Filling the Retargeting Gap with Erick Kirks | 2024 NADA Show

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00

All right, we are sitting here with Eric Kirk's of Johnson, automotive marketing director there. And the only thing we know about you is that, you know, Jordan, Jordan, you've been okay. So I know three things. You know, Jordan, you've been with them for 10 years, and you've been in the automotive industry for over 3030 years.

‍Paul J Daly: 0:25

Wow. And it's in Raleigh. Raleigh as we remember. Okay. Remember, all this stuff is so fun when our first conversation is actually in person, because you have a lot of conversations on LinkedIn or on a zoo. Right. Right. So why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself how you got into automotive and and what led you to be in marketing?

Erick Kirks: 0:43

Yeah. So I kind of grew up around used cars, my dad sold used cars out of the driveway. And so it's kind of a side gig. And so I kind of grew up learning how to recon cars and also learning how to merchandise cars. Just back then it was a five liner in the newspaper. Right? Right. So fast forward. 95 Yeah, exactly. Beautiful

Kyle Mountsier: 1:04

interior. DWR VW, VW Audi

Erick Kirks: 1:08

95. Ovo? You had 25 characters, so you had to be very Yeah. How you wrote

Kyle Mountsier: 1:14

Twitter's only use 25 characters still today.

Paul J Daly: 1:18

It makes you makes you say what?

Erick Kirks: 1:20

disclaimers? I didn't have

Kyle Mountsier: 1:23

didn't even need to put it. Right. Right, right. Yeah.

Erick Kirks: 1:25

So. So yeah, fast forward to college, I started college and work through a car dealership all the way through college. I started out in the wash rack. I'll age myself now it was 385 an hour, and learn how to wash cars for delivery morphed into learning how to do full detail. And, and as I progressed through college, I decided that I wanted to be a marketing major. So I switched from business management and marketing, got into marketing. Of course, back then it was all traditional. There was no digital to speak of. Right. So I actually learned my digital in automotive by when I graduated. I graduated college in 96. Right when the internet was really starting to impact automotive, and it wasn't going to happen in Wilmington, North Carolina on the East Coast, right and so, so I decided to relocate to Southern California, got involved with some of the.com startups in the early early era of automotive. So I worked for a lot of different companies out there, eventually moved back to North Carolina in 2004. transferred back was one of those companies, I was working all up and down the East Coast. So by now I had the I had the retail side, I had the obviously the marketing acumen with my degree and then learning sort of the digital as it was coming about. It was really able to sort of influence and create some of those early products of Legion, font special finance online, and those kinds of things in the early late 90s, early 2000s. Transfer baton North Carolina was operating dealers up and down the East Coast. So I got to work with a lot of different dealer groups, Publix, and privates of all brands in all different markets. So it's been extremely read a lot of fun.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:03

So what led you to head back to retail?

Erick Kirks: 3:06

Yeah, so I took a break. I had been in automotive for so long, I got into, you know, back then start starting to sew different kinds of Legion products to dealers, this new objection was coming out called SEO. I know what SEO was. Yeah. So you know, I started, you know, researching SEO and playing around with it myself. I figured I was pretty good at it. So I ended up wondering if I was always going to be an automotive or if there was maybe some other industries that I might enjoy better. And so I actually started my own digital agency. And I started ecommerce company. They both were sort of experiments and sort of my entrepreneurial efforts of trying to get out of automotive like Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 3:51

right. Yeah, look, everybody's trying to get out. You can do it. And greener.

Erick Kirks: 3:58

So anyway, that was like a six year journey of build this ecommerce company. It kind of blew up, but I realized that I like building it, but not running it. And so I sold it off to another operator. The digital agency was a lot of fun. And I learned a lot. But it wasn't a good model. Because because I chose to work with anyone book car dealers, it's hard to scale that up, right. And so that was about six years into that. And, and I just decided on this cars, I'm just automotive. And I had some contacts at Johnson. I grew up in Raleigh, so I knew the dealer groups there. And, you

Paul J Daly: 4:33

know, it was a bargain knew that people knew how people

Erick Kirks: 4:35

I knew where I would get I knew where I would want to go back and work in retail, what a great so good timing for all those.

Paul J Daly: 4:42

So what So now now that you're firmly tucked in where you're at, what are you paying attention to in 2024? A lot of things are changing, we're talking about like the new normal is that there is no normal Right, right. So what are your focus is heading into 2024

Erick Kirks: 4:54

So I'll say like one of the biggest things, you know, this year that I'm here to really research more as you get a handle on this is how we are utilizing first party data. You know, that's kind of the big thing. CDP's first party data, we have traditionally been, you know, very strong and digital. And a part of that has been what I've what I've always called them as redundant retargeting, because it's if you get someone to your website, one, I get it, yeah, 98% of them aren't doing anything. And so they're just looking around, they're not converting in any way for us to follow up with them. So if they've, if they've taken the taken the step to choose me as a dealer to visit over the competitors, if I can retarget them and get them back, have a better chance of converting them into that conversation. At the end of the day, digital is just about creating an opportunity to have a conversation to sell a car, right? And so it's not about a lead or chat or text or anything. It's just our that conversation looks. So now with first party data, we have to fill in that retargeting gap. It's been lost with cookies going away?

Kyle Mountsier: 5:55

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's a big, it's a big conversation like how do we how do we fill that gap of a customer acquisition tool when we can't understand who exactly was there? Yeah, or what they're not exactly who they were, who they are, but like what they were doing everywhere else? And is that person important enough for me to continue to chase? Right,

Erick Kirks: 6:14

right. Are they actually in market? Yep. And then, you know, at the end of the day, like we have to, we have to get back to the basics, right. And so from a, from an advertising standpoint, all throughout the last few years, and things were great. We didn't really cut back a whole lot. You know, we kept going hard because we figured, you know, we have an opportunity to grow market

Paul J Daly: 6:33

share. And did that really happen? Because that's something that comes up every time something happens and people pull back? We're out here saying like, Oh, no, no, if you have the guts to do it, you're gonna come out of this far ahead. So you did that you kept your foot down on the market, thinking and believing the truth that you would grow market shares, that would happen? It is it is and I'll talk about what happened next.

Erick Kirks: 6:53

So we we already had some stores that were pretty high volume leaders in this. Sometimes we're number one in the states and house remember one of the district or region, we were able to secure some of that as competition never stays the same. Right? All right. You know, continue to doubt someone figure something out, you got to write. Right. And so we've maintained a lot of our a lot of our positions as volume leaders. And we've enhanced that some. And it's also allowed us to pick up some new points, some new acquisitions, and also some new open points. Wow. So lots of opportunity.

Paul J Daly: 7:23

Yeah. Wow, it's awesome. Well, like it was so much fun to get to know you a little bit. I know this is the beginning is probably one of many times we're gonna get to spend time so yeah, absolutely. So thanks for sharing a minute with us here sharing your story. And thanks for kind of leading the way in a lot of in a lot of senses. Great.

Erick Kirks: 7:37

Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate it. Enjoy it.

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