Can you imagine being a rural Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram store located OUTSIDE the Dallas Fort Worth metro, and 6 months later, your store is a TOP 3 dealership in the district?
With interest rates at 20+ year highs, dealer inventory is aging, and pressure is mounting on the Stellantis brand and its stores.
So what did Waxahachie Dodge do to make new sales go nearly VERTICAL like the graphic below?
How It Started:
Eric Wilmeth, GSM of Waxahachie CDJR, stumbled across one of our blogs, just like you.
He saw an ad of a dealership he’s very familiar with – In fact, Waxahachie partakes in dealer trades often with this store.
“I like those guys and want to be like them!” – Eric.
Waxahachie CDJR was dealing with some issues throughout the tail end of 2023 and to the start of 2024.
- Lead count had gone down. Website leads seemed to be non-existent.
- They added third parties to try and help, but that sucked too.
- They were sick of being “talked at” by digital agencies about impressions and funnels.
- They felt like they didn’t have any real presence online.
- They were getting sick of bad information from companies.
It became a normal thing to “pray to the lot gods” where they would throw pennies on the ground and hoped to see some people come into the store.
With everything going on, Eric decided to reach out to Fountain Forward.
He made it very clear. He was purely focused on NEW cars.
“We need to generate new car traffic. The store will get people into a car, just get them more at-bats.”
The store was getting pumped out too often, and they believed they could do the opposite.
What Happened:
The Automotive Accelerator launched in March of 2024 and Wax had a new Media Mix focused on driving quality lead volume and reducing the leverage of third-party lead providers on the store.
This media mix was and is geared entirely towards conversions.
3 months in and things were trending up, but Eric wasn’t satisfied.
Eric was “screaming” for more opportunities.
They were WILLING AND WANTED TO spend more as long as the math kept working.
After taking a crawl, walk, run approach, we went all in on the platforms that were working and starting to generate more opportunities for the store. CORE Website leads flourished, and the store consistently reduced their dependency on 3rd party lead volume.
6 months later, Waxahachie CDJR has taken market share because they’ve been able to pull people out of the DFW metro.
Eric and his team spend hours daily trying to figure out pricing and reviewing analytics.
The store has committed to an aggressive pricing strategy, which has made it consistently stand out in an extremely competitive and saturated market.
As the lead volume has increased, Eric and the team at Waxahachie CDJR have done a fantastic job capitalizing and turning them into sales. Just look at how their market share has changed throughout 2024!
In Conclusion:
Eric and the Waxahachie Team have never been more confident in their ability to chase down sales objectives.
The store’s aggressive pricing strategy, paired with the Automotive Accelerator, a bolt-on turbo for the dealership, has made Waxahachie CDJR a dominant force in one of the most competitive metropolitan markets in the United States.
These results for Waxahachie CDJR are similar to other dealerships around the country. If you’re curious to see if we can help grow your dealership in a similar way, click the button below!
