It’s no longer enough to simply implement digital retailing tools. To be competitive and close more deals, you have to understand the “why” of digital retailing. Why do consumers seek out these experiences? Why do they choose one dealership’s digital retailing over another? And, most importantly, why should you pay attention to consumers’ answers to these questions?
Amanda Hilerio, eCommerce Performance Manager at Dealer.com, recently spoke to dealers about how to take their digital retailing game to the next level. She discussed five talking points to help dealers attract more car sales leads and get the most out of their digital retailing investment.
Consumer behavior trends and the factors affecting consumer decisions
Why you should pay attention to these consumer trends
How to align your processes with consumer trends
Technology integrations that make your processes easier
How to connect your digital storefront to your physical dealership
Watch the webinar to see how your dealership can connect with more dealer leads through your digital retailing experience.
As the automotive sales industry shifts toward offering more digital buying experiences, dealerships need to do more to stand out from the increasing crowd of competition. It’s no longer enough to simply offer a digital buying experience. Your dealership needs to seriously consider how to be different. That means appealing to auto sales leads with a digital buying experience that’s appealing and gives them reason to choose your dealership over your competitors.
B. Malaczewski, manager of Performance Management at Dealer.com, recently spoke to dealers about the importance of differentiating the digital buying process. She offered valuable insight into what motivates car dealer leads to choose one digital shopping experience over another and how you can promote your brand to best appeal to buyers. Key takeaways from the presentation included:
A list of essential and optional steps for your digital shopping experience
How to decide which digital processes are right for your dealership and your customers
Branding considerations that will set you apart from the competition
How to maximize communication on your digital storefront for digital shopping
How to leverage connected Cox Automotive brands to differentiate your dealership online
Watch the webinar to see how your dealership can stand out from the crowd to offer a distinct digital buying experience.
By Katie Wilkins, Dealer.com Senior Director of Product Management
It’s a fact of dealership life today—vehicle inventory shortages will be with us for a while. As you adjust your business strategies, your shoppers are also likely adjusting their plans accordingly. According to a 2022 Cox Automotive UX research survey, 37% of consumers say they are postponing their next vehicle purchase.
That means your website now needs to be more than just VDPs, which today may be leading shoppers to the dead end of a no results page. Your website also needs to include ways for shoppers to educate themselves about alternative vehicle and buying options. Here are a few ways we recommend updating your Dealer.com website to optimize your shoppers’ experience.
Make the “Vehicle of Interest” form easy to find.
We recommend you provide opportunities on the search results page to easily get to a “Vehicle of Interest” form. Adding a banner to the content area on the bottom of the search results page that links to a “Custom Build” or “Find It for Me” form is a straightforward way to accomplish this. If limited results are returned or shoppers aren’t finding what they are looking for, you are giving them an obvious path to next steps.
We’ve seen that dealership websites that have multiple entrance points to the “Find It for Me” and “Custom Build” forms have a higher proportion of their visits reaching these forms. These forms often convert well, with 4% lead submission rates (2022 Cox Automotive UX Research Survey).
To support shopper requests for vehicles your dealership may not have in stock, a new “Vehicle of Interest” form allows shoppers to share details on the vehicle they are looking for. This gives you an opportunity to stay connected with that consumer while you wait for the right inventory to arrive.
Additionally, the Quick Quote tool allows your customers to select their preferred year, model, and color, and register their interest for new inventory. This is another way to generate new lead opportunities not attached to an in-stock vehicle. You can even edit content areas on this page to add frequently asked questions or details on next steps based on your dealership’s process such as the example here.
List vehicles before they arrive on your lot.
Be sure to include vehicles not yet on your lot in your inventory feed, presenting them on your website with an “in-transit” badge. You can also enable the new “in-transit” facet to allow shoppers to specifically filter searches for those vehicles.
Educate shoppers on their buying options.
Remember, you aren’t the only one who is unsure what to do with this low inventory situation. Your shoppers are likely to need some guidance too. Make sure they are aware of all of their buying options by building a page using Page Designer that explains them, like this one. We suggest linking to these pages in the navigation, as well as from the homepage and search results pages.
These paths-to-buy pages should include information on when to choose each path, FAQs addressing concerns (like timeline, price, and what to expect), a contact form, and a phone number. See examples here and here. If you use Dealer.com Managed Content and Creative services, talk to your Campaign Coordinator about campaigns targeted at this issue.
We also encourage you to consider adding chat functionality to your website if you haven’t already so shoppers have another path to contact you for help finding a vehicle. Dealer.com recently announced a new partnership with ActivEngage to give you industry-leading technology, whether you want to manage chat yourself or have ActivEngage’s team of customer engagement experts handle it. Most importantly, remind shoppers your team is there to assist them in finding their perfect vehicle.
The beginning of a new year is always an inspiring time for me. While I’m always focused on continuous improvement, there’s something about flipping the calendar that makes the new possibilities and opportunities ahead more exciting than ever. It’s a great time to reflect and set an intention for the year ahead.
I’ve been thinking about what our amazing team at Dealer.com achieved in 2021. We’ve been relentlessly working hard for our dealers, helping them market themselves more easily and effectively. That work has taken many forms, including maintaining excellence in our customer support teams, expanding our marketing channels, and updating products like Automotive Marketing Platform powered by VinSolutions and Page Designer—targeted at making our platform even better, faster, and easier to use.
We’ve also continued to embrace the rapid evolution of car buying with investments into a more flexible, digital buying process. Dealer.com’s Accelerate My Deal is an integral part of Cox Automotive Digital Retailing, a solution for dealers who want to own every purchase path, meeting consumers based on their buying preferences.
And yet, though we’ve made so much great progress on behalf of our dealers, there is so much left to do! I’ve been thinking a lot about to how to tackle the work ahead, and one common theme keeps rising to the top for me: premium consumer experiences.
The Dealer.com team shares the goal of making every experience a consumer has with a dealer—whether online, in-store, or both—an outstanding one. In today’s retail environment, those standout experiences separate the winning dealerships from the stagnant ones.
With that in mind, I’m challenging my team and my dealership partners to do everything with a singular focus: make this the year of the premium consumer experience. Here are a few key action items I’m encouraging my team and my dealer partners to take to help us all get there.
Implement Tools and Processes that Make Your Work Easier
I’m challenging my team to find and implement tools that help them complete critical projects faster and better, and I’m challenging our dealers to do the same. Think about the various digital marketing tools you use. When is the last time you critically evaluated your processes for using those tools? Have new enhancements been released that could make your job easier if you made small process changes?
As I mentioned, we’ve made some meaningful enhancements to our foundational tools this year. We’ve launched a new Page Designer that makes designing your dealership website more intuitive, expanded channels in Automotive Marketing Platform to make your marketing more cohesive and effective, and aligned and integrated Accelerate My Deal and Cox Automotive Digital Retailing to make deal workflows even smoother. If you haven’t updated your processes to incorporate these new capabilities, you’re missing out on opportunities to improve—and on opportunities to deliver the best possible consumer experiences.
Prioritize Data and Meaningful Integrations
You probably know by now that reliable consumer data is critical to success, not only for automotive digital marketing but also for overall dealership profitability. The right data enables you to generate more automobile leads by personalizing every touchpoint a consumer has with your dealership, from a display ad to deal making. In 2022, I’m challenging everyone to keep the value of consumer data in focus.
For us at Dealer.com, that means taking advantage of the breadth and depth of the Cox Automotive data network, which includes insights from two out of three U.S. car buyers (2020 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey). For your dealerships, it means making sure you’re set up to successfully act on all the data and insights in your systems.
You must have meaningful integrations to make data actionable. And it’s not just about integrations between marketing and sales tools (though of course those are important). You have to think about the data and system integrations between all your dealership departments. When marketing, sales, service, and operations are all in sync, you win. My team at Dealer.com is continuing to stay close to our peers at VinSolutions, Xtime, and Dealertrack DMS to continue bringing your dealership departments and data closer together.
Evaluate the Value of Your Partnerships
There’s no way around it—the right tools and the right data are critical to providing premium consumer experiences. But there’s a third critical element: the right people. Without the right people, even the very best tools and data will fall short.
As you launch your 2022 marketing plans, I encourage you to take note of the role your marketing partners play. Are they making your job easier and acting as a true partner in your success? Or are they little more than technical support?
At Dealer.com, true, meaningful partnership with our dealerships is at the core of our business. Your success is our success. With the right people behind premium consumer experiences, we all win.
I couldn’t end a post about reflection and inspiration without saying how immensely grateful we are for our dealer clients. I continue to be personally inspired by your resilience, creativity, and success, and we couldn’t be more excited to continue to drive success together in 2022.
