Jake Barron, VP of Marketing, Lazydays

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00This is in the dirt with ASOTU.Paul Daly: 0:04

I'm standing here at Digital dealer, Tampa 2023 with Jake Barron, the newly appointed CMO of Lazydays RV, graduate, VP of marketing. So I got a guy gotta have a little career path. That's awesome. So you've been in the auto industry now how long

Jake Barron: 0:22

at this point I was nine years is nine years. All right.

Paul Daly: 0:25

And most of that time was spent with the coons organization, which you most recently were at, you've had the opportunity to do a lot of really innovative things in the marketing department because of the resources that you've had. Tell me a little bit about like, like what you are excited about in like spreading your wings in the RV space, in kind of like pushing innovation forward, as you have done in the past? Yes,

Jake Barron: 0:51

I think it's, it's, there's so many similarities, that there's sort of a path to follow based on what we did with auto, but so much of it is Uncharted, you know, the tech that we think is behind in auto is another five years behind in RV. And the other part of it that I'm excited about too, is that, you know, cars are a commodity people need a place to go, you know, gotta go from A to B, but RV, this is a lifestyle purchase. This is a passion purchase. I think it's just as analogous to like real estate in people's eyes as much as it is to auto. And so yeah, just a whole new customer base, a whole new shopping journey and a whole new chance to do some cool. So

Paul Daly: 1:29

we're talking when you kind of came when the position was happening. I was like, Man, that's like a target rich environment for just building community, right? Because the community has already kind of half baked in. And so from a marketers perspective, it's like, oh, it's a dream. It's a dream, right? Yeah, you're just gonna have all all those opportunities. What are some of those things that you're excited about, like building community in the market?

Jake Barron: 1:49

Yeah, you know, the beauty of lazy days is that our locations are across it, we've 20 locations and counting across the entire country. And so what that means is, it's a ton of it's a ton of opportunities to brand, our company to people that may not know it. And a chance to see different parts of the country. People use their RVs in different ways. You've got tailgaters, you've got campers, you've got the racetrack people, they're just so many different categories of audiences and different lifestyles in the RV space that we just, we get to tap into it all.

Paul Daly: 2:20

Yeah, so now a lot of the content in, in automotive and even an RV is centered around like, what is marketing doing? How are we doing with marketing? We're all thinking they were digital these days. But yet, there's still like an under resourcing a lot of times either have teams or learning or training. What's kind of your encouragement maybe to the industry on how to take a better look at the marketing assurance or the marketing teacher versus?

Jake Barron: 2:46

Yeah, I think it's I think it's understanding how to educate and evaluate the different types of spend and the different types of resources, I think, you know, there certainly is a performance based 30 Day sales cycle, level two marketing, and you obviously need to make sure that you're reaching your goals and coverage goals in that space, sir. But then there's this kind of intangible, at least to start community based, you know, content based play that shirt, you know, you're not going to you may not see that show up initially in your cost per metrics, but you should see direct traffic increase, you should see organic traffic increase it just, I think the problem is it takes time, and it takes resources. And those typically aren't things that dealers are, are overflowing with types. So I think it's just I think it's about setting the right expectations internally. And then knowing what those metrics are that you want to measure over time. Yes, it grows.

Paul Daly: 3:41

There's a short game. There's a long game and both have to work together. Yeah. Well, awesome. Well, congratulations on the new role. I'm excited to just kind of stay tuned and see what happens and see someone from auto take that on because I think it's gonna be really cool

Jake Barron: 3:53

for me too excited to do it.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:56

Thank you for listening to in the dirt with ASOTU. We love the automotive industry and the people who make it run day in and day out. We would love to connect with you more through our daily dose of fun, a free email that you can sign up for at ASOTU.com That's a s o t u.com. We put our heart and soul into it every day. Thanks again for listening. Join us next time for more Conversations in the dirt with ASOTU

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