The days of customers driving around from lot to lot looking at vehicles are long gone.
Lyamen Savy of 321 Ignition pointed out Wednesday during her portion of the Digital Marketing Workshop at the BHPH Super Forum that 80 percent of car purchasing decisions are being made online.
She showed a graph illustrating the changing trends, with customers visiting five dealerships before purchasing a vehicle in 2014. This year on average, customers were going to 1.4 to 1.8dealerships before driving off with a car.
Savy worked through her hour-long presentation “Metrics That Matter” to give dealers strategies to get those potential online customers.
“Numbers create accountability,” Savy said.
Her presentation was between sessions by Kendra Brown and Alex Melen.
Brown, marketing and financial manager/owner of Brown Family Auto Sales and director of operations for the Dream Team Media Company, helped dealers define their marketing strategy and the key performance indicators to track your marketing performance.
Melen, co-founder of SmartSite, guided dealers through jumpstarting their SEO.
Savy, who has 19 years of marketing experience, pointed out the different marketing channels — pulling, fulfilling a demand, and pushing, creating a demand.
The main goal in any marketing strategy, especially with dealerships working with limited budgets, is maximizing their money and getting the lowest cost per lead.
“What you budget, you want the most efficient use,” Savy said.
It starts with planning and gaining a full view of the data.
“You need the full picture to make the right decisions,” Savy said.
She illustrated the possibility of jumping to early conclusions based on part of the picture, going through different statistics from two marketing strategies. The one with the greater cost per lead ended up bringing in customers spending more money.
If working with an ad or marketing agency, Savy said it is important they are providing you with all your numbers. You also need access to your Google analytics to make sure they are set up correctly to provide proper tracking.
She also urged dealers to use a CRM and to make sure their website is up-to-date and welcoming to customers.
