Negotiation time and the time to complete purchase remains the number one complaint of car shoppers. According to a recent study that polled recent car buyers, the amount of time it takes to complete a car purchase continues to grind customers' gears.
Over the last several years, third-party sites like CarGurus, Cars.com, and TrueCars have become a popular tool for dealers looking to boost their New and Used sales numbers and the reason is obvious: sites like these are the most-used resources for online car shopping. When shopping for a car online most New car shoppers start off on third party websites and end up on dealership sites while most Used car shoppers start and end their journey entirely on third party sites.
According to a recent study, shoppers are spending less time in the market for a car than in previous years. With this in mind, how should your dealership go about capturing buyers in their ever-shrinking buyer's journey?
Black Friday. Typically regarded as the first day of the Christmas shopping season, stores offer special prices and deals that result in a mad dash of frenzied shoppers the day after Thanksgiving. Some people dread the crowds and traffic, but almost a third of Americans in 2017 braved the mob to shop for Christmas gifts for loved ones or find sweet deals.
People buy from people. Everyone in automotive retail will agree that it is impossible to sell a customer a car without ever talking to them. So how many people do you talk to each week? Sales is a numbers game. The more people you talk to the more people you will sell. So, what if you could have a conversation with 40,000 people next week? If you multiply that by your closing rate the numbers are pretty ridiculous, right?
When I talk to car dealers about their digital marketing strategy, a lot of times I hear something along the lines of, “We’ve gotten along just fine doing radio spots, TV ads and direct mail, why do we need digital marketing now?” They do make a good point. What they’ve been doing was good enough in the past, so it should still be enough… right?
Amazon, Spotify, Lyft, Purple, Dollar Shave Club. You have heard of all these companies and chances are you use at least one of them on a regular basis. All these products made a major splash when they debuted in the marketplace and many of them have grown into multi-million, or even billion-dollar companies. So, why are all these products so successful? When you stop to think about it, are they really offering anything new?
So, you’ve decided you want to step up your digital marketing game and bring in some outside help to reach more customers and sell more cars. You’ve seen ads for, and received dozens of emails from companies that claim they can help you do just that, so how do you choose one?
As a car dealer you have more than likely heard about Behavioral and Contextual Targeting when it comes to marketing, but if you’re like a lot of the dealers I have spoken to, you may not be entirely clear on the difference between the two.
