BHPH Marketing Independent Dealer Starts Marketing Firm to Help BHPH

By Jeffrey Bellant

Texas independent dealer Kendra Brown went from the nightmare of the pandemic to starting a new marketing company she calls The Dream Team Media Company.

When the pandemic hit and companies were upended, people scrambled for ways to boost business, earn extra income or look for new profit centers.

It was no different for Kendra Brown and her husband, Charles, who own Brown Family Auto Sales, a buy-here, pay-here dealership in Houston, Texas.

The pandemic’s detour would take Kendra from her BHPH dealership to helping franchise dealers market their own BHPH shops.

When it comes to paying the bills, necessity truly is the mother of invention.

“In 2020, we needed to find additional income for our family,” Kendra said. “So, while I still managed our dealership’s bookkeeping and marketing, I stepped outside the dealership to work in a digital marketing agency where I worked with franchise dealers.”

Brown became an account manager and brought what she learned while handling digital marketing at Brown Family Auto sales.

“I took what I learned about digital marketing on my own at our dealership and just kind of blew it up times 100,” Brown said.

“Being in an agency setting, I took a crash course in analytics, tags and websites – all of it.”

Working in a couple of agencies opened her eyes.

“That’s when I really started to see the strategy side of marketing and all of the ways you can integrate your sales objectives or operational objectives and processes, with your marketing and really create an efficient and intentional marketing strategy,” Brown said.

For smaller businesses that cannot afford a dedicated marketing department, they just wing it.

“It’s a lot of, ‘let’s just put some money here because someone said it works,’” Brown said. “When they say, ‘it works,’ they mean they get a lot of impressions.”

On the agency side, Brown could analyze dealers’ budgets, their performance and how it related to sales.

“You could see there were inefficiencies and where money was wasted and why,” she said.

She has strong advice for a dealer on a marketplace site.

“Stop wasting your money,” Brown said. “Get off those sites.”

Eventually, she moved from working with dealers on the agency side to doing her own consulting.

“I had dealers who wanted me to help build their digital departments within their dealerships,” Brown said.

In 2021, Brown partnered with another woman she had worked with at the same agency.

The partner received an MBA in analytics, which blended well with Brown’s skill set.

“We cut our teeth on paid media management, from Google to TV and radio,” she said. “We created these campaigns for franchise and tier 2 dealers.”

Now they are The Dream Team Media Co. She’s already working with dealers.

“I wouldn’t want to work with competing dealers in managing their advertising, but I don’t currently have competing dealers,” she said. “They’re all over the country.”

But Brown said the firm is still in what she calls the “exploratory phase” in terms of what their services will look like and for which market.

“We’re really focused on independent dealers and providing services that the buy-here, pay-here community doesn’t have,” she said.

This summer, the firm will build a website experience for the BHPH customer and it’s going to be very different, she said.

“We’re customizing the search areas on a website that will cater to people looking for financing,” she said.

“There are different actions people take on a website that can tell you what their buying intention is, based on what they click on.”

Dream Team Media will set it up so that when a BHPH dealership receives a lead, they can start the underwriting and in-house process right away because they will know how that customer is searching.

For example, a typical customer might begin a search looking for a vehicle and a monthly payment.

“So, if a BHPH customer is looking for, say, a down payment, we’ll reverse the calculator so they can input their information and receive a down payment,” she said.

Also, the goal is to change the online experience to one designed for a mobile device.

“Typically, a customer has to scroll down a screen to see more, but we’re going to change it so that it’s a more horizontal experience, which is better for a mobile device,” Brown said.

She added the product for BHPH dealers so it will be at a price point they can afford.

Another benefit is how Dream Team Media Co. will create a web structure designed especially for BHPH.

“Traditionally, web structure for a BHPH dealer has been created to optimize the integration with a Dealer Management System (DMS),” Brown said. “But your website should be optimized to integrate with whatever marketing system you use.

“So, if you use an agency or do it all yourself and want to integrate with Facebook or sites that upload your pictures – that site should not be as difficult as it currently is for BHPH.

“We want to open up the integration capabilities for marketing for BHPH websites.”

Brown said her dealership has struggled with these same pain points and want other dealers to avoid them.

The problem is even vendors who can service the smaller dealer, they don’t understand what the BHPH dealer needs or understands.

“Let’s build a website for these people so that they can do whatever marketing they see fits their own business,” she said.

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