Gaining insights into auto industry best practices is crucial. Understanding the car buyer’s journey is an essential step for automotive marketing professionals looking to drive engagement and boost sales. The 2023 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey study has provided a wealth of information that can significantly enhance your digital marketing strategy. Here, we distill the top five insights and actionable steps you can take to elevate your efforts.
1. Vehicle Ownership is Not Going Anywhere
One of the most eye-opening findings from the study is that vehicle ownership remains a priority for most consumers. An impressive 91% of consumers intend to use their own vehicle as their primary mode of transportation in the future, a significant increase from 77% in 2018. Additionally, fewer consumers believe ownership is unnecessary, with this belief dropping from 43% in 2018 to 35% in 2023.
Actionable Steps:
Highlight the benefits of vehicle ownership in your marketing campaigns. Emphasize the control, convenience, and safety personal transportation provides.
Create content that reassures potential buyers about the value of owning a vehicle, especially in a post-pandemic world where safety and personal space have become paramount.
2. Satisfaction with the Shopping Journey Increased
Consumers are increasingly satisfied with their car-buying journey, both for new and used vehicles. Satisfaction for new car buyers has risen to 73%, up from 70% in 2022. Similarly, satisfaction for used car buyers has improved to 68%, up from 58% in 2022.
Three key factors contributed to this rise: better vehicle selection, with only 39% feeling there was limited inventory in 2023 compared to 56% in 2022; better prices, as although prices remain high, dissatisfaction decreased slightly from 54% in 2022 to 49% in 2023; and increased dealer outreach, with more consumers reporting being contacted by dealers with appealing incentives or deals (17%, up from 14% in 2022).
Actionable Steps:
Ensure your inventory is well-stocked and diverse to meet various customer needs.
Train your sales team to reach out proactively with personalized deals and incentives.
Enhance your digital presence by showcasing your inventory online with detailed descriptions and competitive pricing.
3. Improved Online Efficiency
Shoppers are spending less time overall on the car-buying process. The time spent shopping decreased by 1 hour and 8 minutes, from 14:39 in 2022 to 13:31 in 2023. This shorter window means you must be more strategic and targeted in your interactions.
Actionable Steps:
Optimize your website for quick, efficient browsing. Ensure it’s mobile-friendly, fast-loading, and easy to navigate.
Use personalized marketing to keep shoppers engaged throughout their journey. Leverage data to deliver relevant content and offers at each touchpoint.
Utilize third-party sites: Consumers trust these sites for unbiased information. Make sure your listings and reviews on these platforms are up-to-date and positive.
4. The Retailing Experience was Top Notch
Satisfaction with the overall shopping journey surged in 2023, with overall satisfaction jumping from 61% to 69%. Satisfaction with dealerships increased by 10%, and 21% rated their experience as better than their last purchase. Several factors contributed to this improvement, including heightened vehicle availability, the return of incentives, and a shift toward a more digital process.
Actionable Steps:
Encourage enhanced lead submissions: The more detailed the information you gather from potential buyers, the better you can personalize their experience.
Invest in digital retailing tools: Provide a seamless experience between your online platform and in-person dealership interactions.
Promote your inventory effectively through digital channels, ensuring that high-demand vehicles and deals are prominently featured.
5. Digital Retailing Continues to be Highly Beneficial
Consumers are increasingly leaning towards an omnichannel experience, seamlessly blending online and in-person steps to create a more cohesive and integrated shopping journey. This approach allows for greater convenience, flexibility, and personalization, catering to the diverse needs and preferences of modern consumers.
Actionable Steps:
Offer multiple buying pathways: Allow consumers to choose how they want to interact—whether online, in-person, or a mix of both.
Ensure seamless transitions: Make sure the deal carries forward smoothly, regardless of whether the customer starts their journey online or in-person.
Focus on customer satisfaction: Modern dealers who prioritize a seamless, omnichannel experience see significant payoffs in consumer satisfaction and profitability.
Ready to Take Your Digital Marketing to the Next Level?
The insights from the 2023 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey study provide a roadmap for automotive marketing professionals to enhance their strategies. By implementing these top five takeaways, you can ensure your digital marketing efforts are more effective, engaging, and ultimately, profitable.
For a deeper dive into these insights, download our top five takeaways and start transforming your digital marketing strategy today.
As the digital age continues to advance at lightning speed, consumer preferences are evolving just as quickly. Understanding these shifts is crucial in providing an excellent customer experience while driving business success. Based on insights from the Cox Automotive 2023 Digitization of Car Buying Study, it becomes evident that convenience, choice, and flexibility are paramount for today’s consumers, including in the automotive industry.
Convenience: The Cornerstone of Modern Purchasing
Consumers today are juggling busy schedules and expect brands to accommodate their need for convenience. In the realm of car buying, this means offering a seamless, end-to-end digital retailing experience. According to the Digitization of Car Buying study, nearly all dealers believe digital retailing positively impacts their business, particularly in customer experience and satisfaction.
Key Insights:
High Satisfaction: Consumers appreciate digital retailing solutions, with personal connections emerging as a significant benefit.
Seamless Experience: Shoppers prefer a seamless transition from online to in-store without having to repeat information, emphasizing the need for integrated systems that facilitate this.
Frictionless Process: Digital tools in-store enable a frictionless sales process, saving time for both customers and dealers.
Providing a convenient shopping experience will keep your customers coming back.
Choice: Empowering Consumers with Options
In an era where personalization is king, offering a variety of options is not a luxury but a necessity. Consumers want to feel that their unique needs and preferences are being met, and this extends to their car-buying journey.
Key Insights:
Online Purchase Process: Forty-nine percent of dealers are offering customers the ability to complete each step of the deal online, providing the choice to engage with the buying process in a way that suits them best.
Hybrid Environment: Many shoppers appreciate a hybrid shopping environment where they can start online and finish in-store. Dealers are embracing new tools to enhance this experience.
When consumers have options, they feel empowered and valued, making them more likely to choose your dealership over others.
Flexibility: Adapting to Consumer Needs
Flexibility in purchasing options isn’t just about offering various channels; it’s about adapting to the consumer’s changing needs and preferences. The Cox Automotive report highlights the importance of digital interactions and the willingness of shoppers to provide personal information for a more tailored experience.
Key Insights:
Personalized Interactions: Shoppers are willing to share detailed information like income, credit score, and vehicle usage data to enable an ideal, personalized experience.
Open Communication: Consumers often reach out to dealers with deal-related questions remotely while preferring to manage the later stages of the deal in person. It’s important be ready for how and when consumers want to engage.
By being adaptable, you can meet your customers exactly where they are, making the entire buying process smoother and more enjoyable.
The Value of Multi-Channel Purchasing Options
Whether it’s through a robust e-commerce platform or digital tools in-store, multiple channels allow consumers to engage with your brand in the manner that suits them best, enhancing overall satisfaction.
Ecommerce has revolutionized the car-buying process. Consumers can now browse inventory, compare prices, and even finalize deals from the comfort of their homes. This level of convenience and flexibility is invaluable, especially when dealing with high-ticket items like vehicles (read this blog about where we think automotive ecommerce is today).
Enhanced Customer Experience: Ecommerce platforms streamline the buying process, reducing friction points and making it easier for consumers to make informed decisions.
Consistency is Key: Ensuring price and inventory consistency across all channels is crucial. Discrepancies can lead to frustration and a negative customer experience.
Data-Driven Insights: Online interactions provide valuable data that can help improve accuracy and the verification process, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction.
Giving Car Buyers What They Want
Today, consumers value convenience, choice, and flexibility more than ever. Leveraging these insights to enhance your digital retailing capabilities can lead to significant business benefits. By offering a seamless, multi-channel purchasing experience, you can meet the evolving needs of your customers and stay ahead of the competition.
Making the buying process as smooth and enjoyable as possible will leave a lasting positive impression on your customers.
Ready to take your dealership to the next level? Embrace multi-channel retailing and offer your customers the convenience, choice, and flexibility they crave. With Cox Automotive solutions, you enhance customer satisfaction and drive your business forward in this digital age.
We are committed to partnering with our clients to provide a best-in-class website user experience and have created a comprehensive playbook sharing just how. Discover key metrics for website performance, learn how to assess your site’s status, and explore strategies to enhance user engagement.
The automotive industry is constantly evolving. To keep up with the changing demands of the industry, the annual Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey (CBJ) allows dealers and OEMs to stay informed about the state of car buyer satisfaction with the overall vehicle shopping and buying experience.
The 14th annual Car Buyer Journey study was released earlier this year, based on nearly 3,000 respondents who purchased or leased vehicles in the previous year. It sheds light on two significant points: 1.) The industry is NORMALIZING, and 2.) Dealers and third-party aggregators are RESILIENT.
While we all might define ‘normal’ differently, particularly because of inflation, record profits, inventory fluctuations, and rapid digitization, we may finally be transitioning from those not so ideal times into a more stable place. The CBJ findings mark a turning point.
Let’s explore the top 5 takeaways from the study and how they can contribute to enhancing your digital marketing strategy.
#1: Vehicle Ownership is Not Going Anywhere
91% of consumers told us they intend to use their own vehicle as their primary mode of transportation in the future, up significantly from 2018 (77%). With ride sharing and vehicle subscription trending in the last 5-8 years, there were predictions that consumers were moving away from personal ownership. However, we’re seeing the opposite.
With personal transportation needs rising due to personal safety concerns since the pandemic, we see personal vehicle ownership is here to stay.
Fewer consumers agree that ownership is NOT necessary (down from 43% in 2018 to 35%). And, nearly all consumers tell us they intend to leverage their own vehicle as their primary mode of transportation in the future (91% vs. just 9% who plan to use an alternative).
WHAT TO DO: It’s more important than ever to enhance the customer experience – with personal vehicle usage up and the desire to own more than one car. In fact, there was a 36% increase in the number of buyers motivated to own more than one car in their household from 2022 to 2023. Ask yourself:
What re-targeting campaigns are in place to retain your existing customers?
What advertising strategy do you have in place to attract new customers?
Leverage your CRM and activate your first-party data. Reach out to consumers in their preferred method and follow up with past customers to ensure they know how much you appreciate their business.
#2: Satisfaction with the Shopping Journey Increased
Overall satisfaction with the shopping experience is higher for both new and used car buyers: 73% for new (70% in 2022), and 68% for used (58% in 2022). The increase was influenced by three factors:
Better vehicle selection. Fewer consumers felt that there was limited inventory to choose from—39% in 2023 compared to 56% in 2022.
Better prices. 49% of consumers said prices were higher than expected in 2023 compared to 54% in 2022. However, these numbers are still significantly higher than they were in 2021. This indicates that affordability is still a pain point and even more so among the price-sensitive used buyers.
More dealer outreach with good deals. There’s been a significant increase in the number of consumers who mentioned that a dealer contacted them with some appealing incentives or some type of deal – 17% compared to 14% in 2022 and 12% in 2021.
WHAT TO DO: It’s no secret that as inventory rebounded, so did shopper satisfaction with the overall purchase journey – now, with incentives rolling back in, ensure you are getting the right message in front of the right customer at the right time and in the right way.
This starts with taking an in-depth look at your digital marketing strategy and focusing on your:
Website: Ensure your website showcases relevant information your shoppers want to see. You have a short window to grab their attention, so your website should be personalized, easy-to-navigate, and data-driven.
Advertising: Ensure you are utilizing the correct channels to target your in-market shoppers and serve them the information they want to see. Dealer.com’s Machine Learning and Real-time Bidding platform can analyze prior ad performance, vehicle detail page engagement, and browsing trends in real-time to ensure your ads are served to the most relevant buyers in your market.
#3: Improved Online Efficiency
Shoppers spent 1 hour and 8 minutes less when shopping in 2023 (13:31) than 2022 (14:39) as the experience became more efficient. This time spent means you have a shorter window to influence shoppers during their journey, so you must be more strategic and targeted. Delivering personalized content during the entire purchase process to keep shoppers engaged is crucial.
Third-party sites have been resilient throughout the pandemic and chip shortage – consumers find them to be trustworthy, reliable, and unbiased. We found in our data that buyers are 57% more likely to visit third-party sites exclusively without having to visit the OEM sites especially among used buyers.
WHAT TO DO: Take the data and insights you receive from third-party sites such as Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book™ and ACTIVATE them. These insights can be used to personalize messaging to stand out as the one to do business with because you know the shoppers wants and needs and can provide them with the experience they’re seeking.
#4: The Retailing Experience was Top Notch
Overall satisfaction with the shopping journey surged in 2023 from 61% to 69%. With inventory levels returning to pre-pandemic levels, your buyers are back heavily shopping your vehicle inventory. Contributing factors include heightened vehicle availability, the return of incentives, and a continued shift toward a more digital process.
Encouraging shoppers to submit an enhanced lead yields higher satisfaction than a basic lead. In fact, satisfaction with the dealership was 10% higher AND 21% more rated their experience as better than their last purchase in 2023. The more you know about your shoppers, the more you can provide a personalized experience, and in turn, shoppers will be more satisfied with their interactions.
WHAT TO DO: Elevate customer satisfaction to new levels by promoting enhanced lead submissions from your shoppers. The more shopper information you have means you can foster a more personalized experience that ultimately results in higher satisfaction throughout the buying journey.
#5: Digital Retailing Continues to be Highly Beneficial
Buyers are moving toward an omnichannel experience—a mix of both in-person and online steps. The key is to have different ways to buy based on the shopper’s preference, then ensure that the deal carries forward no matter online or in-person. Seamlessness is the name of the game, and the modern dealers that make this the focus of their strategy are seeing some pretty big payoffs in both consumer satisfaction and driving profits.
WHAT TO DO: There’s ongoing opportunity for improvement in dealmaking processes, particularly with the ongoing shift towards digital retailing. 81% of shoppers surveyed said digital retailing improved the overall buying experience. Consider mapping out the necessary steps for your dealership to embrace a more digital future, while addressing current gaps such as financing. This includes integrating digital retailing solutions seamlessly onto your website and providing comprehensive content to educate customers on utilizing the available tools effectively.
Adapting to consumer behavior, regardless of economic challenges or industry shifts, is key to staying ahead. By aligning your dealership and digital marketing approach with the desires, needs, and preferences of today’s shoppers, you can provide a customer experience that not only attracts their attention but also leads to successful sales.
Utilize these insights to elevate your digital marketing efforts and access our latest infographic for a bite-sized overview of the top five takeaways.
The online shopping landscape has changed. The era of flexible car buying options is here and dealerships must adapt to meet evolving consumer preferences.
Across the internet, today’s online shopping experience allows consumers to effortlessly add groceries to their online carts and pick them up at the store or have them delivered. It’s all about choice and convenience, and increasingly they expect a similar flexible retailing experience when shopping for cars.
As a first step, embracing an omnichannel strategy can help encourage consumers to rethink their car shopping journey.
At Cox, we define omnichannel as not limiting the shopper to choosing an online or offline experience. A consumer can begin their deal online, take it offline, and even go back online again, moving freely between the two to complete their deal.
According to the 2022 Cox Automotive Digitization of End-to-End Retail Study, 92% of shoppers say they will complete their next vehicle purchase entirely online or through a combination of online and in-store.
We see trends toward omnichannel because consumers still want the choice to talk with a person at the dealership to learn some of the cars’ features, do a test drive, and understand their finance options. Regardless of where the purchase starts (online or in-store) or where a deal is completed, retailers need to make the process as efficient, streamlined and fluid as possible.
Our products and solutions at Cox Automotive allow you to offer the flexibility car shoppers expect. Streamlining the online to offline experience will be key, and preparing your dealership should start today.
Implementing Flexible Retailing Experiences
Achieving an effective flexible retailing experience requires careful planning and strategic implementation. Here are some key strategies to consider:
Use digital and AI-powered tools that provide a single view of the customer, predict what they like based on their behaviors, and extend a personalized experience if they transition into the store.
Keep shoppers’ information safe and let them know you take their privacy seriously.
Make shoppers feel more confident by using digital tools in the store. This makes it easier to go over information they’ve already given online and make sure everything is correct.
Tell shoppers to review financing options on your website. They can pick extras and send in their financial details to get a good idea of the total cost, including fees and taxes.
Source: Cox Automotive 2023 Digitization of Car Buying
Ecommerce is an Essential Ingredient
Looking at retail flexibility as a spectrum, shoppers range from wanting to do everything in-store to wanting to do everything online.
True automotive ecommerce is a full end-to-end online experience from vehicle selection through to the purchase and even delivery (read this blog about where we think automotive ecommerce is today.)
The combination of ecommerce—which offers true online checkout—and a flexible shopping experience has created a new model of retail that combines the best of both worlds. In the shift toward ecommerce, it is vital to adapt to online shoppers’ needs, and implementing a flexible retail strategy will increase your chances of success.
Ecommerce, powered by technology, automation, and machine learning, allows a consumer to complete their transaction at their own pace and to provide the relevant information as needed, whether that’s within the next week or the next month.
Dealers who are ready to implement ecommerce today are at the forefront of industry innovation, catering to changing preferences, creating a customer-centric shopping experience, businesses can unlock new potential in retail and gain a competitive edge.
For dealerships who are looking to thrive by offering flexible shopping experiences, an omnichannel approach with the integration of true ecommerce is essential. By partnering with Cox Automotive, dealers can launch advanced functionality to elevate the car buying experience and stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving market.
Listen, I get it! Staying on top of all-things advertising can be a daunting task. This is a fast-moving space that seemingly evolves daily. From Google rolling out new campaign-types each quarter, like pMax+, to Meta offering verified business checkmarks that help customers feel confident they’re dealing with a legit brand, all these changes affect your advertising in very real ways. We constantly see new advertising capabilities surface that can help dealers reach their customers in what can feel like an endless space.
However, taking your advertising to the next level does not have to be a massive, time-consuming evolution. It is worth remembering that there is no such thing as “perfection” in this sometimes-confusing space – that is an illusion – we aim for progress!
Something I’ve learned in my years as Director of Advertising at Dealer.com is that many dealers are only on the cusp of what their advertising strategy can do. Excuse me for taking advantage of a few overused clichés, but there is almost certainly some low-hanging fruit that could mean more traffic on your website and your showroom floor. I’m not talking about reinventing the wheel here or buying a whole social media platform just to change the name to a single letter for the sake of headlines.
A stale strategy is paramount to failure. But there are steps you can take to beef up your advertising strategy, small things that we can do today can have an impact.
As we have known for decades, most organisms will grow to the size of their environment, reaching out towards the limits of their domain and then slowing their expansive growth at the edges, becoming rigid – a marketing campaign is no different. Like most successful species, innovative advertising strategies need to be elastic, have room to flex, and be ready to push your boundaries with a diversified media plan.
Allocating just 8-12% of your monthly advertising budget to evolving your marketing and communications channels can reveal a lot about the topography of your space. You’ll get a better view of what works for you – and what doesn’t – and how much room you have to grow. Try something new for 45 to 60 days, assess the results, and pivot accordingly. Avenues that you wrote off a few years ago may prove fruitful, or perhaps a channel you hadn’t considered is now blowing up because of technological strides in targeting or audience capabilities.
While doing channel discovery testing (which is distinctly different than traditional A/B asset testing) it is important to note that what works for some advertisers doesn’t always work for everyone. And what worked in the past won’t always work in the future! So many external factors affect the market and buzzy trends tend to capture industry headlines. But continued and repeated channel testing can often lead to breakthroughs, even on a seasonal basis.
Why are you not using data?
In today’s ecosystem, the key to staying in front of high-value car shoppers is with first-party data and audience targeting is the keystone. First-party data allow you to:
Predict Auto Shopper and Consumer Behaviors
Gain Audience Insights
Personalize Content and Advertisements
Define and Map Out the Customer Journey
First-party data also gives you valuable insights into audience demographics, product-interest engagement metrics, lease or financing options, and service specials, just to name a few. This data also informs us on what customer behaviors are prevalent within an individual’s web activity, which gives you the ability to not only understand more about your consumer but have a clearer picture of how you can effectively reach them at the right time. These are insights that third-party cookies or purchased list data just can’t compete with.
How many of you are using your own data?
There are three areas that immediately come to mind when thinking about how to activate the first-party data that you probably already have at your dealership, information you’ve been collecting since the first day you opened your doors.
Your CRM – This is direct access to your customers’ behavior and can help you with lead management and marketing. Your CRM can be a treasure trove of information on your customers that you can harness to get your message in front of the right people.
Your Website – Uncover the pages that shoppers have visited on your website, what specific offerings or vehicles they’ve looked at, when they signed up for email specials or price alert notifications, or any of the other ways they’ve engaged with your site.
Your Email Engagement Strategy – Your consumer emails give you insights into what your target audience engages with. You’d be shocked if I told you most dealers don’t focus on analyzing and activating these insights. You can have a clear picture of what that consumer is interested in so you can use it to tailor your marketing to them and create those critical personalized experiences.
If you’re already advertising with Cox then you have access to our huge dataset, hyper IP targeting, and cookie-less household addresses. But setting aside just an hour per month to format and upload the info you already have, which we layer onto our own data, can help give a more accurate picture of your customer’s path to purchase, and that’s something we can really use!
We live in a visual world, now more than ever.
You heard about Barbenheimer, right?
Here’s a secret; every agency uses the same providers. Google, Facebook, Instagram, CTV/OTT, etc. are essentially the same platform no matter who is at the wheel. What sets agencies apart is their data – which we talked about above – and the ability to manage creative, especially when it comes to visual mediums like CTV/OTT and Display ads, and creative collaboration is a big part of any successful equation. Fresh, professional-looking creative can make or break the success of a campaign.
One thing we’ve seen over the years is that, despite best intentions, visual assets often become an afterthought for many clients. The focus of strategy discussions invariably drifts to campaign budget allocations, search ad copy, or keywords, but these things are slowly disappearing as our world increasingly becomes more bite-sized and visually oriented. Google’s Performance Max campaign type relies heavily on custom static creative and video messaging, as does CTV/OTT, and Cox’s proprietary audience-targeted display and dynamic remarketing.
Evergreen Visual Assets – In this new world, it has become imperative that dealers have evergreen assets that act as an anchor for these newer, visually engaging channels. Crafting an overarching message about your business, that speaks to the customer not about individual products but branding of the buying process, must be the core of these campaigns. From there, we can build on the message for more seasonal messaging that is more surgical in nature; monthly specials, limited-time deals, or rare inventory, to name just a handful.
Whether you supply your own custom assets or have our Content and Creative teams build them out, it is important not to let this slip through the cracks.
Build on momentum. Finding what works for your business can be uniquely individual. We can analyze broad consumer data to get the broad strokes, but identifying what has worked for your dealership, in your market, is the key to unlocking the inertia within the data. Using the Email Engagement Strategy above as an example, we can see what types of imagery and verbiage worked well to guide our digital strategy. Did people respond to a specific deal or phrasing, did they respond to a specific product image or color, or is the market culture focused on a specific topic that is locally relevant?
Our Barbie meme above show just how much outside “momentum” can affect outcomes.
With a little coordination, the momentum you get from a well-crafted marketing blast, physical mailer, or even signage can all be reproduced in your digital campaigns, especially as the industry moves quickly towards a more-visual mindset.
At the end of the day, though, the best way to find success is to test, fail, and test again. And make no mistake, just because an idea isn’t a homerun this time doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it! Frequent testing and refinement, combined with continually evolving audience data, is the new normal for digital advertising.
As the majority of us know, there are really big benefits to both having and collecting first-party data for your business. Think of your contacts, your customers, your leads, your website, your insights, your predictions… Everything that you have been collecting since the day your doors first opened and website went live at your dealership.
Your revenue sits in that first-party data. Or more importantly the strategy tied to it. And you can unlock many benefits and advantages by learning new ways of how to activate that data. Especially with a cookieless future quickly approaching on the horizon. In an ever-shifting automotive industry and world, your first-party data will help you stay a step ahead.
When it comes to your business and marketing goals, it’s essential to understand and map out where your dealership or brand is today, and where you’ve set your sites on going. Data can and should be a leading driver to help you successfully do this.
So together, let’s take a closer look at how your activated data can help you stand out to your ideal customer in your marketing efforts, mix-match-modernize your strategy, and help you map out your step by step as digital retailing and our industry bridges towards an eCommerce future.
It’s time to re-strategize how you’re activating your dealership’s data
Part of activating your data is interpreting and acting on the insights, especially when it comes to what your consumer wants, needs and prefers. However, your existing methods of activating your first-party data don’t quite work the same way anymore.
It’s time to revamp your strategy to accommodate the changing landscape of the industry and connect to new shopper insights.
Educate and Demonstrate: Remember, how we do business, where we do business and who we do business with has and will continue to shift. You need to make sure that your marketing strategy includes educating and demonstrating to the consumer you have the cars, service, experience and capabilities they want and are willing to show them how to use them.
Some of these consumers will be existing customers, but they might need reminders of how your business has evolved. And some of these consumers will be part of the heightened 56% of cross-shopping auto buyers who are open to and entertaining a different brand and type of car. Educate and demonstrate the advantages of doing business with you and what makes your brand the one they should choose. They’re new and haven’t had the first-hand experience yet, so give them the virtual experience and highlight hallmark values and experiences your brand offers.
Communicate the Way TheyPrefer: If you’re not communicating the way your consumer prefers, you are definitely missing out on business and probably losing some of your current customers. This year’s Cox Automotive annual Car Buyer Journey Study revealed that for the two growing segments of in-market auto shoppers, their preferences for communication steer them towards who they ultimately decide to do business with.
And what they prefer when it comes to communication is ease, a frictionless experience, and in their preferred method. For many that means texts, having chat available on your site, and instant buttons so they can quickly complete their desired actions.
Shifting Parts or All of the Car-Buying Process Online: Both of the growing segments of auto shoppers surveyed in the 2022 Car Buyer Journey Study said they prefer to buy online – with 75% of them saying within the next 5 years they would buy a vehicle entirely online. They’re a growing target, currently completing 10 out of 13 of the purchase steps online.
It’s an Amazon buying world. Consumers are open to and moving toward being more comfortable with buying high ticket items online, like cars, predominately online as well. Look at what you currently offer with your digital retailing tools and map out what steps you still need to go towards a fully eCommerce future. We have a few suggestions and items to consider when doing that below!
Rome was not built in a day, but it was built brick by brick. And so should your digital marketing strategy – lean the most on your first-party data to be your bedrock foundation and the digital retailing tools you have supporting, feeding and connecting your customers to what they want and need.
It’s time to gear up for the new speed of retail
Digital retailing tools continue to grow and expand how auto dealers do business and plan their marketing strategies. This digital foundation was laid in our industry during the pandemic with the goal of a better shopping experience. As satisfaction levels continue to likewise grow with the online experience, so should your focus on adding more digital retail solutions and capabilities as well as connecting them with your first-party data to help drive your business.
Did you know 70% of shoppers are more likely to buy
From a dealer if they can start the process online?
The new speed of retail is here, and shoppers expect a streamlined, digital experience. So, to help you meet them where they are, it’s important to take a look at where you are.
Whether your dealership is on the low end of the eCommerce spectrum only offering a few digital retailing tools, or are fully automated and full-spectrum eCommerce ready, there are distinct advantages to mixing, matching and modernizing your digital retail strategy. And first-party data should be the core pillar of how you’re connecting it all and moving forward, especially in a cookieless future.
As we touched on before, by alleviating your consumer’s pain points, and activating your first-party data with personalization, you’ll have the ability to not only stand out to your ideal customer and retain existing customers, but you’ll also have the ability to improve your customer’s experience in the following ways reported in the annual 2022 Car Buyer Journey Study. In a cookieless future this is where your revenue will have the ability to grow.
In-market auto shoppers and buyers reported the following satisfaction levels and advantages with transacting online:
88% – Save time at the dealership
86% – Save time with the buying / leasing process
83% – Seamlessness of continuing the online buying transaction in store where they left off
81% – Improved the overall buying experience
78% – Greater transparency with pricing
By connecting your first-party data to your existing and future digital retail tools, you’ll not only give your consumers what they’re looking for, but you’ll set yourself up for increased exposure and reach, the ability to turn vehicles more quickly, increase your opportunities for acquisition and inventory and close more deals. More specifically… profitable deals!
Automotive digital retailing vs. eCommerce: What’s the difference?
There is often confusion when it comes to the differences between digital retailing and eCommerce. While they both start online, that’s where the similarities both begin and end.
Digital retailing helps guide the overall experience for your shopper and saves time for both you and the consumer. Your customers can easily navigate and engage with your website during different stages of their purchasing journey.
Digital retailing: Largely supported by a person at your dealership: There are many steps that digital retailing can connect. For example, the consumer starts the deal online and can take it to a credit app submission, sometimes even a credit decision, but at that point dealership personnel will need to engage with the consumer to walk them through the deal. So, while technology plays a big role, the process is largely supported by a person in the dealership.
eCommerce: A fully digital transaction: On the other hand, eCommerce also begins with the consumer starting the deal online. But the key difference is that a consumer can take a self-paced fashion, working through the deal all the way through digitally signing the contract package and scheduling the delivery of the vehicle. The process is also supported by F&I automation primarily, not dealership personnel. Most dealerships have dedicated eCommerce teams who solely focus on these end-to-end online transactions.
If adding an eCommerce channel isn’t feasible in the near future, digital retailing can still satisfy those digitally savvy shoppers. Consumer research confirms that not every consumer wants the same results from their online experience. In fact, 9 out of 10* prefer a flexible, personalized buying experience. Make it simple for customers to explore the information they are comfortable researching (inventory, trade-in values, financing terms/payments, F&I products) and move the process to the dealership when they are ready.
Aside from leveraging digital retail and eCommerce solutions to provide seamless transitions between digital and physical interactions, training your entire team (not just your BDC) on switching between online and offline interactions goes a long way. You’ll see increased confidence, improved satisfaction and the consumer will appreciate this more personalized and efficient way of doing business.
For the road forward
A cookieless future isn’t as worrisome when you put your first-party data to use. By revisiting your current marketing strategy, mixing-matching-modernizing your digital retailing tools to connect them to your data, and planning everything your dealership does from the top down on how you’ll grow your eCommerce business, you’ll stay a step ahead of your competitors and align your dealership for success in the future.
As technology continues to evolve, activating first-party data is essential for every auto dealer, whether your business is brick-and-mortar or strictly eCommerce. You’ll gain insights into consumer behavior and preferences, improve customer experience, and optimize your marketing campaigns and dollars.
It’s time to start shifting from just collecting first-party data to activating and connecting it. Because when you do, you’ll quickly see the difference it can make for your business to increase conversions and your profits.
Cox Automotive has the most connected and comprehensive view of the automotive industry and offers unmatched data and insights into consumer behavior, automotive trends, and operational best practices. Whatever your goals, we can help you get there faster to stay a step ahead and successful in today’s marketplace.
WWant to hear all the ways to fully activate your first party data? Catch the replay of a unique webinar opportunity with Automotive News hosted by Jade Terreberry and Noah Lee. They’ll share examples of actions you should take now, and outline strategies successful dealerships and OEMs are implementing to make the most of your marketing efforts and dollars. Sign up for the watch webinar.
To compete in today’s challenging automotive retail environment, you deserve a data-driven partner who helps create a successful digital marketing strategy with innovative tools and technology. With the NADA Show 2023 just around the corner, Dealer.com has been working hard to bring you new products and enhancements to the products you know and love.
Watch this video as Noah Lee shares a few new products and enhancements being unveiled at the NADA Show 2023, including:
• Accelerate My Deal — the industry’s most trusted and user-centric digital shopping experience.
• Local SEO – dominate the search engine results page and get improved dealer rankings for local search terms.
• Automotive Marketing Platform powered by VinSolutions–now available to Dealer.com customers to send personalized, automated marketing across the car-buying journey.
Visit the Dealer.com booth to get a full rundown of all the advanced digital marketing solutions we’ll be highlighting
One of the many benefits of digital marketing is the ability to track and measure. Tracking has always allowed marketers to optimize the consumer experience and better understand behaviors to deliver more relevant messages. There are changes coming to how we track and measure online behavior, and you may have already heard about the “cookie-less future” and “updates to third-party cookies.”
First, let’s explain what a cookie is, what will change and how those changes will help automotive dealer in the US.
What is a cookie?
Technically, cookies refer to files or bundles stored on a user’s computer that hold data. They are two types of cookies
First-party cookies are unique to a specific website, and user data can only be collected and activated on that one specific website.
Third-party cookies are added to a device by other parties in agreement with the website they are visiting. Third-party cookies allow marketers to follow users around the internet to learn about their behaviors, and, in many cases, retarget them and build custom audiences.
As a marketer, the more we know about behaviors online, the more relevant ads we can present.
What is changing with third-party cookies and how it affects dealership marketing?
As consumers have expressed increased concern over personal privacy and data, and as new regulatory laws have been passed, companies have had to adjust. Apple sparked the beginning of the end when it started blocking third-party ad tracking to protect its users. Google followed suit, it is currently set to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024.The new changes to stop supporting third-party cookies are designed to benefit the consumer.
These changes will have a major impact, though audience size may decrease, audience quality will increase. Placing third-party tags all around the web, to make a bunch of guesses about human behavior, is a poor way to build an audience. This practice can waste time and money and is not very effective.
In reviewing many automotive data companies, there seems to be a lot of guesswork when building marketing audiences that are being resold. This system doesn’t help the car shopper or the marketer and can waste a lot of money — quickly.
And as you’re building out your audience strategy, there are some important questions to ask your potential conquest/big data partner. Make sure your potential partner can answer these questions with facts, stats and deep knowledge.
Having a mobile-friendly website is one that correctly displays on mobile and handheld devices. This makes for a streamlined experience for your dealership staff and online car shoppers when viewing your website. According to Google, w hen web users visited a mobile-friendly site, 74% of people say they’re more likely to return to that site in the future.*
And as the automotive industry moves toward a more digital-first environment, many car shoppers use the internet to shop for cars, so you must make the experience as easy as possible.
Today, many businesses want their website to be fully responsive because it’s essential to have a mobile version of a website. This means the design and development of your website responds positively to the car shopper’s screen size, platform, and orientation.
But at Dealer.com, we use the latest, advanced, mobile-first technology to deliver a user-focused, search-engine-optimized experience when car shoppers visit your site with any device. We mobilize and optimize your site for any smart device.
But you might wonder what’s the difference between a fully responsive website and a mobile-first website.
A Fully Responsive Website
Today, almost everyone has a fully responsive website, meaning the browser will rescale itself to keep the user experience and look and feel across all devices — with no irritating zooming, scrolling, or resizing. Fully responsive websites are also the easiest to implement and maintain and to build a mobile experience at scale. But having a fully responsive website without having a mobile-first strategy does not fully optimize the user experience.
A responsive site only takes the desktop site and makes it mobile friendly. While it can be an adequate mobile platform, it doesn’t optimize for the best mobile experience like a hybrid platform. It also doesn’t account for behavioral differences going from a desktop to mobile device. Just because a desktop site can respond to a device and scale down, doesn’t mean the shopper wants to use a scaled down desktop site.
Additionally, responsive websites are likely to load slower on mobile devices with customized CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) because it loads the website in its entirety. Ideally, users want a mobile experience on mobile device which would require the web-developer to write additional CSS to hide/add elements to the responsive website causing search engines to crawl more code.
Dealer.com takes today’s web site experience a step further and uses a mobile-first approach that allows us to optimize every mobile experience so dealers can render a specific experience to any device.
Why Mobile-First?
Mobile devices are at the forefront of the digital revolution that has taken place in the last decade. According to Dealer.com, 62% of traffic to dealership websites comes from personal devices. That’s why it’s so essential to ensure the mobile experience for your website is uniquely optimized for each user.
We also know that as dealers, many of your sales and service staff use personal and handle-held devices to interact with customers daily.
Google announced that a website’s mobile friendliness would be a new ranking signal for grading websites. So, the more your website can adapt seamlessly from desktop to a specific personal or handheld device, the higher your website is ranked.
Mobile-first technology from Dealer.com works to deliver a superior user experience across every device while controlling each experience from an intuitive dashboard. This allows you to configure every aspect of your website, simplify site updates across devices, merchandise inventory with precision, and deliver digital deals through transparent automotive digital retailing.
Adapted to Every Car Shopper
We’re committed to using responsive technology to build mobile-first, adaptive websites for our clients— the industry’s most flexible website response capabilities. Our technology incorporates the essential parts of a fully responsive website with the ability for device-specific experiences, we are not just responsive or only responsive.
By optimizing each shopper’s experience for device-specific content and configuration, we give dealers more flexibility and customization opportunities than other providers. So, no matter if you’re shopping on an iPad Pro or Galaxy S22, we create a website specifically for each device.
At Dealer.com we believe that designing with a mobile-first mindset ensures every car shopper has the unique experience they deserve.
