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.
Half of a consumer’s decision to repurchase or recommend an automotive brand or dealer is based on trust. While dealerships and car salespeople have long suffered from a lack of consumer confidence throughout the purchase process, gaining trust most certainly is possible when dealerships act intentionally. A leading way to win over auto sales leads is through a digital buying experience—if it is done properly.
Even with digital sales methods, dealerships need to bolster consumer relationships to meet their goals. Ensuring that the digital sales process is developed and grounded in trust ultimately benefits both the car buyer leads and the dealership. Here are five ways your dealership can build trust with modern car buyers.
1. Understand the power of digital
Automotive sales have been trending toward an era of online shopping for some time now. But within the past 18 to 24 months alone, the percentage of vehicles purchased digitally has skyrocketed from 2% to almost 30%—a massive and sudden shift in consumer preferences that dealerships simply can’t ignore.
This preference to purchase vehicles online is still gaining momentum. More than three-quarters (76%) of automotive dealer leads are willing to consider a complete online purchase process. This movement toward digital or hybrid purchasing is not likely to go away anytime soon, and savvy dealerships understand that the sales process has been permanently disrupted. Having the right technology available is a necessary basis for initiating customer relationships, anticipating their needs, and building trust from the get-go.
2. Evaluate technology to ensure you have the right solutions in place
Whether your dealership has digital experience tools already in place or if you’re just getting started, it’s important to evaluate available technology so it is serving both your customer base and internal needs. With the right functionality, these tools can guide automotive leads through the sales funnel, close deals with more efficiency, and increase profits.
Connecting those dots and getting the technology right ultimately impacts your bottom line. Dealerships surveyed earned 25% higher front-end gross profits and 24% higher back-end gross profits, compared to traditional dealer leads. The right technology will meet customers where they already are in the sales process, providing tailored support that demonstrates your business recognizes their unique needs.
3. Use customer data to keep deals moving forward
Through responsible customer data usage, dealerships can target buyers with relevant automotive digital marketing in spaces that are of most use for them, resulting in a win-win situation. Admittedly, it’s not easy to do. About half of dealerships say that it is a challenge to leverage data and systems to identify opportunities, while 86% of dealers agree that having accurate and complete customer data is a dealership priority. However, the right software and tools can assist.
Customer data can come from a variety of sources, including the consumer sharing it directly with the dealership, the consumer sharing it with a trusted third-party partner, or outside entities collecting it. Ideally, the dealership combines its own data with that of trusted partners for the most well-rounded view. The data can help your dealership understand the customer’s vehicle type preferences, budget, stage in the sales process, communication preferences, and more.
Your own data should provide the insights you need to offer personalized online user experiences like recommendations, specials, and fixed operations content based on their previous shopping behaviors. Customer data provides a 216% increase in lead form submission rates, based on a Dealer.com study of 524 franchise dealers who subscribed to Experience Optimization. Dealerships using Experience Optimization showed that customers were three times more likely to initiate a trade-in deal. Salespeople can use data to inform their approach to a deal and to better assure customers that they are being supported throughout their ownership journey.
4. Give customers control of their buying experience
Customers want to be in control of their shopping experience, so most successful dealerships offer a range of online and offline communication options to help make customers comfortable and enable open dialogue. Offering a hybrid experience that combines the functionality of brick-and-mortar operations with the convenience of shopping online is key for building strong relationship with a wide range of customers.
With this hybrid model, customers can do as much of the shopping online as they would like, and then come to the dealership when they’re ready. This level of flexibility helps bolster confidence and trust in the process. Two-thirds of dealer leads say that they want to complete more of their next car-buying process online compared to their prior vehicle purchase. If a customer can purchase on their own terms, they’re more likely to give your dealership good reviews/referrals and remain a loyal customer.
5. Gather and utilize feedback from recent happy buyers
Consumers familiar with shopping online are overwhelmingly satisfied with their dealership experience, with 77% expressing this sentiment. Harness the power of your happy customers and make it easy for them to spread the word for you. Build the feedback-solicitation process into the car-buying experience.
This is especially important because 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business, and almost the same percentage trust these reviews the way they trust personal recommendations. More than half of shoppers say that the most important factor when choosing a dealership is the dealer’s reputation.
Building trust with the modern car buyer will help enhance and solidify your reputation. You can accomplish this by understanding what car buyers want, utilizing technology to your advantage, giving customers the ability to shop online, and then seamlessly moving the process forward. To learn more about how you can build trust with modern car buyers, visit Dealer.com.
A version of this article originally appeared in Digital Dealer.
Automotive internet marketing is changing. Third-party cookies—data used to display personalized ads and track internet users between websites—are going away for good. Advertisers will no longer be able to track and target shoppers the way they always have. They will have to rely on their own first-party data to deliver the personalized shopping experiences customers expect. So, what does that mean for your dealership?
Data and Marketing Basics
The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them. If you know that a particular customer keeps looking at a particular vehicle online, you can take action to advertise specific makes and models to that customer. You may also be able to identify that customer’s current vehicle, price range for a new vehicle, propensity to buy, and more. All this data makes automotive digital marketing more effective. But as third-party cookies go away, you’ll know less about your customers, and your advertising has the potential to be less personalized and less effective.
The Importance of First-Party Data
If your dealership doesn’t have a way to track consumers outside of third-party cookies, your advertising audience is about to get smaller. Dealerships that have access to first-party data have a better chance of coming out on top in this new landscape. But what is first-party data exactly? First-party data—data that you have the right to collect and access—includes the following:
– Data stored under your website
– Data stored in your CRM
– Data stored in your DMS
– Tier one data, including some OEM data
Your Dealership’s Auto Advertising Plan
Your dealership can approach auto advertising and take advantage of first-party data in one of three ways. You can: 1) manually provide advertisers with your first-party data, 2) purchase first-party data to create audiences, or 3) partner with an advertising provider that already has access to large amounts of first-party data.
Manually Provide Data: This approach involves providing transaction records from your DMS, for example, to your automotive advertising agency to create specific audiences. You may also be able to provide this data to cable television companies to show ads tailored to your audience.
Purchase First-Party Data: The approach involves purchasing consumer data from companies that aggregate different pools of first-party data so dealerships can target and personalize auto advertising.
Partner with an Advertiser with Access to First-Party Data: If an advertiser is already part of an ecosystem of companies that collect data about consumers, your dealership automatically has access to more first-party data and can advertise more effectively to a wider audience.
Advertising with Dealer.com
When your dealership advertises with Dealer.com, you get access to exclusive first-party Cox Automotive data throughout the entire buyer’s journey. That includes first-party signals from three out of every four car shoppers. That is the biggest basket of first-party data available to dealerships today. This data allows you to track customers and households based on their browsing data from Kelley Blue Book, Autotrader, and Dealer.com websites to create targetable profiles that make your dealership’s advertising more effective.
As third-party cookies go away, it’s time to meet with your advertising team to reevaluate your advertising approach. Whether leveraging your DMS and CRM data, purchasing data, or partnering with Dealer.com to leverage the largest pool of first-party data in the industry, create an action plan now that can help you personalize your customers’ experience and keep them coming to your dealership.
To learn more about the importance of first-party data and how your dealership can gain an advertising advantage in the coming months, watch our detailed video all about marketing in the cookie-less future.
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.
