Tag: Websites

Creating a Cohesive Digital Retailing Strategy

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As the industry changes to cater to customer preferences for online car shopping, implementing a digital retailing strategy has been on the mind of many dealers. Bob George, Head of Products at Dealer.com, and Brett Pomerantz, Senior Director of Product and Retail Experience at Cox Automotive, caught up with Cole Frankman, COO at Frankman Motor Company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to chat about the role people, processes, and technology play in creating a cohesive digital strategy. Here are some highlights from the discussion. 

Brett Pomerantz: What are some of the best practices you’ve implemented at Frankman Motor Company that have really helped your team learn and embrace change?  

Cole Frankman: We don’t sell cars; we help people buy cars. Today’s consumer is smart. They do all their research. For the most part, they know what they want and they know what they’re going to get. … We just help people buy the car they want. It’s all about service. You can buy anything online, and cars are getting that way too. Probably about half of our sales are online only, over the phone, site unseen. … Customer service plays a big role.  

BP: In what way would you say that digital retailing and the sales experience in general have evolved from the early days of digital retailing, and where do you see it going from here?  

CF: In the early days, a digital retailing tool was essentially a payment calculator. A lot of websites had just the simple interest rate and what your payment was going to be. The tools got better from there and started using live bank rates. Now, we’re at the point where you can do pretty much every part of the purchase, if you want to, right in the tool.  

BP: How has your website played a role in the customer experience? How have you leveraged your car dealer website to publicly communicate the new ways you’re doing business, as well as to promote your digital tools and processes available to consumers? 

CF: There are a multitude of ways to have leads sent in from your website. When I first started at the dealership, there were like seven or eight different call-to-action buttons you could use to send in a lead on our website. Now, digital retailing is the only way to interact with us. As soon as I made that change, more and more people started to use the digital retailing tool. More and more interactions started happening. Now I constantly see traffic growing and more people using that versus calling or showing up. Conversions keep going up.  

BP: There are different interpretations of digital retailing. How does your dealership define digital retailing, and what parts of your business are involved?  

CF: We have found that Dealer.com Digital Retailing is the most complete solution. You don’t have to have five or six different software solutions to get one thing done. You need to be fluid through the whole process, otherwise you’re doing the same stuff twice. Using the tools and processes that are smoothest for the car deal is my philosophy, not necessarily just the customers, just the employee, or just us. It has to flow. Dealer.com Digital Retailing really helps with that because everything is really integrated and plays nice together.  

This interview originally appeared on CBT News Dealer Forward. Watch the full video interview here. 

Learn more about how Dealer.com Digital Retailing can help you simplify sales, save time, and drive more automobile leads.

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Are You Getting Quality Digital Traffic?

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For as long as businesses have been on the internet, they’ve been counting—and touting—their website traffic numbers. In the early days of e-commerce, more visits quickly became a proxy metric for more success.  

As time went on, companies began to realize that more site visits did not necessarily translate to more sales. The reason is simple: not all digital traffic is quality digital traffic. When developing a digital marketing strategy, your dealership can learn from the mistakes of these early marketers by focusing on the right metrics and by trading in high numbers for healthy results.  

How to Differentiate Traffic Quality 

If you were forced to choose between low and high traffic volumes, it would be wise to choose the latter. And your dealership should aim to increase total traffic. But how can you tell whether the people visiting your site are in-market shoppers or simply passing the time?  

Tracking a few additional, slightly more advanced metrics can help you determine what portion of your traffic adds value to your dealership. Website visitors tend to show true interest and even purchase intent by what they do after they’ve arrived on your site. Casual browsers bounce quickly while potential buyers take their time exploring your site.  

To evaluate which kind of traffic you’re attracting, simply review average time on site and pages per visit. If most people are spending fewer than 30 seconds on your site and barely visiting more than a single page, you’re probably attracting the wrong kind of traffic.  

Align Your Campaigns and Intended Audience  

If your traffic is high but quality is low, your campaign creative, messaging, or targeting may not be resonating with your intended audience. To confirm that suspicion, check the click-through-rate on your campaigns and compare them to past campaigns and industry benchmarks. If you see low-quality traffic and a low click-through rate, it’s probably time to take a closer look at your campaigns.  

One solution: start speaking to the audience you wish to attract. Work to develop consistent, cohesive campaign creative designed to engage your ideal customers and drive quality traffic to the website. While this might feel overwhelming for many dealers, partnering with professional graphic designers and campaign coordinators makes it easier to develop and deliver strategic, compelling campaigns. When selecting creative and strategic partners, be sure to screen for automotive knowledge and experience, which will help keep creative efforts aligned with your dealership’s strategy.  

Evaluate, Iterate, and Engage  

Great digital advertising isn’t about one campaign or one piece of creative – it’s an ongoing, iterative process. Follow up and review every campaign and piece of creative to ensure that they’re connecting with quality prospects. Remember, a successful digital strategy will drive more than just large traffic numbers. When you’re doing it right, you’ll see increases in engagement as demonstrated by more time on site, more pages per visit, more VDP views, and of course, more leads.  

To learn more ways your dealership can adapt in a new age of automotive sales, check out our free eBook: 4 Questions to Improve Your Dealership’s Digital Marketing. 

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Are You Getting Enough Digital Traffic?

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The world of automotive retail is changing and attracting new customers to your dealership is more complicated than ever. As consumers spend more time online, and the marketing tricks and tactics that worked yesterday inevitably change with tomorrow’s technology and consumer demands.  

In this new world of automotive sales, dealers must constantly evaluate their digital marketing practices and make adjustments to keep up with today’s consumer demands. And the best place to start this evaluation is by checking your digital traffic. 

Stand Out in the Crowd of Competition  

The car buying process for most consumers starts online—looking at local inventory, comparing colors and options, and trying to find the perfect car for the perfect price, as close to home as possible. These consumers are thorough in their online research, spending an average of about 14 hours online looking for cars,1 which is great news for dealers like you trying to drive traffic to their website.  

Here’s where the process gets somewhat complex. The world wide web is a big place. Consumers can find easy access to the information they need in a number of places, right down to the details of how much they’re willing to pay for their next car purchase. So, it might as well be your website that informs their next purchase decision. On the other hand, if your dealership’s website doesn’t answer or even address their questions, would-be customers may pass you by. 

Optimize Your SEO Strategy 

If your website isn’t getting enough digital traffic, there’s a good chance your dealership’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy isn’t doing enough to set you apart from all the other dealership’s in the world. It’s the first symptom that your site is getting lost in the shuffle of search results. 

To ensure your inventory and dealership services consistently reach likely buyers browsing search engines, your SEO strategy must be optimized for local reach. The specific mix changes from dealership to dealership, but your SEO strategy may include some combination of custom content like blog posts, news articles, and new make/model pages designed to help connect you with local buyers. 

This approach is proven to elevate performance across your digital strategy with higher organic rankings, increased website traffic, and more leads from qualified visitors. But because implementing the right strategy can be complex, it’s always a good idea to enlist the help of the experts—a proven team of copywriters, strategists, and SEO specialists—to enhance your website’s overall visibility.  

After just one year of running Dealer.com’s car dealer SEO service,2 dealers experienced an average of:  

  • 30% more website visits    
  • 52% more VDP views 
  • 59% more phone leads 
  • 14% more form leads 

If your digital traffic has seen better days, optimize your SEO for local searches and partner with a team of SEO experts you can trust to drive digital shoppers with proven results. 

To learn more ways your dealership can adapt in a new age of automotive sales, check out our free eBook: 4 Questions to Improve Your Dealership’s Digital Marketing. 

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Sources: 

  1. https://www.dialogtech.com/blog/18-automotive-marketing-stats/#:~:text=Car%20buyers%20spend%20an%20average,hours%20 online%20during%20their%20search.  
  1. Based on a study of 43 franchise dealerships with Premium SEO and Dealer.com Advertising from December 2018 – May 2019 VPP.  

Pop Quiz: Can You Answer These  5  Questions  About  Website User Experience?

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When it comes to connecting with in-market shoppers online, some automotive retailers are challenged to deliver the user experience (UX) that consumers have come to expect.   

It takes more than fast site speed and attractive pages to please today’s consumers, and it can be daunting or confusing to begin steps toward building a better website experience. Sometimes, it takes learning the fundamentals about UX and a mindset change to start improving your digital traffic and conversions. 

In this article, we will look at why UX matters for automotive websites, the tools for measuring website UX, and how Dealer.com is advancing the total experience.   

Question #1: Why does good UX matter for your dealership website?   

Like many industries, automotive is seeing consumer preference for digital experiences gain momentum. As in-market shoppers continue to initiate and complete more activities online, and dealers adopt technological advancements to make these experiences better, the bar is being raised.  

It may sound like good UX caters to website visitors and creates an uphill battle for website owners, but this description would be selling it short. A good website experience benefits all parties. 

With a good experience, your visitors can enjoy seamless interaction with the site, locate the information they want, build a positive impression of your dealership, become an advocate for your business, and feel confident to visit again. On the other hand, when visitors have a poor experience, they are more likely to leave your website without taking the desired action and less likely to come back. 

As a website owner, you want to utilize car dealer SEO to allow in-market shoppers to find your website in Google Search organic rankings, navigate to your site, and engage with it – all with as little effort and friction as possible. Site engagement might include searching inventory listings, viewing a Vehicle Deals Page (VDP), researching trade-in options with a vehicle valuation tool, submitting a deal, or scheduling a tune up with your automotive service appointment scheduling software.  

When consumers leave your website before doing anything, you end up with less information about them. That means your leads and conversions suffer—and so does your revenue. For these reasons, UX-focused dealership website design is crucial to your business success.   

Question #2: What two (2) types of data are used to assess website performance? 

There are two types of data used to measure site speed and performance: lab data, and field data.1 Both are important but serve different purposes, so let us take a closer look at each.  

Lab data offers reproducible results and debugging capabilities to help identify, isolate, and fix performance issues, so it can be particularly useful during the site development. In contrast, field data captures real-world experiences across a variety of devices, networks, and other conditions. Since real-world experiences are more relevant to website owners, and correlate to measures of business success, you may benefit from focusing on field data over lab data. 

Question #3: What two (2) mainstream website UX reports provide your Core Web Vitals? 

There are two reports that provide your performance against Google’s Core Web Vitals, 2 which include field data measurement: Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI), and Google Chrome User Experience (CrUX).3

The PSI report provides extensive lab data and a limited subset of field data about a page, while the CrUX report is powered by real user measurement of key UX metrics across the public web. After comparing the features of these two reports, consider which one will better suit your needs on a regular basis. 

Question #4: What does Google say is the most important factor for search ranking? 

To further demonstrate the importance of website UX, Google will begin a gradual update of their search algorithm in June 2021 to include a new signal called Page Experience. This will be one of hundreds of signals Google considers when ranking search results. To learn more about this update, visit our blog Are You Up to Speed on the Google Page Experience Update?.  

Google has made the priority for search ranking clear: “While all of the components of page experience are important, we will prioritize pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar. A good page experience doesn’t override having great, relevant content.”2 

Therefore, in order for your website to top the search rankings, increase digital traffic, and produce more leads, the best approach is to prioritize total UX over specific performance measures.   

Question #5: How has Dealer.com advanced website UX? 

With 55% market share of automotive franchise websites in North America, Dealer.com has unmatched visibility into actual consumer behavior and real-time preferences. We use this information to deliver technologies focused on the total UX, building on what matters most to you and your website visitors.  

Our team is continuously and actively improving key elements of site performance. Here are some examples of recent advancements that improve UX for your website visitors:   

  • Delivered a full-service, personalized dealership experience. 
  • Enabled inventory personalization, often on the first visit. 
  • Revolutionized the VDP to be a deal-making destination. 
  • Redesigned search to make finding the right VDP faster and more efficient. 
  • Optimized font loading to allow car shoppers to see the textual content sooner. 
  • Reduced processing time and improved interactivity. 
  • Reduced core JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). 

Dealer.com is committed to providing enhancements to its Websites platform that have meaningful impacts to site performance. We put our data, technology, and expertise to work for your dealership, ensuring that car buyers find what they need quickly and have a productive experience, from start to finish.   

See how Dealer.com Websites will help you convert your website visitors into more leads and deals.  

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Sources: 

  1. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/speed-tools  
  1. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience  
  1. https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-user-experience-report  

3 Takeaways from the Recent Evolution of Automotive Digital Retailing

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Well before 2020, and the disruptions that occurred during this tumultuous year, dealers have known that automotive retail is destined to increasingly take place online.  

There has been a dramatic digital shift in the automotive retail marketplace in recent months. As a result, digital retailing is more important than ever before. The existing automotive digital retailing transition has been unexpectedly accelerated. Dealers need to consider the implications of this trend, and how the resulting challenges and opportunities may require them to take action. 

In this post, we share insights into the state of digital retailing and how these tools are both evolving to meet consumer needs and generate automobile leads. 

Digital Retailing helps dealers meet consumers where they want to shop. 

Consumer preferences for how to shop for and purchase vehicles changed in 2020. From learning about new models and exploring dealership inventory to penciling a deal and obtaining a trade-in vehicle valuation, there was suddenly a strong desire to accomplish each of these steps with minimal physical interaction with dealership staff.  

What better way to do this, than to stay home and work through a dealership’s website? These circumstances made digital retailing a valuable component for automotive retail operations, and they forced dealers to reset and engage differently. 

For many dealers, this change could not be accommodated overnight. There was an urgent need to make sure they were up to speed and had the right tools to let consumers shop how and where they wanted. To fulfill this, adjustments to processes and technology investments might have been required in order to optimize the online experience and continue functioning. 

Ultimately, technology is the vehicle for the transaction, and not the endgame. The focus is on building a connection with the shopper. 

Digital Retailing won’t replace dealership staff.   

There is no question that automotive digital retailing now plays a key and expanding role in the initiation and execution of leads and deals, among its other contributions. As a result, a common question within dealer circles is how far will the technology and consumer preferences evolve? Will digital retailing take the place of shopping in the showroom? 

Tools and technologies will continue to expand the capabilities of digital retailing, giving the consumer a tailored experience when buying a new vehicle. However, it is not expected to become the complete picture for the future of car-buying.  

Digital Retailing is an invaluable tool for in-market shoppers, but it does not check every box. Instead, the future of automotive retail points to assisted shopping experiences.  

Digital Retailing supports a hybrid shopping experience. 

Thanks to the increase in adoption across many products and services, digital retailing is fast becoming the standard practice for doing business. Consumers are increasingly feeling comfortable and empowered doing business online, so long as they are equipped with the necessary tools to complete the process. 

To understand the desire for an assisted experience, step into the shoes of the average consumer who is serious about purchasing a new vehicle in the near future. There are generally 3 shopping styles:  

  • Assistance is needed or wanted from the very beginning 
  • No assistance is needed or wanted start to finish, or it is self-service 
  • A hybrid approach, where assistance is required to answer questions about the inventory, offers, or the retail process 

Purchasing a new vehicle is one of the largest financial moves most consumers will make, so It is comforting and confidence-building to have an expert available to provide guidance or assistance.  

These days, an increasing share of car shopping is happening through automotive websites before consumers enter a dealership. Through industry-leading technology and expertise, Dealer.com is the digital marketing partner a dealer needs to master consumer experiences. 

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3 Ways to Offer Shoppers a Differentiated Digital Experience

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Automotive digital marketing and avocados have something in common – both have fairly short “Best By” consumption timeframes, where something that recently seemed new is suddenly past its prime.  

The lesson here for dealers: don’t let your automotive web design and curated user experience gather dust. With more consumers doing more online than ever before, they have high expectations with their shopping experience.  

From browsing inventory and researching a model, to submitting a lead and reviewing your customer service, there are several points along the buying journey where you can differentiate your dealership and keep your customers coming back for more. Read on for 3 ways your dealership can differentiate the digital experience you offer shoppers, keeping them engaged while delivering more value to your business. 

  1. Support Meaningful Conversations 

Your dealership website offers a lot of information to consumers. Equally important, these pages collect highly valuable first-party data for your future use, such as targeting in-market shoppers with display ads or video ads.  

While retargeting ads have value, they offer one-way communication to consumers. In other words, they are marketing at people rather than conversing with them. As a dealer, you know how important person-to-person conversations are. So, how can you preserve shopper connections and support meaningful conversations?  

Through 3rd party integration with LivePerson, Video Chat and CoBrowse are aimed at creating a more engaging environment for online shoppers with more interactive features. As the name describes, Video Chat enables consumers to chat with dealers over video, which can be initiated from the Digital Retailing application. A handy tool for reviewing details, CoBrowse lets shoppers share their screens with dealers while shopping, allowing dealers to guide consumers as if they were side-by-side in the showroom. Ultimately, you want to replicate a good one-to-one experience, but digitally. 

  1. Provide Flexible Retailing Tools 

Automotive digital retailing is not often described as a leisure activity. Until recently, this step might have been a bit daunting to shoppers, and the turning point where they would hop in their car and pursue assistance at the dealership. This is becoming less and less the case – partly due to environmental circumstances, and also because the tools are becoming more user-friendly.  

The latest digital retailing solutions turn this challenging process into simple steps, giving the consumer a bit of validation as they move forward. They also provide flexibility with how and when the lead form is completed. For example, a consumer may be missing some information and they can skip a step and come back to it, rather than running into a dead end. 

Digital retailing of today is a self-driven and self-directed process. In other words, people want to be guided, but not forced. To keep people engaged and on the path toward submitting a deal, it is important to provide options for completing the form: pause for a break, get help, save it to edit later, etc. This flexibility translates to generating more automobile leads; a consequence of a consumer-first sales process, which is nothing new, but now it is digital-enabled. 

  1. Build Trust Through Reputation 

The saying goes that opposites attract, but not when it comes to recommendations for buying a car. When going through an important decision like this, people look for things they can relate to. More and more, consumers are looking for trust and the feeling of it within the automotive buying experience. This is where positive customer reviews can effectively tie a ribbon on your next deal.  

One of the ways you can differentiate from your competitors and answer the question “Why buy from us” is by investing in reputation management for car dealers. Your best advocate is the person who just bought from you. By soliciting their goodwill through Review Generation, and helping other consumers see the perks of this transaction, you can convince other people to do the same.  

A detailed review can be especially useful in building trust and illustrating the experience for a prospective customer. For instance, here are examples of superior customer service will score big points with consumers today: you offered to meet them wherever they were (i.e., for the test drive), made them feel safe, made the deal transparent, made things easy (deal signing, car delivery), and treated them like an individual.  

It gives shoppers confidence to learn that you are going the extra mile to transact in the way they want. There is power and opportunity in public recognition that your business cares, and you can use the tools of reputation management to broadcast this message in an authentic voice.  

From Websites and Digital Retailing, to Advertising and digital marketing services, Dealer.com solutions are built to connect consumers with dealers digitally. Let our team help you guide in-market shoppers through digital car-buying, dealership customer retention, and more. 

Tips for Personalizing Marketing Initiatives to Drive Site Traffic

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It’s been a long time coming, and there is no going back now: your dealership website merits just as much attention as your showroom floor.  

Businesses are leaning more heavily on their digital presence, and for an ever-widening range of functions. With sophisticated data enabling a highly personalized experience, the best approach is to meet the expectations of consumers wherever they might be in their car-buying journey.  

Here are some tips for leveraging your website and automotive advertising to reach consumers with the right message, no matter where they are. 

Keep Things Simple 

Your website can help you achieve many things, but only if it’s built intelligently and purposefully. Take steps to make it as easy as possible for consumers to do business with you.  

  • Create easy click paths. You have probably heard the expression “time is money.” Does your automotive web design meet consumer expectations? Aim to make it quick and painless to reach the core content. 
  • Link targeted ads and experiences. No one likes a dead end, either while driving or after clicking on an ad. Ensure your digital advertising points to specific landing page experiences. 
  • Support every profit center. In addition to promoting new and pre-owned inventory, actively manage your automotive service marketing to keep revenue flowing through your fixed ops. 

Showcase Your Brand 

Your website is an extension of your brick-and-mortar dealership. Just like showroom visitors, digital foot traffic should be guided through the shopping experience to help build a sense of connection. 

  • Design with purpose. To feel authentic, your website needs to be representative of what they would expect in store from the ownership and brand. Whether your dealership is sleek and modern or colorful and casual, the presentation and messaging should be consistent. 
  • Keep your audience informed. At the most basic level, your website is a communication tool. Leverage this real estate to inform customers and consumers what is going on with you in your individual market. 
  • Get the whole team involved. Support inclusion by asking team members to lend ideas for features. This may range from homepage slides, to dealer promotions marketing, or to ways they engage in the community, such as volunteering and other good works.  

Work Smarter, Not Harder 

Consider ways you can squeeze more value from resources you already have, including the ones that are working behind the scenes. By investing time to assess and optimize your existing assets, you can put systems in place that net higher-quality traffic and increase efficiency. 

  • Leverage first party data. When it comes to car dealership analytics, nothing beats the data from consumers who have already visited your website. These digital touch points represent an audience that is already identified as likely to buy.  
  • Build feedback systems. There’s a lot more to performance measurement than Google’s data and impressions share. Bolster your data set with real, on-the-ground metrics for your market. Digital advertising generates a wealth of data that can improve the quality and the effectiveness of audience targeting.  
  • Leverage local data buckets. If your first party data isn’t cutting it, or you’re ready to take your advertising to the next level, consider the benefits of external data sources. Partnering with companies like Kelley Blue Book and AutoTrader means your ad campaigns can benefit from zip code-specific data. As a bonus, it’s flexible and fluid, so options abound for trialing, testing, and adjusting. 

In today’s market, it’s important for car dealers to pay just as much attention to their websites as their showroom floors. As consumers spend an increasing amount of time online, optimizing your website to improve their experiences has never been more important, and this movement is here to stay. By meeting consumer expectations, wherever they are in the car buying journey, your dealership will gain a competitive advantage. 

Visit Dealer.com to explore more ways you can leverage data to personalize marketing initiatives and increase consumer engagement through your Digital Storefront. 

Why Ease and Efficiency Matter in Website Innovation

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By Bob George, AVP Product Management for Dealer.com

More than ever before, consumers in the automotive industry expect a personalized and intuitive digital shopping experience. Whether in market for a new vehicle or service for their current ride, today’s shoppers are looking for ease and efficiency on their path to purchase. And this trend is transforming how dealers meet their customers: online.  

While the catalyst and rate of adoption in 2020 caught many off guard, industry insiders have anticipated this happen. This development has been years in the making and building momentum in other industries. Technology leaders like Apple have shown how award-winning design and intuitive user experiences make it easier for users to engage with their products.   

For leading digital marketing providers in automotive, these principles are applied as standard practice while developing new tools and services. Increasingly, consumers are choosing to shop online before stepping inside a dealership showroom. This shift is forcing dealers to rely more on their Digital Storefront (e.g. their website) to perform essential functions: attract, engage and transact. User experience data and insights are contributing to the production of digital tools that are easier to use, more appealing to try, and address current consumer pain points.   

A personalized experience is a key factor to the success of this effort. In a recent Dealer.com survey of 524 dealerships, all participants measured increases in website visitor engagement following 6 months of adding Experience Optimization, a website personalization tool that uses data and automation to deliver recommended vehicles and specials to shoppers in real-time based on their vehicle preferences. This dealership set also benefitted from a +216% increase in lead form submission rate.  

Here, we will review how dealers can benefit from recent technological advancements and meet consumers wherever they are in the shopping or ownership process.  

Enabling 1:1 Consumer Experience  

While being an early adopter of digital innovation may be helpful in other areas, this inclination isn’t necessary to understand the importance of the consumer experience. At a basic level, consumers want their path to purchase to be simple. This applies to purchases made in the dealership showroom, on the website, and somewhere in between.  

To get on the right track, a dealer’s digital marketing provider must have access to vast amounts of consumer data, pulling from multiple sources to build the most complete picture. The value of this data should not be underestimated, as it informs every touchpoint the dealer has with the consumer: from marketing, including email and text, to advertising, such as paid search, display and video, to the website experience, to Digital Retailing, and ultimately to your dealership.   

The successful provider must be able to harness data and insights to turn anonymous pixels into repeat customers who will drive lifetime value. At the end of the day, sales to repeat customers will keep the dealership running along.  

There are steps a dealer can take to understand the key moment that a consumer is going through, then build a tailored selling plan and proactively overcome any pain points. As mentioned above, data plays an important role throughout this process:  

  • Use buying signals to identify opportunities  
  • Automate a personalized offer  
  • Communicate by preferred channels  
  • Customize the digital retailing experience, working a deal online and/or offline  

Integrating New Digital Tools  

The array of options for reaching a consumer have changed dramatically from just 5 years ago, and they continue to evolve at a blistering pace year over year. So, too, have consumer habits changed, including where and how they get their information.   

A prime example of this is the growth of digital video advertising. Across industries, digital video budgets are expected to grow 1.8X from 2018 to 2022, reaching $50 billion in 2022. This includes advertising on Connected TV (CTV) – television that’s connected to the internet through a Smart TV, Apple TV, or similar streaming device, and completely separate from cable or satellite. In 2019, viewership of over-the-top (OTT) networks exceeded 170 million, which equates to more than half the US population.   

For dealers, access to Targeted Digital Television advertising is just around the corner: CTV and OTT advertising is in pilot now. This product expansion will allow video advertising to be served on TV devices across OTT networks, using household data and consumer buying signals to target shoppers on any device or network.  

Another addition to the dealer toolbox that is coming soon is the Personalized Landing Page, which is launching in parallel with VinSolutions’ all-new dealership CRM platform. The aim of this new experience is to help consumers start high level decision-making between buying a new vehicle and servicing their current one. Many readers will have personal experience of clicking on an email offer to access a dealership website, landing on either an inventory listing or just the homepage. Since we know consumers are looking for ease and efficiency, it is best to avoid having them re-enter search criteria or try to re-find the offer that was just presented to them. Using multiple data sources to gather consumer information, the shopper is brought to a personalized landing page which includes the same offer as shown via email.    

After landing on this personalized page, the consumer is set up for the Digital Retailing experience, moving into the nuts and bolts of the deal, with the potential to increase dealer profitability.    

Supporting Ownership Everywhere  

Understanding what matters most to consumers while they shop online is fundamental to the partnership between dealers and digital marketing providers. This shared knowledge, and the all-important consumer data and insights gathered from every corner of the industry, combine to drive the digital innovation that is required for growth.   

A shared primary goal for dealers and providers is to drive lifetime customer value by keeping focus across the purchase and ownership lifecycles. Starting from shopping to purchase, from routine and preventative service to fixed operations, and finally back around to buyer consideration, there are countless touchpoints with consumers.   

Dealers have the ability to get additional miles out of these consumer touchpoints by using Reputation Management tools. Customer reviews are an increasingly influential factor among car buyers, and dealers need an efficient, easy way to solicit and manage these natural endorsements. Dealers should be taking full advantage of reviews to reinforce their dealership reputation and appeal to new shoppers. Review Generation uses a high-converting SMS-based review request system to engage customers while the transaction is still top of mind, to create a constant stream of reputation-based reviews.  

In today’s market, it is critical to enable 1:1 consumer interaction to drive this lifetime value – and the only way to do so effectively is with enhanced digital technology that supports ease and efficiency for consumers.  

Visit Dealer.com Websites to learn more about the advantages of delivering a full-service, personalized digital storefront experience for your customers so you can meet them wherever they are in the shopping or ownership process.   

Breaking Down the Online and In-store Divide for Shoppers

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If you had a chance to tune in for the Cox Automotive Forward Focus session Breaking Down the Online and In-store Divide, then you would have heard Wayne Pastore, General Manager of Dealer.com, and Bob George, AVP Product Management for Dealer.com, discuss the changes that this year has brought to automotive digital retailing. While some aspects of the automotive industry began to slow down in March 2020, the need to connect the in-store and online buying experience was accelerated. Read on to learn how data and insights gathered during the consumer’s path to purchase can help you guide your customers through a more personalized and meaningful online buying experience. 

Retailing Everywhere 

The automotive shopping experience is evolving. While the end goal for the consumer remains the same – to buy a car that meets their needs and budget – the process by which they reach this decision is streamlining with better data and technology. In years past and till recently, a dealership website was used more for vehicle research, while the automobile leads were generated inside the dealership’s walls. Fast forward to present day, and new digital products and processes make it easier than ever for a shopper to purchase a vehicle without stepping inside a dealership showroom.  

Considering recent digital advancements, is there a way to bridge the online and in-store experiences that would benefit both the dealer and consumer? This brings us to Retailing Everywhere, a singular, multi-channel consumer retailing experience designed to drive profitable transactions and customer loyalty. Let’s look at the key components that make up this type of experience: 

  • Automated marketing and advertising 
  • Guided 1:1 consumer experience 
  • Advanced communication 
  • Deal connectivity across CRM and web 

When a consumer encounters a seamless digital experience, they stay on the website longer and go deeper into buying process. Keep reading to learn about innovations that support the Retailing Everywhere experience. 

Automated Marketing and Advertising 

Many consumers are spending less time on the road, for both professional and personal reasons. With more people staying home, what tools and tactics should you use to reach the right audience? If there is one thing most consumers are doing these days, and possibly more than a year ago, it is watching TV.  

Consumers are increasingly “cutting the cord” to cable programming in favor of Connected TV options, such as HULU and Netflix. This trend, combined with consistently positive performance in video advertising, has led to the expansion of our video advertising services on Connected TV channels. Placement is driven by the same data that powers Dealer.com display advertising, Facebook targeting, and other services. And since traditional TV does not offer the flexibility to target specific audiences, we can spend more effectively in this space. Robust reporting is available, so you know when and where your video ad is being shown, and to whom. 

Guided 1:1 Consumer Experience 

When a shopper lands on your Digital Storefront and begins to move through the site, either to view inventory or explore fixed ops deals from your automotive service marketing, the platform responds with a highly targeted, personalized experience. Our Experience Optimization product uses data from past shopping behavior to inform and customize experiences throughout the website. This includes slides, specials, banners, content. The goal is to introduce the most relevant offers and content to consumers on the first visit. 

Once the shopper has found the perfect vehicle, they will likely explore the digital retailing tools. Modeled after tax software, our brand-new Digital Retailing experience takes a complex process and breaks it down into small and simple steps. It’s a flexible, consumer-driven process, as shoppers can jump in and out of the pieces as needed to learn more about the deal. As a bonus, we’re finding people are using more of the tools and engaging more because it’s not a one-way street.  

Advanced communication 

The goal with shopper communication is to enable 1:1 conversation and offer a guided experience, and there are several ways to do this. Two examples include video chat and co-browse in Digital Retailing. Explore these services to see which ones would be the best fit for your Digital Storefront. 

Deal connectivity across CRM and Web 

Your dealership CRM plays an important role in moving the retail experience forward to a transaction. The reason is this platform provides visibility and understanding into consumer intent, and both of these inputs may be used by sales to deliver a personalized sales experience. 

With our latest offering, a deal can cross both your CRM and website, and it can originate in either space. Choose to review a deal in your CRM, and you’ll find a clean, simple view of the customer’s online deal activity that is accessed by a link. With CRM integration, leads fed directly into your CRM under one customer record update automatically every time the shopper changes their deal structure 

Driving interactions is essential in the Retailing Everywhere model. The technology you employ should support your activity instead of just replacing it, like talking across a table inside your showroom. The easier that information passes between the shopper and your dealership team, the better the shopping experience. Let our team help you to put the right message and interaction out to the consumer, regardless of where they are in the process.