Performance auto parts may not be on your agenda to buy, or to sell, but the automotive performance parts industry can still provide the basis for a fun and useful marketing exercise. If you follow this exercise, I ask that you look for ways that it can be related back to your industry, whether that is automotive-related or astrophysics.

Challenges of the Performance Auto Parts Industry

The performance auto parts industry, including an astonishing number of retailers, manufacturers, engineers, wholesalers, and users of automotive performance parts have each had a pretty hard time over the past couple years. The economy tanked, gas prices skyrocketed, and the world has tried to become more eco-friendly. The significance of these direct blows to the performance auto parts market makes it a great example of the importance of marketing.

Car dealers (the whole automotive marketing industry for that matter) are just an example I will use, but this is about a lot more than the automotive industry and car dealers. It applies to the automotive market, anecdotally, but this is mostly about overlooking the reasons people would want to buy from you, and being blind to what people are really looking for.

Without understanding people’s motivations and expectations, it is nearly impossible to deliver what they want. In the cases where you are able to reach the market and get the sale, it is usually only a small slice of the pie, and it is more blind luck than marketing talent. It is like driving a car with your eyes closed … you may not crash the first time, but it is just a matter of time.

Car dealers are infamous for their marketing short-sightedness, so they make a great social media example. New and used car sales organizations live or die in short bursts of business. Their inventory is usually financed using a “floor plan”, and if the inventory is not selling, the bank will make it very uncomfortable for them. This creates a challenge that is not so unlike the urgency felt in other businesses. It causes a lot of companies to focus more on an eight percent increase in new business and overlook the eighty percent increase they could achieve if they look ahead [...]