Google Marketing Live: Embracing Today’s Digital Landscape in Automotive
Written by Chris Prijic and Narumi Takagi
In this year’s Google Marketing Live “Think Auto” segment, there was a running theme of “embracing digital” within the automotive industry. While we see other industries (especially the e-commerce industry) fully embracing and immersing themselves in today’s digital landscape, we have yet to see the automotive industry follow suit and dive deep. On average, shoppers are spending 14 hours online before going into your dealership. Even though we see a growing number of shoppers who spend more time online, we don’t see the industry jumping into the new opportunities that their online presence has to offer.
According to Dr. Ruth Heuss’s session, Dr. Heuss noted that ⅔ of shoppers make decisions online before stepping foot into the dealership; this stat alone makes how we market and take part in their journey online crucial. We need to help our shoppers navigate the car-buying process online and provide them with the same experience when they walk into your dealership. This all begins with understanding your shopper’s car buying journey. A shopper’s journey may begin more explorative and sometimes random as they develop their curiosity, but as their understanding of what they are looking for becomes clearer, they will reach a stage of consideration.
As marketers, we need to mold our initiatives to take part in this process, and we need to embrace the new learnings, tools, & opportunities to do so. Broad and generic advertising has its place, but being able to provide individualized experiences is what’s going to influence the shopper to reach their stage of consideration.
We need to respond to customer interest and customer demand and evolve the shopping experience to deliver what the shopper wants.
It all starts with discovering and finding ways to use the data you have about your customer’s journey. There is much we can learn from the shoppers who arrive on your dealership website. Whether it is the cars they viewed or the price range they’re interested in, you should use the information available to you to personalize the customer’s experience through your marketing strategy.
In order to connect the dots of your customers’ journeys in a way that coincides with today’s expectations around security and privacy online, third-party data sources are no longer a viable way to provide personalized, relevant experiences. In order to make these experiences effective, you need to engage with your first-party data and connect touch-points directly across your digital mediums.
As your dealership’s digital presence becomes an increasingly influential part of your customer’s car buying process, it is essential to provide that unique, relevant experience across the customer’s journey.
At Orbee, we’ve built our platform on the notion that dealerships need to take control of their data and use it to drive their success. Our platform ingests data from all automotive sources, matching touchpoints and unifying your marketing, website, and sales data into a platform dedicated to making your dealership customer-centric.
Once you start to ingest data and begin to utilize its full potential, your automotive dealership will be on the right path in using state-of-the-art technology to streamline your business and offer your shoppers the personalized car buying experiences they want and deserve.
