Owen Moon and Jason Harris Talk Service Marketing at FIXED OPS DIGITAL
Owen Moon is hanging out with Jason Harris (in style I might add) in a special Las Vegas edition of The Drive! Owen and Jason were both in town for the Digital Dealer Conference and decided to get together to talk about all things Fixed Ops!
“At FIXED OPS DIGITAL we’ve created a digital infrastructure that allows dealerships to merchandise their Fixed Ops department.” – Owen Moon
Check out the entire video above!
🌟Contact Owen Moon by phone at (605) 376-0195 or shoot him an email at owen@fixedopsdigital.com 🌟
Jason Harris
00:00:14
Hey, what’s going on? Podcast Nation is Jason hers here, and thank you for joining me on another episode of the drive Los Vegas, special addition. Today I have a special guest with me. I have the one only: the famous Owen Moon.
Owen Moon
00:00:29
That’s a good thing, is sweet and has some fun.
Jason Harris
00:00:34
Were going to talk all things FIXED OPS DIGITAL.
Owen Moon
00:00:36
Absolutely, I love that.
Jason Harris
00:00:38
I don’t get to talk enough about it, so looking forward to this one.
Owen Moon
00:00:43
It’s all I do so.
Jason Harris
00:00:45
That’s good, that’s where going, but I have for everybody out there watching and listening. I love starting off all these podcasts with a little origin story, because I’m always superfast how people get started in the business. So what is the Orden Story of Owen Moon?
Owen Moon
00:01:01
Man, you know, it’s like Taylor. Two careers started right out of college, ended up at an agency that was automotive only.
Jason Harris
00:01:09
Okay.
Owen Moon
00:01:10
Didn’t know anything, but what we had was we had an infomercial that we were able to syndicate across the country and we actually went around. My first two years in the business was actually going around and helping set up subprime departments. Relatively new. Nobody was doing it, and so we would not only do the advertising, you don’t even see those local information at three o’clock in the morning. That was us. We were doing subprime. Get your financing. But what the dealerships needed was somebody helping with the banks, help with the inventory. You know, kind of the whole thing. So that was right. My job was I’d go around and I would, I would kind of fake it till I made it. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’d go into these stores and help set up our little piece of it. But looking back at it now that I’ve been in this business over 20 years and kind of one of the gas out there, I see all these young, you know digital people out there, but it was a great learning time because I got to instead of going to a radio station or TV station, coming out of college. Being a marketing guy, I got right into the trenches and learned the whole inside of the dealership world which, yeah, which I couldn’t have asked for better. You know better learning experience in that time that I spent doing that.
Jason Harris
00:02:25
Get in the trenches, and that’s what, that’s what it’s all about. So I mean like fix of marketing. Just don’t I think when people think of fix up marketing I’m not a hundred percent sure exactly what are they ultimately right? Yeah, so like you know when you say fix OPS marketing, like what’s on the first thing comes to your mind.
Owen Moon
00:02:44
Yeah, you know, when we talk about marketing, your service department online, we really focus on all profit centers because it’s more than just your service side of the business. You know it’s also part its tires, its accessories, its collision, and so what we’ve really tried to do is create an infrastructure that allows the dealership too, you know, kind of merchandise, those departments on their website. You know for years all we’ve ever seen is sales, variable vehicles and you know the services of the business just weren’t getting any attention. You know that’s where.
Jason Harris
00:03:26
The business that can absorb all expenses.
Owen Moon
00:03:29
Well, and here’s why most of the marketing that you see from service is, you know, database marketing. It’s getting into retentions, types, type scenarios, and so that’s a whole different customer, that’s a whole different, that’s a whole different strategy and those strategies are still very effective. You know they work. They’ve gone away from maybe as much direct mail as we used to do, but now more email, marketing and different touch points and things. But when you start talking about the conquest customer, that that that customer that’s online, they might not know about the dealership, they’re you know, getting hit by the independence. It’s a whole different thing. So you know, we just help create a really really well-thought-out infrastructure that gives customers that same sort of online funnel that we’ve seen so effective on the same side.
Jason Harris
00:04:19
You know, I love the fact that I bought up the transition between kind of letters and over the email. At what I can find annoying sometimes is that all we did was take the content we stuck in letters and then just shoved it into an email. That was it, and there the there’s a lot more opportunity there. Right I mean think about like my. I’ve got 200 unready mail sitting in this box, you know, and just to think that I’m just going to take what I used to do in letters and in going to shove it into an email, think that’s good enough, it’s just it just really.
Owen Moon
00:04:50
Email you almost have to reverse it right. Tell my sales team all the time.
Jason Harris
00:04:54
You!
Owen Moon
00:04:54
I always was sort of an idea that you build it right, whether you’re in pitch or sales, presentation or just anything. You sort of give the meat and potatoes or, like you, you get to this big clothes where you email the opposite. You got to give the big clothes at the beginning because nobody reads emails. It’s like by time you get halfway done, you’ve lost their attention and they’re moving on. We don’t.
Jason Harris
00:05:18
I mean it, I will tread. I will probably go through two rounds of triage before I actually start opening stuff right, and you know. So it’s like I love the subject pains that typically see right ABC Motors service specials last month. I mean nothing else. So let’s talk a little about email stratagems. All right, so what would you say here? Some good email strategies for? Well.
Owen Moon
00:05:45
One of the things that we’ve done, you know, with our solution and our solution is more of an online solution, obviously focusing on the website and that type of thing. But we’ve turned the special page that’s usually very vanilla. Maybe there’s a couple. You know things that the service manager will pick out and say: hey, I want to throw this on there. We’ve scratched that. We said, look, you’ve got to make it more of a menu style, you’ve got to make it. You know, let’s put all your popular services, let’s get some of those late ownership services, and so what we tell dealers is when they want. Do email marketing kind of use that same logic right? You’ll focus on some of the ones that you want to focus on, but then let’s drive them into a better experience.
Jason Harris
00:06:30
Yeah, it’s just it’s the bread crumb.
Owen Moon
00:06:33
Yeah, it’s just getting them into an area. So when we build out content, right so you know, obviously there’s a certain way to do it. There’s certainly not to do it. Everybody wants to automate everything.
Jason Harris
00:06:41
We don’t want to hit that preferable easy button.
Owen Moon
00:06:44
You got, you know, and building content just takes, and so what we do.
Jason Harris
00:06:48
Dreams.
Owen Moon
00:06:49
We build a transmission page, for example, and then, if we put a transmission offer in an email, make sure that that person, when they click that offer, actually goes to that trans, don’t go to the home page, don’t go to scheduled service. Let’s take them down that funnel and let’s give them the information. So when they do finally make that decision, they’re going. You know what I feel very comfortable with making this appointment today.
Jason Harris
00:07:12
Yeah, exactly right. Well, you know what I think is always kind of funny. We use this kind of mass approach right. I hate, I hate, I hate the term mass, you know, because we have too much data on our customers to take a mass approach.
Owen Moon
00:07:29
Communicating spraying: pretty kind of scenario.
Jason Harris
00:07:31
100% right. I mean, like you know, encourage, like our service clients to, you know, start bucketing out their customers. You know where the customer that comes in in-service with you all the time. Why would you hit them up and send them the exact same offer that you going to send to someone that you haven’t seen in 12 months? Like it makes no sense.
Owen Moon
00:07:51
That’s where that service special page kind of has been, you know, misleading for not only vendors but even for customers. Right. I always tell my dealerships that I work with and it’s kind of our. Our, I guess you can say the best practices that we use. You don’t have to use the special page as a place to discount, be competitive and then win with information right. I always say couponing dead. When I think of coupons right, I think of some lady sitting at the at the kitchen table. She’s clipping coupons. Yeah, I mean couponing strategy on your website. I mean that’s old school. What we want to do is we want to build, build the momentum right. We want to get them into the information and then let them go a little deeper into that, that same offer, that same service and then bring them to the path and to the appointment. And that’s either scheduling online or maybe click to calling you know from their mobile device to a to a service or an appointment coordinator. You do that enough times to those conquest customers. You’re doing great now you’ve got someone he hasn’t been in your store for two years. Lose money on them aggressively. Get them. I give them that exposure back to your service.
Jason Harris
00:08:59
Yeah, it’s like we. We miss you, we want you back and you know what. We’re willing to put our money where our mouth is so that you can’t come back and.
Owen Moon
00:09:06
You imagine you not going to a dealership for two years. You get something in your email. It’s for 2995 oil change. You then go to the website and you see the same 2195 oil change. Are you special at that point exactly? There’s nothing there. So I think that’s one thing that vendors like like I’ve been doing this a long time. So you know I kind of look at things you know just from a vendor standpoint. They want to do what you talk about, they want to bucket everything together and make it easy. And I think that’s where we’ve really taken the fixed up side of the business, the service side of the business, and we’ve opened the hood and we get very granular on a lot of things that we do. So when customers come and work with us right away they’re like: wait a minute. You integrate with this partner, you talk with these guys, you know you, you have different analytics that shows kind of the whole picture, not just. Oh, this is many times somebody you know clicked on this coupon or click the print boot button. Exactly 70% of consumers are mobile and yet somebody says you click the print button 700 times come on. You know what I mean.
Jason Harris
00:10:10
What is that? It doesn’t work, you are honest with it. Do you even own a printer?
Owen Moon
00:10:14
No.
Jason Harris
00:10:14
I don’t own a printer.
Owen Moon
00:10:16
No, not my, not my whole.
Jason Harris
00:10:18
At home, right like so, like here, we are sending campaigns there, like on the website, in print, print, and I’m like I know I own a printer. Someone recently sent me a document I had to fill out and it was like I had to go buy a printer.
Owen Moon
00:10:30
Well, I’m like. Can you make this docusign so I can just sign it. Yeah, like I bought a house on Docusign, but yet we’re trying to print coupons now it’s like that makes sense what you.
Jason Harris
00:10:39
Upon something that that was kind of cool is the content of the site all right, which is a great opportunity for conquesting and educating people and bringing them into your funnel. But then also it’s amazing also for retention. I got a question and if you’ve already answered it on your website, know awsome right like this dealer, really cool guys. They do a lot of video content and they do a lot of video content in the service department. Right, well, one of their very, very first videos six or seven years ago: horrible video. This sounds bad the camera, but at least it was least they. They did it and the video is about how to replace the wiper blades on the caper angle, which you have ever one angle and had to do that. There’s like two little snaps. Don’t press both of them down, you’ll you’ll break the other one and you have to go. You literally got to start all over and one piece still. Today that video gets over 15000 views a month.
Owen Moon
00:11:35
Because people want to know.
Jason Harris
00:11:36
They want to know and nobody else has put an updated video out and we’ve even talked about updating. I’m like why?
Owen Moon
00:11:42
It works well and then so what we’ve kind of done too, when this kind of ties right into it, we’ve actually taken that content. So let’s say we did when the wiper video. There’s excuse me, content. We then do an explainer video as well. So that explained her video, because a lot of people like to use video to get their information, not necessarily.
Jason Harris
00:12:02
Reading right.
Owen Moon
00:12:03
Can we get any?
Jason Harris
00:12:04
I’m always looking for one right like you know, like buy some from me. I don’t even want to look through the pictures on that thing. I just want to go watch video and how to put the stupid thing together. That is, that’s it. But you know I find I actually have some service managers at. I’ve actually argued with me in the past and like they don’t want to do these videos because if the consumer is going to do it then I don’t pick up the labor hours. True!
Owen Moon
00:12:28
Put it on your website.
Jason Harris
00:12:29
It’s a great place on your website, but in reality it’s like sometimes I’ll watch these videos and go. Yeah, I know I’m not doing that myself and because you are the one that provided me that value in the content. Well, I’m all right, there’s a button all right. Click it. You’re going to do it for me. Quarter percent.
Owen Moon
00:12:44
Yeah, and when we do our videos, that’s where we house everything is on youtube for the dealership with their own parts and service channel, but then obviously links into all the relevant content that we’re doing, ties everything together. You know I always say people can do what we do. Fragmented, you can hire someone to do videos, you can hire someone to build content. There are some service management or special management software companies out there, but nobody brings it together at the level that we do, and that’s why we’ve grown so much. I mean we’re we’re well over 500 stores now in three years. That’s part of it was the vision, I think, but part of it was also just timing. We’ve had everything hit us right: covid inventory issues, but yet that every one of those has made another spotlight on the service side. And so since we’re kind of the leaders in the space and we’ve really kind of embraced that role, you know we get a lot of phone calls and people talk to us all the time. So we feel very blessed and my team is always here to help and they’re always willing to just roll-up their sleeves. And even if it’s not something that benefits us or something that’s you now directly correlated to what we do, we’ll try to get the answer for him and make it.
Jason Harris
00:13:56
Happen so well, that’s awesome man and I love hearing when people want to make that command. But the cool thing is actually comes from some experience right. You know I do say it, but you know, for an agency just to show up and not know the new ones, the fixed opposite, it’s kind of tough. You know that is when I start seeing the coupon strategy. You know it’s like this will work right and it’s like you know. It’s like if you haven’t set down and truly understood the dealerships, you know count goals or they’re ours. Perro goal.
Owen Moon
00:14:27
100.
Jason Harris
00:14:28
You know, you know the fact that they’re having some time issues or their absorption rate is not as high as maybe all the other dealerships in the bin in the group or someting like that, like, like, like you, because you guys have that experience, you’re able to sit-down listen to these bills and objectives. Let’s reverse engineering backwards.
Owen Moon
00:14:45
Yeah, and our performance team is based out of Chicago. So my production team, to Denver my performance team, is out.
Jason Harris
00:14:51
Chicago.
Owen Moon
00:14:52
You know I made the commitment early. I said you know what I don’t want a-train because we’re too, we’re too new and we’re moving too fast that for me to go train performance managers or account reps, it’s going to, it’s going to kill us because you know is going to have to take those times and the people that are on to hurt the worse. There are my clients right. So we hired very smartly, very, you know, experienced performance managers and they do what you just said every day. They’re in the trenches with the service managers, they’re talking about offers, they’re talking about what we’re seeing from an engagement standpoint, what we’re seeing inside, they’re schedule like time. These are all things that we can kind of bring to the table.
Jason Harris
00:15:35
And what’s that?
Owen Moon
00:15:36
Service manager.
Jason Harris
00:15:37
The toughest one.
Owen Moon
00:15:38
They’re like I don’t want to do this, I don’t I don’t like digital is not my world. Maybe they’re intimidated. We make it really easy for them to get involved and by about the second or third month we are now like their best vendor because they’re like okay, I’ve got to go to. I need to. I need to promote something. I just got a new alignment machine and I want to promote it. We put a strategy together to make sure we get that.
Jason Harris
00:16:02
That’s cool. I mean look, you got to have that open communication with your agency. You know you have to be able to. You know, agents got to be able to help you out and look at you know the next time and say: man, looking at all your Wednesdays, Wednesday is the count’s just not there right. So we’re going. We’re going to run this campaign but were on to run it at this time and we’re going to do a special Wednesday right now or after our things, because we’re looking at it between three pm and like five.
Owen Moon
00:16:28
Like an early happy hour.
Jason Harris
00:16:31
Right, but you have to be super tied with your agency to be able to execute that. I do want to go back a little bit to the website content stuff because I actually get super excited. It’s one I love, love, love, and there, and there is no easy one for it is. It is a field of dreams, it’s a building. They will come scenario right and but ships within their content can nominally show their experts but also just who they are as people right and like I want to connect with, like people you know, like my minibus dealership you know I had, I had four triple diamond master technicians. All right, but these guys they were, they had on a hood. It’s the third cylinder, the right valve.
Owen Moon
00:17:16
They are the experts.
Jason Harris
00:17:17
Are the experts, you know, but by creating content with them, because they are the experts, you know people were learning, they were getting educated and obviously they were coming to and referring people to them right. I’m surprised how often I see a dealership not emphasize their expertise.
Owen Moon
00:17:40
Yeah, you know the contents. Funny because obviously, Google’s always changing what, what’s relevant to them, like, how to get your content to rank. Obviously, any frame scenarios, or you know, code injected type scenarios, make it a lot tougher, for they’ve come a little little bit farther. But we always are an agency. Look at our content, our best practices. We just want to do what Google tells us, run the play, you know, on the playbook and just make it work now. One thing that we do with all of our content, which I think is really cool, is that we showcase the dealership on it like amenities, kind of the wiser vice, getting that getting that out there. That is on all of our content. So we might talk about transmissions or alignments or you know whence wipers. But it all ties into. Also. Why should they come to the dealership to get that done? Because that person again goes back to knowing your, that person’s shopping you against the jiffy loops. What’s set you apart? If pricing is pretty comparable? We’ve got to tell customers why it’s more important to come to the dealership. We’ve got the certified technicians, we’ve got the parts and fluids, we’ve got the right machinery for these very sophisticated cars. So you don’t get that by just showing a coupon or just, you know, just putting out some very cooky cutter stuff that you get from the, or maybe the generic stuff that comes from your website provider. You have to be local, you have to be very, very custom in order to make that.
Jason Harris
00:19:12
That impact, I love it. I did it. So here’s my next question, like: what would you say? You’re like the top three content pages that a dealer can go make right now that you guys have just seen historically, just crush it!
Owen Moon
00:19:25
You know most of the content that we see that does really well is our general service. You know oil change, tire rotation, batteries, you know just some of that stuff. That’s more of your everyday maintenance. We obviously started really focusing on late ownership services. Excuse me because that’s where the defection happened.
Jason Harris
00:19:46
But it’s also the best client you can ever have.
Owen Moon
00:19:49
Well, it’s the best customers pay. You’re not dealing with warranty anymore. We don’t get as much of that search because again, that’s sort of like after the warrants, but that’s the stuff that is, that’s you know, that’s the. You know the meat and potatoes right. That’s the stuff that’s going to make you your money a 100% and again, you know another thing that we’ve really focused on.
Jason Harris
00:20:10
Would you make like a singular page, or would you kind of like break it down like explanations like what the filter is and why you know your car actually has to use this type of oil versus out there? It’s like how? How deep? How gradual would you be?
Owen Moon
00:20:21
That’s how we get. We get really granular. We’re doing semisynthetic, we’re doing synthetic, we’re doing changes now. What we also do is you know-how, like one on the top AV bar where if you hit the service button, you drop it down. We build out what we call service overview pages. So that same oil change page. Well, then that oil change service would get clicked on. It would bring him into an overview page. That would then go okay. Here’s semisynthetic, here’s synthetic, here’s diesel. And if somebody wants to be, I want to know more about synthetic. They then would then dig a little deeper into that particular service. So just creating that whole.
Jason Harris
00:20:55
Value around the service, I mean not just looking at, and you’re like service and it’s 300 and $49.
Owen Moon
00:21:01
What does that mean?
Jason Harris
00:21:02
I mean like I love it, I love it when I go into it next time and I’m like service three under $49 and it’s just got like a list of stuff that most average people aren’t I’m going to know what.
Owen Moon
00:21:12
What?
Jason Harris
00:21:13
You’re able to break down it and show why it needs to be done and the value of doing it. You know, for your vehicle that’s this huge value. Now it’s valued, all perception right. So it’s like, if we can build that value before they even get into the dealership, how much easier it is to start adding on even more value while we’re in the.
Owen Moon
00:21:32
Well, and that’s what, I was going to say a lot of times. What we find and what dealers are telling us is that they’ve really increased those lines right. You only have so much money or time to make money in the service department. If you’re open from seven am to six PM, you got that many hours to make hay right.
Jason Harris
00:21:48
That’s so.
Owen Moon
00:21:49
Why not be able to pre, educate and services prior to them getting there? So when they come in for that oil change, you can also say: hey, you also need this, this, and this they might have already exposed themselves to those services on your website. It puts you in the game right you. You make more money on each of those customers while they’re there, but it’s also good for turn downs. You know I talked to a lot of services as they’re becoming more popular. Somebody turns down an alignment service. They can create an email, drop our link right into that email, and say: hey, I know you’re trimming this down today. Here’s a little more information on why it’s important now our services are getting armed with more data.
Jason Harris
00:22:31
More information.
Owen Moon
00:22:32
And they use it because it’s all right there, for it’s not a separate microsite, it’s not known. Again, it’s not. You know, one size fits all scenarios, it’s really specific to that dealership.
Jason Harris
00:22:44
You know what it’s cool for dealerships that do have sees like that. You know, I think too often the marketing department just kind of focuses on the fact that they’re just working with one department. But you know multiple friends have to get involved and play nice with this.
Owen Moon
00:22:58
100% and nobody’s talking accessories. You go to the dealership, they’re tired, they’re tired, displays are weak. You know it’s just, it’s like let’s along.
Jason Harris
00:23:09
I don’t know how it is. You know where you are, but you know where I am up in Canada we have this thing called the season and I hate, I hate the fact that we call it a season because.
Owen Moon
00:23:21
It’s like one little blip in the calendar.
Jason Harris
00:23:23
What are you talking about? Like? Bring the display out and then we take the display, probably on the, and it’s like this.
Owen Moon
00:23:31
Well, that’s where all the due to the special, it’s every fault. Duties are huge for retention. Crier gave us some data, was it something like 72 or something like 82? I can’t remember exactly the percentage, but it was really high. If they buy tires from you, they buy their next car for sure. So, and everybody says it and even goes. Well, that’s really great, and then they go back and there’s no, there’s no real focus on selling tires. So you know, but we make it easy right, we bring it to him. Hey, Jason, how would you like to sell some tires? I’d love to sell more tires. Let me show you how you can do it exactly. Here’s a good, better best. You now imagine having a good, better, best scenario for each model. That’s what we do. We say here’s a Toyota Camry, here’s the good tires, here’s the better tires. Here are the best tires for your, that Toyota Camry and our dealers love it because they’re like. Wait a minute this is given us.
Jason Harris
00:24:26
That makes life so much easier for sure. Like I know, we could easily jam like they’re 40 minutes or at least you know, but I know we’re in toward the tale of our time. We touch on some really really great topics and you know, for anybody out there that’s watching and listening and would like to maybe kind of learn more. Continue the conversation. What what’s the best way to connect with?
Owen Moon
00:24:48
You know, definitely on our website we’ve got a lot of great contact content information like fops digital dotcom. You know most people have my cell number and that’s why my voice is like this because I’m always talking, my direct line is 605376015 or shoot me an email in a fix to digital dot com and you know I’m always you would say I’m just called away, so give me a shout, we’ll jam, we’ll talk strategy and then what I’ll do is I’ll get you in touch with you now, my sales team. We’ll talk with our performance team and we’ll really help you figure out how we can really move your fixed ops department to new heights in 2022. And that’s what we’re doing out here. We’re just launching some new software called drive Service specials. Speaking to Morrow at one of the breakout sessions, we feel like digital dealers are a great place for us because we get to talk to a lot of digital people and they’re now getting thrown into the online service marketing evolution, as we call it so.
Jason Harris
00:25:49
That’s so, and thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Owen Moon
00:25:51
This was a pleasure meeting this great, glad, glad this was our first game.
Jason Harris
00:25:55
I’m sure of many more.
Owen Moon
00:25:57
Absolutely absolutely!
