Branding Consistency Across the Whole Automotive Group with Samantha Morrow

Samantha Morrow is the Director of Marketing at Hello Auto Group in California. She has an extensive background in graphic design and marketing, and now oversees the six, soon to be eight, stores in the group. 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• How Samantha got into the world of automotive
• How the CDK hacking affected individual dealerships’ operations
• What branding considerations are important when opening a new store
• How changing inventory levels impact marketing and pricing strategies
• Where AI can be applied within a dealership’s marketing strategy.

In this episode…

Every marketer knows that brand consistency is essential, but automotive groups face an extra challenge when it comes to maintaining consistency across different car brands.

Groups with multiple dealerships for different automotive brands must balance overall group brand consistency with car brand-specific consistency.While each location may have a distinct target market requiring tailored offers and advertising, physical locations for each brand should feel connected – perhaps not identical, but certainly related. 

In this episode of InsideAuto, Samantha Morrow, Marketing Director at Hello Auto Group, chats with Ilana Shabtay about the CDK outage, the major marketing changes Hello Auto has made over the past few months, understanding the demographics of each individual dealership, and leveraging AI-based marketing tools to improve results.

Resources Mentioned: 

• Ilana Shabtay on LinkedIn 
• Fullpath 
• Samantha Morrow on LinkedIn
• Hello Auto Group
• CDK
• B Auto
• Fullpath Audience Activation
• Hello Gives Back
• Activator
• Hello Buys Cars
• Canva AI Video Editor
• YouTube Studio 
• Adobe AI Video Editor

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Fullpath.

Fullpath is the automotive industry’s leading customer data and experience platform (CDXP).

Fullpath enables dealers to turn their first-party data into lifelong customers by unifying siloed data sources and leveraging that data to create exceptional, hyper-personalized customer experiences.

To learn more, visit www.fullpath.com

Episode Transcript:

Ilana Shabtay 

Ilana Shabtay here, host of Inside Auto podcast, where we interview top dealers, GMs, marketers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in and out of the automotive industry. And before we introduce today’s guest this episode is sponsored by Fullpath.com. Fullpath is automotive industry’s leading customer data and experience platform, CDXP. Fullpath enables dealers to turn their first-party data into lifelong customers by unifying siloed data sources and leveraging that data to create exceptional hyper -personalized customer experiences.

For more information, visit Fullpath.com Today’s guest is Samantha Morrow. Sam, how you doing?

Samantha Morrow 

Good, how are you?

Ilana Shabtay

Good, it’s so nice I finally got to meet you in person a few weeks ago and now we get to connect on the podcast so I’m really looking forward to today’s discussion. For our listeners, Sam is the Director of Marketing for the Hello Automotive Group in California. Extensive background in graphic design and marketing and now oversees the six stores, six going on to eight stores in the group. She also loves cooking so that’s like a nice fun fact. And for anyone who’s actually watching this podcast versus listening to it on Spotify,

you could see her background, which is just like an incredibly beautiful whiteboard of all of her notes and all of the projects for her team. So we’ll have to talk about that, but also like now I can totally understand, for sure a very talented graphic designer if this is the type of handwriting that I’m seeing. So again, welcome to the show and I look forward to chatting with you today. Awesome, so let’s start with…

Samantha Morrow 

I’m happy to be here.

Ilana Shabtay 

how I start with all my guests, how did you get into automotive, how did you fall into this industry that we’re all sort of like probably never leaving at this point.

Samantha Morrow 

I hear so many people talk about this and so many people most of the time wander into automotive by chance or they were born into it. I’m one of those people that wandered into it by chance. I was working at a real estate brokerage at the time. I was fresh out of college. I have a degree in graphic design and branding with a little bit of creative writing. So not really a marketer but I was working in marketing and my current owner reached out to me and was like, ‘Hey I love your background. I love…

you know, your branding experience, you can put your stamp on Hello we’re brand new.’ At the time we were only three years old, so we’re, I mean, we’re still growing and evolving. So it’s been a lot of fun creating a strong brand here at Hello and building a team and doing all that. But automotive is just so fun. I don’t think I’ll ever leave now that I’m here. I mean, the constant evolution of automotive, I mean, like CDK goes out, it keeps you on your toes.

Ilana Shabtay 

That’s really cool.

Samantha Morrow 

So all of these things are just why I love automotive and why I’ll probably stay specifically in marketing. Just because everything’s always changing with AI and new technologies and new advancements, it’s just so much fun.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, I agree, by the way. I also stumbled in. Not as cool as the story as you. I mean, I think that’s really awesome that the owner just was like, I think this could be a good match. You have so much opportunity to create a brand for us, which is an incredible opportunity. But stumbling into auto and being part of like this huge ride the past few years, especially from COVID and all the challenges since has been really incredible. It’s so dynamic. I agree. And since you touched on CDK, maybe we’ll jump right there

and talk a little bit about what’s been going on with CDK. First of all, have your stores been affected? And if so, I wish you the best of luck getting back into action.

Samantha Morrow 

Yeah, so all of our stores are on CDK. It’s definitely been a whirlwind to say the least. I think we’re glad that we didn’t have all of our eggs in one basket and we weren’t affected CRM-wise because we’re not on Elead And I’ve heard from a couple of dealers that they maybe have gone away from Elead or they’ve gotten, you know, they’re really glad that they weren’t all together in one platform because when one goes down, the rest of them tumble. So…

Ilana Shabtay 

Yes. Sure.

Samantha Morrow 

We’re getting back on our feet. We’re trying to make the most of things, stocking in cars and Be Auto rather than CDK, creating new ways to desk deals without CDK being alive. The major thing though was kind of keeping staff morale up because when a sales manager can’t do their job to the fullest extent or the office people can’t do their job to the fullest extent, it’s definitely a drain on the state of things. But just making sure everyone’s lively, that the customer experience is still great, even though we have to paper contracts and things and just

Ilana Shabtay 

Thank you.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah.

Samantha Morrow 

keeping everything positive and alive.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, that’s great. And I think that’s a really good perspective. I think the morale is a really interesting perspective. Do you feel like this is going to have an impact on the automotive industry moving forward when it comes to data and security? And if so, what do you think those implications will be?

Samantha Morrow 

I think definitely it’s gonna have an impact. I’m not sure how extensive it’s going to be yet. I think it’ll definitely have a play with dealers of how they’re protecting their own data outside of just relying on a vendor to keep their data protected. It’s definitely going to have to be inside of a dealership as well. So definitely, I think when we’re onboarding new vendors, that’s definitely gonna be a topic of conversation. And when we’re doing vendor evals, same thing. I think as well, consumers are probably a little bit worried

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah.

Samantha Morrow

about their own data going forward. I know like I had a couple friends reach out to me that have purchased cars from our stores and just kind of freak out thinking maybe their social was everywhere and they didn’t know what was going on in the automotive space and outside of the automotive space and you know, CDK got hacked. What happens to me now? So I think that’s definitely a top of mind priority for both consumers and for dealers.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, that’s actually an interesting topic you bring up because have you guys communicated or have you heard of any dealers communicating right now proactively to consumers about their data or you’re just training staff on how to answer if it comes up? I haven’t really had those conversations with any of our dealer partners yet.

Samantha Morrow 

So we haven’t done anything yet. I know that there’s probably some communications and talks with CDK on how to approach that. I think until we know how vast the data was leaked or if it got leaked at all, I mean, all we know is CDK got hacked. I think until that happens, we can’t provide accurate information. So unless we wanna just say something that we don’t know the right answer to, it’s kind of we’re waiting for CDK.

Ilana Shabtay 

Right, right, right.

Ilana Shabtay 

Right, right, of course.

Yeah.

Samantha Morrow 

So we’ve kind of trained the staff or at least kind of talked to them about it of we’re not quite sure what’s going on from our knowledge. Nothing’s been leaked yet. And there’s nothing to worry about your data right now because there’s nothing we can do about it. But going forward, it probably will be a major topic of conversation.

Ilana Shabtay

What are some of the big changes or small changes that have had a really big effect on how you’ve been running marketing? I’d love to hear a little bit about that, specifically as you grow into eight stores total and what you’re gonna kind of like carry over.

Samantha Morrow 

 So I mean, I feel like we’ve made more changes in the last three months than we have the entirety that I’ve been here, which is a little over two years now. Not just in marketing, but in our people, our culture, our business model as a whole has really warped and evolved in the last quarter/year.

Ilana Shabtay 

Interesting. Wow.

Samantha Morrow 

We changed our used car process, we changed management in that regard and changed the way we’re pricing cars. I had the honor of being able to help with new car pricing in the last couple months, which has really helped me as a marketer get really granular when it comes to specifically with Fullpath going in and putting in custom campaigns and boosting specific models and going in when you’re looking at dealer day supply versus market day supply and seeing which models really need a push, Which a lot of the times you’re relying on a GM to tell you,

Ilana Shabtay 

That’s it. Yep.

Samantha Morrow 

‘Hey, I need to move outbacks.’ But now I understand why.

Getting even more granular with pricing of, hey, let’s put the color red on a cross track into Fullpath I always call it nurture because I’ve been on Fullpath for so long. But Audience Activation campaigns and VIN to kind of push that one further out than the rest of them so we can get those cars out specifically. I think as well, when we were going into Fullpath campaigns, we’ve kind of learned that, yes, you can set it and forget it because Fullpath’s AI tool is just incredible. But I think something a dealer told me once and I’ve kind of used the phrase a couple times is AI created human perfected.

Ilana Shabtay 

 I love that.

Samantha Morrow 

So kind of taking everything that the AI has done, but putting your own take on it. So I’ve gotten really granular within the Fullpath campaigns and gone in and looked at which landing pages are working. If a landing page works really well for a specific phrase, what keywords are working and what are not, and kind of going through every single level of the campaign, seeing what cost per lead is on a new car campaign versus a brand campaign, and seeing if that works better in social versus SEM.

Going in at every single level and doing that. I think the other hand of an SEM is the SEO portion of it and in the last year we’ve doubled our organic traffic on our site because we’ve built all of these content pages around it and I found out last night some of our articles are now ranking nationally which is just super cool to see and you know doing all of this has really changed the face of our marketing and how we are presented as a dealership.

Ilana Shabtay 

Congratulations.

Ilana Shabtay 

I think that’s incredible and I’ll just go back to your first point which is, I mean, it’s just I’m comparing the dealership world to like how I would…

think about marketing at Fullpath, right? And it’s like, the better you know the Fullpath product, the better you’re gonna be able to market it. And I make sure to listen to client calls, for example. I wanna know how our clients are talking about our product. It makes you a better marketer. And I love the dealer perspective. It’s like you got the chance to be really involved in the pricing, which is incredible, because like you said, it makes you a better marketer. But just like understanding the process and understanding why certain vehicles are on the lot for longer.

It just helps with that messaging, so I think that’s such a great point. Thanks for sharing that. And then beyond that, also just understanding the effect of your marketing in different ways and how you can make sure that you’re covering all your bases, whether it’s SEM or SEO. I think those are incredible changes that will continue to affect the business and the brand. Assuming you’re going to carry those over into the two new stores, anything else you can share with that transition, I think it’s…

I just think about it and I’m stressed. So I can imagine, like, how are you going to transfer the data? How are you gonna share the data? Or if at all, and how are you gonna figure out that transition and make it the smoothest possible for your team?

Samantha Morrow 

So, I mean as a marketer, it really doesn’t get super stressful for opening a new store until like the quarter before. And then it’s an avalanche of you got to create the website, you got to create content, you got to make sure all of the store is beautiful inside that it’s coherent to the rest of the store’s brands, especially one of the new stores is going to be another Kia Point, one of them is going to be another Mazda Point. So that’ll put us at four Mazda stores and two Kia stores. So making sure if you go to one Kia store to the other and one Mazda store to the other, that they look identical.

Ilana Shabtay 

great, great.

Samantha Morrow 

feel identical, whether it’s Hello or just Mazda in general. Making sure we’re keeping up with all of the brand standards on both fronts. And I think one of the major things and best advice I could give is just learn your markets beforehand because every market is different. Making sure you know who your competition is because knowing who your competitors are is how you’re going to compete in the market. Learn your demographics. Learn everything about the community.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah.

Samantha Morrow 

Like our Santa Clarita community is huge on schools. So we do a lot of community giving. We donate $25 per car we sell and a dollar per repair order and put it back into the community. It’s one of the fun things my team gets to do is run our Hello Gives Back campaigns. And it’s so much fun. But

Ilana Shabtay 

Amazing.

Ilana Shabtay 

That’s awesome.

Samantha Morrow 

it’s different in every community that you’re trying to help and different for who they really want to support. So it might be schools, it might be the environment, it might be whatever it is. It could be new moms. It could be, I know down in San Diego, there’s a huge foster care system. So we’ve been working a lot with the foster care system down here. And up here in Valencia, we’ve been working with the schools because 19% of kids are on the poverty line here in Santa Clarita. That’s a huge difference from here to there. So making sure you know that demographic beforehand is a huge upper hand that if you’re not ready for it will take you by surprise.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, great advice. And I think also continuing to understand the community even after you’ve launched, right? Like making sure that you’re staying on top of what’s most important to the customers that you’re serving. Wonderful advice. And then how is, I’d love to touch a little bit on inventory at your stores. Is that still something that’s challenging for you guys? Do you feel like inventory has come back to regular levels? What’s that looking like for your stores?

Samantha Morrow 

Inventory compared to COVID has definitely come back to regular levels. A lot of our stores had no inventory this time last year, or this time the year before it was even worse where we had no inventory at all on the ground.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yes.

Samantha Morrow 

So we’re finally seeing a great level of inventory. Some of our stores may actually have too much at this point, which is always a fun new strategy to have to go around because you went from no inventory and an easy marketing strategy of let’s just move because the consumer demand is so high and then to a strategy where consumers have the upper hand and pricing strategies really come into play because we’re seeing healthy inventories and it becomes a buyer’s market once again.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah.

Samantha Morrow 

I mean, when we look at our pricing strategies, we’ve seen a huge turnaround on the used car side and on the new car side. When you compare our dealer day supplies versus the market and our turn rate and looking at just getting more cars on the ground for the used car side is our main focus right now. I mean, sales to service has to be a huge push. I think a lot of dealers are feeling that of trying to sell cars out of the service drive and get cars out of the service drive because the used cars is where we really need more inventory because that hasn’t come back to

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah.

Samantha Morrow 

normal levels quite yet, but on the new car side we’re definitely seeing a good amount from the manufacturers.

Ilana Shabtay 

Now, are you involved in that strategy or do you get to think creatively from a marketing perspective on how to get more service to say, I’m sorry, like service to trade in?

Samantha Morrow 

Yes. So we’ve been working with our partner at Activator, kind of building those campaigns through Activator. And we just built a service to sales team at each one of the stores. It didn’t exist before because we didn’t really need it. And I mean, we’re still new as well. We’re only five years old. So building all of these processes and building all of this at each one of our stores has definitely been a huge learning curve. I mean, my owners have tons of automotive experience, but for those of us who don’t, it’s definitely been a stepping stone.

Ilana Shabtay 

Mm -hmm.

Samantha Morrow 

But

we did just launch our own Hello Buys Cars campaign. So we’re starting to do some paid marketing. We got to partner with another vendor to build a custom tool to our own store that kind of is able to, yeah, it monopolizes our own stores and they can go into our own tool and get an offer directly on our site within three minutes for their car and we’ll buy it for them same day. So it’s definitely been fun creatively

Ilana Shabtay

That’s really cool.

Samantha Morrow 

on the graphics side, but it’s definitely been a learning curve.

Ilana Shabtay 

Right, that’s true.

Yeah.

Wow, thanks for sharing. It sounds like you have launched some really cool initiatives together with also what seems like great partners. And then just before we wrap here, and this has been really wonderful, thank you for sharing all your knowledge. Any predictions? Well, this was, I mean, who knows what’s gonna happen with CDK? CDK aside, any predictions for the market or for marketing or AI in general for automotive that you see in the next like 6 to 12 months that you see having an impact either on Hello specifically or just

That’s really cool.

Ilana Shabtay 

the market as a whole.

Samantha Morrow 

I think I’m still personally learning the industry. I’ve only been in it for two years, so I don’t have that much experience to weigh off of to see how we go through these ups and downs.

Ilana Shabtay 

Mm -hmm.

Samantha Morrow 

But during my tenure, I’ve definitely learned that you have to stay vigilant and I definitely think marketers should still just watch industry trends constantly. I think it’s also interesting that it’s an election year. We don’t exactly know what’s gonna happen. Cox Automotive actually just released a study yesterday that stated three out of four Americans are worried about how the election’s gonna affect the economy and 60% of them are worried about how it’s going to affect car buying. So it definitely is a top of mind thing to think about when…

Ilana Shabtay 

interesting.

Samantha Morrow 

looking at it. I know that manufacturers and industry predictions still think we’re going to have a huge second half. I mean, we sure as hell hope so. But I think that’s kind of where it’s going is one AI is going to really help us as marketers. I think we’re already using it big time. We use it now to create voiceovers for our scripts and it sounds better than most voice actors, which I think is awesome. We use it to create different cuts out of YouTube so that we can create social media

Ilana Shabtay 

Hahaha

Ilana Shabtay 

That is awesome.

Samantha Morrow 

based on one big video. It’ll cut it up into pieces using AI. We use it to actually write our descriptions now on our used cars.

Ilana Shabtay 

That’s cool. Wait, what do you use? Do you know offhand what you use for cutting up the videos through AI? Do you know what it’s good? cool.

Samantha Morrow 

Actually, Canva just launched a new editor in their software and I know YouTube also in their studio can also slice it up. So it’s pretty cool that everyone’s developing something. I know Adobe also has been rumored to work on something that should be coming out pretty soon, which is super exciting. But we’ve been using it in every aspect. We’ve been using it to write our scripts, to come up with research to back why we’re changing verbatim on certain ads.

Ilana Shabtay 

Sweet. Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah.

Samantha Morrow 

Like all of these things that AI can funnel and do, it’s just been really really fun. So I can’t wait to see how it continues to evolve in the industry and where it goes from there.

Ilana Shabtay 

Awesome. Sam, thank you so much for joining Inside Auto podcast. This was incredible. I don’t know, for someone who’s only been in automotive for two years, you know your shit. So thank you so much for joining. And for those who enjoyed this episode, tune in InsideAutoPodcast.com. You can also tune in on Spotify, Apple, all your favorite outlets. So thanks again, and we’ll catch you next time.