Bob Lanham started his career selling cars at a Toyota dealership in the Southeast part of the country. Since then, he has risen through the ranks of the dealership, eventually becoming the Sales Director at Hulu which led him to his current position as the Head of Automotive Retail at Facebook.

Having worked closely with dealer groups, manufacturers, franchise dealers, and OEMs, he brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. Bob shares his take on how the industry reacted to the pandemic and what shifts he’s seen.

With sales volume cut by 70+ percent for some, dealers learned quickly that they had to understand marketing and media in a way that cut costs but still allowed for an effective return.

His team believes that the average dealer can cut about 30- 50% of their marketing spend and still market effectively by leveraging a media mix marketing strategy.

Bob shares steps that the GMs of today can take to drive this strategy in their stores:

Step 1: Outline all your marketing and advertising expenses. Including cost! Map it all out.

Step 2: Ask a lot of questions and make sure your expenses are, in fact, investments. What is your return? Are the people handling your marketing and ad spend up to the task?

Step 3: Never look at what media you buy in a silo. This includes all media and advertising initiatives. Media platforms do not work in a silo they work together and drive each other.

Step 4: Keep an active role in communicating if you use a vendor for your marketing and media.

Bob Lanham left us with two principles to keep top of mind:

Your advertising and marketing spend is not meant to be a tax.

When you take away the bias of how you buy media and look at what you should and should not buy, your media mix becomes more powerful.

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