Dealers want to help luring customers to the Mazda3

LAS VEGAS -- Mazda should revamp its digital marketing strategy to keep the key Mazda3 compact car fresh in customers' minds, dealers told Mazda executives at the make meeting during the NADA convention.

Paul Passarelli, chairman of Mazda's dealer council and general manager of Garden City Mazda in Hempstead, N.Y., and Huntington Mazda in Huntington Station, N.Y., said dealers asked Mazda marketing chief Russell Wager about refining a digital marketing strategy for the Mazda3 to lure customers away from the newly redesigned Honda Civic and Hyundai Elantra.

"Mazda couldn't have better products," said Michelle Primm, managing partner of Cascade Auto Group in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. "I just wish we had better floor traffic. If we can get people in, they're sold."

Mazda reported selling 23,396 vehicles in March, down 27 percent from a year earlier, which left its first-quarter total at 17 percent behind last year's pace. This performance is "not acceptable," Robert Davis, senior vice president of U.S. operations at Mazda, told dealers during the meeting, according to people in attendance.

Sales dropped for every nameplate in Mazda's lineup in March except the new CX-3 crossover and the freshly redesigned MX-5 Miata roadster. Perhaps most worrisome for Mazda was a 31 percent drop in sales of the Mazda3. 

Despite the punishing first quarter, Mazda has set a goal of increasing U.S. deliveries 6 to 8 percent in 2016, U.S. executives told dealers during the make meeting. 

Passarelli said dealers are optimistic the newly redesigned CX-9 will lead to stronger results for Mazda. Executives told dealers the three-row crossover will arrive in dealerships in May, starting with high-end trim levels, ending a monthslong drought during which many dealers were left without large crossovers. 

Until then, Passarelli said, Mazda has resisted the urge to prop up its sales in unhealthy ways. "We're glad we're not fleeting vehicles or punching cars," Passarelli said. "Nothing like that." 

During the meeting, Mazda executives also laid out plans to deliver a better customer experience, including Drive Beyond, a training program that began with about 125 dealers in early 2016. Passarelli said dealers are optimistic about the training program, run by consultancy Strativity Group, because "it's something that any good dealer would want to learn and do."