East Midlands dealer group Gordon Lamb took a 'green' route in a marketing drive designed to highlight its model mix.

 

Gordon Lamb’s group marketing manager Stuart Pearce recently ran an ‘Eco’ test drive event to take advantage of one of the largest growth areas in new car sales.

Pearce said: "As a representative of six manufacturers including Land Rover, Nissan, Renault and Skoda, all of which have new, ‘eco-friendly’ models, plus Honda and Toyota who are amongst the leaders in this field, we were able to offer customers a choice of 19 different models to test drive – all on one day, in one location.”

The test drive event took place earlier this month at a country inn in the heart of the Peak District.

Gordon Lamb played host to 150 guests over two days and carried out ,around 230 test-drives.

This equated to customers being behind the wheel for over seventy hours.

"By the close of the event a huge number of enquiries had been logged for the sales teams to follow-up in our CRM system, Pearce said.

"A Renault Clio ECO2 model was sold on the first day, swiftly followed by a Toyota iQ a day later whilst several more sales have been made since and as an added bonus, we have built a great deal of goodwill with customers by giving them a great day out.”

Gordon Lamb was able to keep costs low by segmenting their database and sending invitations out with their regular quarterly customer newsletter mailings at no additional cost.

“The overall investment was just £250 per franchise which we have already recovered.

"Customers were invited to bring along additional guests, so we achieved a guest list profile of 30% existing customers and 70% prospects, giving us access to new potential business."

The dealer group is planning a similar ‘Eco’ event again in the spring.

In the next few months it will host a four-wheel drive event to market our off-road portfolio, including the recently launched models from Nissan, Toyota, Honda Skoda and Land Rover.