a horse, ride a Toyota," as the headline and it got a lot...

Brian Bosche:
That's amazing.

Caroline Murray:
It was funny. I was proud. It was a fun moment.

Brian Bosche:
All those years of your family just drilling ad slogans, like finally cropping up to be used.

Caroline Murray:
I was like, "This is my moment." Yeah. So we made that ad and it got a lot of attention. A lot of people commenting like, "What's my ticket worth. Can I use my ticket for this?" Blah, blah, blah. Got ton of comments, lots of feedback and of course we got the trolls like, "Oh, well, it's COVID times. How dare you?" That always happens no matter what, but overall really positive experience. And that was one of my favorite things I worked on. And a great example of a way to see a negative thing happening and just do a positive spin and make a fun promotion out of it.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Caroline Murray:
And the freedom that we have like I said, the bigger brands will give us the incentives, but the dealerships, my clients themselves have the power to come up with these promotions and we work together a lot to come up with stuff like this. And that's my favorite part of the job is coming up with the Rodeo tickets for rides or a nickel for a pickle. It's so fun to be able to have that freedom. And the other industries I've worked in, we just can't do that as much. So that's why I think what makes car dealerships so special is the power of the promotion.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Well, you have scale and everyone can act individually.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly.

Brian Bosche:
That's what my question is around. Do they have to get approval from Ford because then it would be like, "Oh, we can never do nickel for a pickle." But when you have that freedom, yeah, you can do those. But this is a really fascinating partnership where it's an old school industry, been around for a long time. There are these tech competitors coming up, all these competitors, trying to pitch new ways for people to get cars that are easier and a pandemic strikes. So old school car dealership industry has to innovate, add new services. And it's almost like your going to market with these car dealerships in a partnership. And that interaction, I imagine you're working with a lot of different car dealerships.

Brian Bosche:
So you're learning from them, you can give advice to the actual car dealerships. That's good context. Let's walk through this. How would you work with a car dealership that came to you early in COVID or how did you, and they say, "Okay, we're we need to come with some deals." How much are they bringing you into the actual business decisions versus just saying, "Hey, we need you to do this ad for us."

Caroline Murray:
It depends. A lot of them put a lot of trust in us to understand and to know because social media is such a new forefront for a lot of them too. Most dealerships have been putting all their money into TV and radio for years. And there's been a big shift lately of them starting to spend more in social. I do, do a lot of consulting with my dealers and telling them what I think is right, because it is totally different what you do on social versus TV. And another part of our creative is like, usually it's a big no no when people send me like a TV spot and ask me to put it on Facebook. Because the content is different, it's not the same so whatever they want me to do, I'll take it and put my own spin on it. We've got our targeting and we know what to do. I'll make them something special with that Dealer OMG flare, like I said. Put that vertical experience in there and make it our own. I do a lot of consulting and I love that my clients can put that trust in me too. I have a good relationship with a lot of my clients and we work together really well. It's a lot of fun.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. How do you build that trust? Because that's one of the biggest... I used to run a creative agency and the disagreement upfront where they don't trust you, they're not relying on your expertise. Do you have any tips for the audience of your dealers trusting you and how do you establish that trust and get them to buy into what you're pitching?

Caroline Murray:
Yes. I will say that some people from the get-go will just not trust you. I've had that experience there. Some people who just you can tell from the beginning are weary and they either trust you or they don't. And sometimes they fall off. It's just a matter of getting them in the onboarding, showing them what we can do. Every month we have the opportunity to report to them and tell a story. Like our reports, we really focus on telling a good story of what happened that month. So I think that's a good way that we establish trust with our dealerships. We have a lot of other great technology like Sales Matchback Reports with our customer lists. In Facebook, you can upload customer sold list from the past month. We can take those and run them in Facebook and it'll run it against our campaigns up to the audience level and you can see where purchases happened.

Caroline Murray:
So you can see like, in market new trucks got two purchases and then in the market this got zero. So from there we look and we can optimize and say, "Maybe this audience can go. Maybe this audience needs a boost because it's working." Like we're very analytical. We're always analyzing and optimizing based on those things. We really rely on the reporting part of that to help tell our story and build trust with our customers.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Caroline Murray:
And it's a big part of it and we set up their Google tag manager and their Google Analytics. We implement their basic pixel. Like I said, our performance managers really are a Jack of all trades. We make the creative, but you also have to know how to work in all the Google platforms, how to set up a tag manager, how analytics works and how to tell a story in there too, and show a cohort analysis is another thing we do where you can show like the percentage of web traffic likely to come back after a few months and ours is always the best. It's like, we'll show that. We show stuff like that.

Brian Bosche:
You have to prove it.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. You got to prove it. You got to prove it, definitely. So you got to know how to use those analytics tools to your advantage and optimize based on those. We're constantly optimizing every single month, always looking to see how we can be better. And things are always changing too in this industry. We're always finding new tools, we're always finding new ways to do things. So it keeps you on your toes.

Brian Bosche:
Definitely. And so they come to you, obviously you're experts in ads for auto dealerships. So they're like, "Okay, we trust this team." And you continue to prove it by showing the analytics which is so important, obviously. How have you presented that to them? Because I've seen so many different ways that agencies and creative marketing teams have pitched to their executives or stakeholders. Is it a presentation? Do you do an interactive video? How do you actually deliver those results to the client?

Caroline Murray:
So month by month, we use things like Proposify and stuff and ReportGarden. ReportGarden well put together a really beautiful report. It's got all the colors-

Brian Bosche:
ReportGarden?

Caroline Murray:
... ReportGarden. Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
Oh, cool.

Caroline Murray:
That's a good platform we use. You can automatically schedule things and my reports go straight to my email every month on the first. And it puts together, it has a really pretty layout. It's got like Facebook and Instagram report with like some pretty colors and then it's got a good layout. So it's got a pretty visual too and it's got the simple analytics of like your click through rate, your impressions, your VDP views. It's just the vehicle display page, which is what we care about driving traffic to the vehicle display pages. So we show all of those important KPIs in those reports and we can customize it based the client and their needs.

Caroline Murray:
So we'll send those every month. But also what we started doing is a quarterly business review with our clients. So every quarter we reach out to our clients and say, "Hey, let's sit down and talk about how this past quarter went and how we can realign our goals with what you want." And it's a great way to remind them like, "Hey, we're here." Because a lot of dealerships work with many other people besides us. They work with people at CarGurus and they work with people on Google because we don't do Google. I work in Google personally sometimes, but we focus on Facebook and Instagram.

Caroline Murray:
So we have to sometimes give them a poke and be like, "Hey, we're here. Here's what we're doing for you." But the quarterly business reviews are a great way for any business with clients to just sit down and remind them that, "Hey, we're doing this for you and it looks awesome." And then we can talk about where to go from here and the next three months and do our goals align with your goals. And we have a good talk and we did some recently and it went really well and we're going to try to implement those regularly.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. That's great to see. Just the consistent reporting back so that they always have that trust. Even if they might not look at it that week, they know they're coming in and they know you're doing your job and not hiding. And then having the in-person to really reset. That's great. And ReportGarden looks great. I just pulled it up. I haven't heard of the ReportGarden before.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. It's a great tool we use. You can customize some beautiful reports. You can customize any KPI you want in there and you can schedule everything to show up right when you want it in your email. It's super handy. And yeah, it is a great way to show not just dealers, but a lot of clients just care about numbers. They care about the bottom line. You want to show them, they're like, "Great. That ad looks pretty but what did it generate?" So you have to have something to show for it every time.

Brian Bosche:
Definitely. So let's get into the nitty gritty a little bit. How many ads do you have going at any one time?

Caroline Murray:
A lot.

Brian Bosche:
Is it hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands? Give a scale.

Caroline Murray:
Probably hundreds. Personally, I run about 20 accounts. Each of the performance managers run anywhere from like 15 to 20 accounts. And within those, it depends on what type of dealership you have. We try to calculate who has what accounts based on like how much time we think it'll take because a franchise dealer like Ford will take a lot more time than like a buy here, pay here, like Paradise Motors in Lansing, Michigan. Like I told you.

Brian Bosche:
Okay. Yeah. Paradise Motors, go Lansing. Actually, this is a Michigan household. Not MSU so sorry, Lansing.

Caroline Murray:
Oh, really? I love it. I was actually born in Grand Rapids, but I only lived there for like two years. So I just say I'm from Austin, but I do love Michigan. I have a space for it in my heart. But yeah, it just depends on what kind of store we're working with. And I have some franchise stores who have like 10 different campaigns. We prospect, we conquest people like some of with Toyota. Sometimes they want to target people who are in market for a Nissan or a Honda. So we've got a special campaign for that.

Caroline Murray:
We also do service campaigns. Not every dealership wants to do that, but we'll target for service offers like, "Hey, buy three tires, get one for free." With like some fun creative. It's all dependent on what the dealer wants and we'll do it all. I have accounts that have 20 campaigns. I have accounts that have two campaigns and it really varies, but all in all there's a lot to manage and it's really important to have good time management in this job.

Brian Bosche:
Absolutely. That's a ton of ads.

Caroline Murray:
It is a lot.

Brian Bosche:
How do you produce the creative for them? Do you work with freelancers, contractors, who actually produces this?

Caroline Murray:
We do it all ourselves actually.

Brian Bosche:
Wow. Okay.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. Like I said, we are really a Jack of all trades. We are analyzers, we're graphic designers. We're all those things. We're copywriters. We do it all. And that's what's awesome. It's fun working with a small team. We show each other and some would be like, "Is this cool? Do you like this?" It's a really collaborative, open environment and it's really fun. And my boss is awesome and he gives us all these tools. He gives us Adobe account. So I've got Adobe Premier and all these great editing softwares.

Caroline Murray:
So typically I like to take the OEM, the manufacturer videos and I'll download them and zoom them in and edit and crop them into that full screen thing. And I'll add my own flare like put some music, put some writing over it, like performance mince or something fun like that that's just different and doesn't look like a spammy TV spot with the 0% all over the big screen.

Brian Bosche:
So you're a Jack of all trades. You're just doing everything across the team, which is amazing to see.

Caroline Murray:
We do.

Brian Bosche:
How do you manage all that work? So you can feel free to get very in the weeds here because I've spent the last seven years at Slope and now Smartsheet building work management software. So how do you coordinate who's doing what at what time? How do you keep everything together?

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. So we've got a client budget sheet. Everybody is assigned to each of their own clients. So we work primarily independently. We're assigned our own accounts to work on, but if we're having trouble with something, we can message each other and be like, "Hey, does this look weird to you?" To offer some advice, but usually we work on our own. So I've got my own list of accounts. I have a little notebook where I just write everything down. I write each account and do a little checklist.

Brian Bosche:
It's individual management, which is a little easier than coordinating across creative team.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. It'd be a little chaotic to manage all together. We're always there for each other if we want advice, but I like working on my own and we have our own focus and we have our own relationships with our clients, which just a lot less chaotic too. We are the one person that our client talks to. So it's a great way to develop a relationship too. Like the one-on-one time that I get with my clients every month is really fun to talk to them about what we want to do next month. And it's a good way to relationship build too. Just having our things assigned to us.

Brian Bosche:
Definitely. What is the review process like? Like do each disease dealership have to approve the ads that you put out? Can you operate independently? How do you manage that?

Caroline Murray:
Yes. So it is a chaotic, like our job works in like weeks. The first week, we're reporting. Second week, we're optimizing. Making sure ads are good. Third week's kind of chill, and then fourth week we're duplicating, getting ready for the next month. So when we're duplicating and getting ready for the next month, like what I'm doing today, because today's the 28th and our ads start on the first of every month. We send out a sample links to every client every month.

Caroline Murray:
That's that's definitely a tedious part of it and requires serious time management. I've definitely found myself on some days working until eight o'clock like, "Oh God, got to get these ads samples out." It happens to everybody every time because also with car dealerships, incentives and promotions tend to come out really late. They'll come out even after the month has started. So you find yourself going back and doing it over again anyways. But typically, we try to send all of our samples out around this time and then the respondents approves and we just have it set to run on the first.

Brian Bosche:
How do you send it out for review? Is it just email or is it...? How do you [crosstalk 00:30:53]

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, we email. Honestly, I think there should be a more futuristic way by now. We've been looking, but I type out. I have free type samples where everybody they'll say like, "Prospecting campaign." And then I'll name it by the ads and each audience will have a link to the ads. They'll be like, "In market trucks." And that'll link to that ad for that. And market SUV is linked to that ad. And you can spend pretty much a whole day just going link, link, link.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, it's repetitive.

Caroline Murray:
If you waste your time sufficiently, you can end up doing that a whole day in a rush. So yeah, time management is huge part of it. I learned that.

Brian Bosche:
There is new software, it's called Proofing software. It's what I build every day.

Caroline Murray:
Really? Oh, my God.

Brian Bosche:
You can upload graphics, video, send it out for review and approval. They can mark it up with time codes and markups. We'll chat after. I don't like to plug Smartsheet Proofing too much but it's the [crosstalk 00:31:44] they've build.

Caroline Murray:
Ooh, well, that's definitely interesting. That's actually so interesting. I would love to hear more about that because they're always like, "Oh, there has to be a better way to do this."

Brian Bosche:
Well, when we started out as an agency, we did mostly video work and we talked about before the show, we worked with a tax accountant who's like, "All right, I need to rank number one across each of these different..." whatever they were. It was like 75 different videos trying to go to each little part of legislation that he wanted to show up for. And you're right. We just had to link to every single video that we'd put on. Like someone listed YouTube link or Vimeo link, and then just... It was probably like 250 email threads of feedback on these videos. And we're like, "This is impossible."

Brian Bosche:
That's why we started building Proofing software to help with that and there's others out there, but yeah, it's good to know. It's so hard to manage that type of review at scale. Especially when I imagine a lot of people at car dealerships don't really check their email that often, right?

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, that's definitely [crosstalk 00:32:38].

Brian Bosche:
Like not just online all the time.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, a lot of my job is like some of my clients are texters versus emailers. You get to know them that way too. But I spend a lot of time chasing after people too. Being like, "Hey, did you see my thing?" It happens. That's just a part of working with clients, I think too. It happens but I like it.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. So let's dive into the Facebook, Instagram world a little bit, because that's your bread and butter. What trends have you seen over the last six months or so or through the pandemic that are interesting, best practices you've seen. Any insights you can give the audience because you do this at scale with a lot of different audiences. What best practices can you share with the audience?

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. Our best practices, like I said, we do a lot of video content. I know some people have mixed emotions about doing videos and their effectiveness, but for car dealerships, I think it's important to have something fun, moving and thumb stopping rather than just like a static image. Our collection ads are our favorite thing in the world. A collection ad is where you put a video on the top and you can link products underneath. And we have these data feeds where we can implement links and we can link the car dealership inventory straight from the website right underneath.

Caroline Murray:
So when you're looking at a video, you can go and click and it'll go straight to that BDP automatically on that website and link. And that kind of technology is really helpful in our best practice. We call it dynamic inventory ads and we'll link that with our videos. We just are trying to get really creative in these times. Like I said, our best practices have been coming up with really good incentives that aren't just so generic like 0% for the rest of your life. These things can get repetitive, but...

Brian Bosche:
What's performed the best then? Have you had any standouts where you're like, "Wow, this worked and we didn't realize it would work like this."

Caroline Murray:
Yeah. Honestly, Rodeo tickets for rides and those crazy promos have worked really well. Like getting creative. And recently we had Trucktober for Halloween. No tricks, just treats. Spooky low prices. It's like super cheesy, but that's the industry. It just kind of makes you laugh and that's the kind of stuff I've been doing. A lot of it is holiday based like month by month or we're always doing something different.

Brian Bosche:
So it's the cheeky, it's the goofy, it's the cheesy and that's on brand.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly. We have fun. It's cheesy. Some people may like Scoff at it, but I think a majority of people laugh at it and enjoy to see it. We get a lot of good feedback and laughs on our ads and most of it, it's just having fun and thinking of a fun promotion and some fun creative and some fun copy that's not just so generic, like shop new cars now. We try to write something fun.

Brian Bosche:
You see those all the time.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly. Like an Aston Martin, I've got this cool video that has a wolf fighting. It's like a rare breed. Statement of independence on the road. You try to write something that's not like, "Shop Aston Martins now." That's boring. We'll try to write some spicy copy. We'll spend quite a bit of time trying to differentiate ourselves with our writing and our videos. And it definitely stops people.

Brian Bosche:
That's a good lesson. You don't have to overthink it a lot. If it's a car dealership and you know what your brand is and your brand is, "All right, let's do something seasonal that's a little goofy and tries to stand out. You're right. Just the endless cars driving through mud and slow motion [crosstalk 00:36:12].

Caroline Murray:
Right. We're all tired of it. I'm tired of it. We all are. It's just like too much. Yeah, it's just the power of the promotions. Another funny one I thought of just now is Scott Elder. He did one called Scotty Mongo where he was dressed in a Pikachu suit like Pokémon GO. He was like, "Got to catch them all." It's something you don't see every day. So that's why I think it's funny too, because you got to get people's attention on social media. You got to do something different and be fun. You've got like three seconds to get these people's attention while they're scrolling through. So our goal is to think like, "How can we get their attention?"

Brian Bosche:
And that can be, there's a man in a pickle or there's a man in a Pikachu suit and that's what grabs you for that second. If I've learned anything from TikTok, and you're right, you just have three seconds. You're just scrolling through the thumb stopping. It's just that three seconds of like, "What is going on here?" That really hooks you for the rest of it which is interesting to see. Yeah. Okay, so this is an industry not a ton of marketers are familiar with. So this is a hard question, but what can other marketers, other advertisers learn and what are some unique things that they can learn from your industry? I didn't prep you for this.

Caroline Murray:
No, that's fine. I think the power of a cool sales event or a cool giveaway can get people's attention really. And something close to comparison, I used to do giveaways and my old organic jobs and I worked in home improvement. Like, "Get a $20 Home Depot gift card if you sign up for this." I mean the power of offering something and having a cool incentive and a cool promo along with some fun creative can really go a long way. I know not every industry can do it, but you really can get creative with it. If you can do it, a little incentive, a little giveaway, especially with the holidays coming up you can go a long way. Before I had the power to do all of these crazy sales events, I would come up with my own little giveaways and stuff and be like, "Get a little $20 gift card, sign up with this thing."

Caroline Murray:
I would make fun little memes and stuff. You can even get really creative with social media these days. Making a good meme if you have that kind of language and if your industry is right, will really connect with people. I really believe in being funny and lighthearted, if it's appropriate. Obviously, you can't always... You got to know your audience, but I'm a big believer in being fun and making people smile, especially on social media, because social media can be such a toxic place for some people, especially right now.

Brian Bosche:
Just doomed scrolling.

Caroline Murray:
It's doomed scrolling. Exactly. I do it all the time.

Brian Bosche:
I would kill to see a pickle man selling cars on my timeline.

Caroline Murray:
Exactly. That's the way I see it. Whatever I'm making, I want it to be lighthearted and fun. And I think that everybody could use a little smile right now.

Brian Bosche:
That's great lessons. Keep it lighthearted.

Caroline Murray:
Yeah, keep it lighthearted.

Brian Bosche:
And it's for entertainment. At the end of the day, is it entertaining? I love the giveaways because I think people often overlook the power of a giveaway or the power of a [crosstalk 00:39:14].

Caroline Murray:
It is very powerful when you don't have much money to spend and you got to get people's attention, that's what I used to do when I was just working in house and I had not much to work with. It goes a long way. If you can be creative enough to put the fun image and a fun concepts that's relevant to your audience. Yeah, all about the fun.

Brian Bosche:
Yup. So this is where to close out plug, where can people find you? Where can people find Dealer OMG? Do you have anything fun, exciting coming up that you want to plug? Just have that.

Caroline Murray:
Well yeah, follow us. You can go to dealeromg.com, Dealer OMG on Facebook and Instagram, and then me, I'm Caroline Murrz on Twitter. I've just started using my Twitter professionally and that's how I saw you and met all these other people. I'm working on building my network on there.

Brian Bosche:
Are in the marketing Twitter community yet?

Caroline Murray:
I am.

Brian Bosche:
Amazing.

Caroline Murray:
I've met a lot of cool people on there. It's so fun. Caroline Murrz on Twitter, you can follow me Dealer OMG on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook were there. Yeah, I would love the exposure. So follow me, I'll follow you back. Love to be in the marketing Twitter community.

Brian Bosche:
Fantastic. Well, thanks Caroline. We really appreciate you coming on.

Caroline Murray:
Thank you.

Brian Bosche:
I do. There's no we here. It's just me. It was like this big production studio behind me.

Caroline Murray:
Everyone claps.

Brian Bosche:
The team at Creative BTS thanks you for coming on. Thanks Caroline.

Caroline Murray:
Thank you.