According to NADA, the average automotive buyer visits 1.2 dealerships while car shopping which is down from 10 years ago when buyers visited an average of five dealerships. If this is true, why are dealers continuing to utilize the same tactics in marketing and advertising as they did 20 years ago? Why are we accepting this in the industry, and thinking that the actions of our prospective buyer hasn’t changed? Below you will find some of the most challenging occurrences that dealerships are facing today in marketing and advertising.
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The Top 7 Challenges Dealerships Face in Marketing/Advertising:
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1. Proving Actual Advertising ROI
Every dealership has lead providers and utilizes what “They” believe sell the most vehicles and give them the largest return on investment or (ROI). Ask your management team to show it to you, better yet, “Prove It To You”. Sadly, most cannot. At Dealer Synergy, not only will we help you see and understand which providers are working best for your business, but also help you filter out the companies that do NOT work best for your business and show you New or Missed Opportunities that actually want to help you grow your business into the future.
Dealer Synergy can help teach you to prove ROI by:
- Auditing Your Current Marketing Plan
- Identifying Your Overall Dealership Marketing Strengths & Weaknesses
- Assisting Your Marketing Team in Analyzing your current Vendors including Your Current Agency
- Show & Prove Where Changes Can be Made
- Train & Implement those changes with Your Current Team
2. Learning Omnichannel Marketing
What is Omnichannel Marketing? Omnichannel Marketing can be defined as a multichannel sales approach to provide customers with an integrated shopping experience. Customers can shop online on a desktop or mobile device, via phone or in-person at a brick and mortar dealership and receive the same experience, same transparent numbers and data and the #1 benefit to the consumer is it is done at “The Customers” pace. When your customers begin to interact with these different features and technology, data is collected and used to create personalized messages or offers that drive customers to the next stage of the sales process through the exploration of Retargeting and/or Conquesting. The customer is guided and shown how to schedule an appointment, create and maintain in-service notifications and post-service follow up.
Dealer Synergy can teach you and your team Automotive Marketing Trends through:
- Help explain and train digital retailing transactions
- Help create and align new & established marketing channels to OEM specifications
- Help create, train employees and enforce processes to this form of marketing
- Create accountability through scheduling and project management of this approach
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3. Understanding New Social Media Marketing Essentials Tactics
If history has taught us anything, it would be that change is inevitable (especially, over the past year). Change in how we operate and advertise is not exempt from this period either. Marketing and advertising in the automotive Industry has truly been affected by tactics such as price and payment advertising, as well as newspaper advertising. These tactics cannot be truly measured, or relied upon anymore. New interactive digital advertising is the new norm of advertising. This includes avenues like Google My Business, Facebook, and SEO/SEM. Unless you are building your campaigns on these platforms with specific goals and an ‘end result in mind’, your advertising could be working against you and your dealership.
Dealer Synergy can help you understand and implement these new tactics by:
- Examining your current advertising, media mix & spend by source
- Analyzing where improvements and changes can be made
- Installing those changes and working to effectively increase your units and gross per month
- Training your dealership staff to actively create a profitable campaign and produce results month after month
4. Testing New Digital Marketing Essentials Tactics
With understanding these new tactics in Advertising and Marketing, dealers can be faced with many challenges in trying to design and inspect on what would work best for their individual store. Many vendors that reach out to dealerships daily, weekly & even monthly can blur the lines of what may work and who to trust. Unless you are prepared to train yourself in all of these features and functions and properly become an expert, Dealer Synergy can jump in, analyze and help implement and train you for that future success.
Dealer Synergy can show you how to test these tactics by:
- Looking in depth at your current targeting and aligning it to match the tactic being utilized
- Creating New Comprehensive Targeted Campaigns that produce incredible results
- Provide targeted Analytics showing where your Dollars are being spent and show you the direct results of those dollars
- Duplicate those campaigns that did show success and create them across all avenues
- Train existing staff to create those campaigns month after month and hold those staff members accountable to those results
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5. Understanding Automotive Sales Leads Providers
Leads are the Lifeblood of the dealership. They obviously come in many forms. Walk-In, Referral, Internet Request, Chat, Advertising(Social Media, Television, etc.). Many lead providers come into the dealership telling dealers that their system and leads are not only the best, but they have the most advanced platform that can prove it to you directly. Unless you know these platforms and providers inside and out, you start this relationship at a serious disadvantage without knowing it. After dealers sign the agreements, the vendor often trains on their system and not one person can intelligently inspect the validity of what is promised without training.
Dealer Synergy helps you understand these car sales lead providers and Shows you and your team the signs to look for in the future by:
- Comprehensive CRM Audit
- Inspection of Vendor Backend Sites and Dealer Portals to ensure proper setup & use
- Protection for dealerships against Parasitic Vendors
- Search & Find New Partnership Vendors
- Setup Lead Source Provider Radius and Radii with Dealership/PMA
6. Holding Automotive Sales Leads Providers Accountable
In addition to Understanding the 3rd party Lead providers and what they can provide to your dealership, you also need to be able to hold those same providers accountable for the massive amounts of money that your dealership is spending with them. Without continuously holding these vendors accountable, dealers can spend up to 10 to 15 thousand dollars per month on their “services”. Unless you can directly see what vehicle these vendors have sold for you, how can you hold them accountable to see if the dollars spent make sense? You cannot.
7. Understanding Social Media Tactics, Targeting, and Analytics For Car Dealers
Within all the changes in marketing and advertising that dealerships have faced in the past 12 months, nothing is more important than for dealers to understand how social media tactics, targeting marketing, and how utilizing them can truly take advantage of not only selling more units, but also inventory control.This offers a much faster, responsive, and reactive direct consumer advertising. This strategy also has the ability to purchase inventory, and explore other revenue generating sources.
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