FRIENDLY KIA

NEW PORT RICHEY, FLORIDA

Friendly Kia

Friendly Kia is a new and used Kia sales and service center located in New Port Richey, Florida. An hour North of Tampa Bay, Florida, the dealership enjoys a steady stream of business from both the Bay-Area cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater and the smaller bedroom communities that surround it.  

BACKGROUND

Having served these communities for over 20 years, John Gilliss and his staff at Friendly Kia have placed significant emphasis on the dealership’s customer satisfaction record and dog-friendly lot and showroom policies. This commitment to customer satisfaction is evidenced by exclusive awards from Kia which sees the dealership among the top thirty in the United States.

Friendly Kia is named after Mr. Friendly himself, the owner, John Gilliss. He has owned and operated Friendly Kia since 1998 with care and compassion. He wants to make the car experience fun, and he is at Friendly Kia every day. He and his two favorite dogs, Elly and Gilly, are a permanent presence around the dealership , and their customers can certainly tell the difference. 

 

John provides his cell number right on his TV ads. He is very involved with the community and he wants to make New Port Richey the best place that it can possibly be. Every year Friendly Kia sponsors KIAFEST to raise money for the Main Street Fund in downtown New Port Richey. The Friendly Kia Trolley rolls around in various non-profit events, and they love being able to supply it to the community when it needs it. 

CUSTOMER SINCE

2015

PRODUCT SUITE

WEBSITES, DIGITAL MARKETING

Friendly Kia

THE CHALLENGE

With five other large Kia dealerships in the Tampa Bay area, Friendly Kia needed a way to aggressively position the dealership as the ideal place to go, even if it’s a longer drive out of the cities. The dealership also wanted to supplant competitors by marketing to shoppers who were considering vehicles from Kia’s myriad high-value competitors. 

Friendly Kia was also one of the very first clients to pair DealerFire paid advertising with responsive websites, creating a fluid customer experience delivering users from search to website content with creative and engaging marketing messages.

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THE SOLUTION

DealerFire experts knew this battle for “superior sales in the suburbs” required more than just targeted promotions. In coordination with Kia’s own positioning as a challenger brand, DealerFire experts sought to find a way to highlight the advantages Kia models enjoy over the competitors and put these findings in front of shoppers. Secondly, they had to show the tangible benefits of choosing Friendly Kia over other dealerships, which may be closer. 

 

Working closely with the Friendly Kia staff, DealerFire PPC specialists and content writers conducted tireless research into the models and brands shoppers were choosing instead of Kia as well as the consistently-popular models that Friendly Kia was selling.  

 

Next, DealerFire experts matched up the four most popular models Friendly Kia sells with their closest competitors from the four most popular brands that were competing with Kia. The DealerFire content specialist in charge created a custom template and model-vs-model landing pages that compared the benefits Kia models enjoy over comparable models from Kia’s biggest competitors.  

 

In addition to simply comparing the two models and showing the benefits of choosing one from Kia, these pages also featured tangible data that was added to show the value of working with Friendly Kia over other area Kia dealerships.  

Friendly Kia

THE RESULTS

Built to target lead forms rather than clicks, the paid-search campaign now earns an average of 30 new sales leads a month with an average cost of $31.00 for each lead. DealerFire content is allowing shoppers, who may not have previously considered a Kia vehicle, to see the benefits of these models and Friendly Kia has surpassed all of their local competitors, and many national ones.  

In 2018, Friendly Kia was #1 in the entire Southern region for sales and had national sales rankings as high as #3 behind only two dealerships in Los Angeles, California. 

+218%

INCREASE IN BLOG TRAFFIC

+45%

INCREASE IN CONVERSIONS ON LANDING PAGES

+129%

INCREASE IN TRAFFIC FROM LOCAL MARKET AREA

+15%

INCREASE IN LEADS FROM LOCAL MARKET AREA

Friendly Kia

"Our competitive edge has grown every month thanks to DealerFire website and digital marketing integrations, in addition to the white-glove approach to our account. As a direct result, our sales have been recognized nationally and are now #1 in the state"

- TYLER HOLT

FRIENDLY KIA, INTERNET MARKETING DIRECTOR

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