Auto Dealers Innovation Series presents real solutions for a new marketing reality
The digital marketing revolution has made inroads into every sector of the economy, but auto dealers have yet to catch up with the changes, automarketing and marketing experts told dealers, GMs, dealership staff and marketers attending the 2017 Auto Dealers Innovation Series hosted by Trillium Automobile Dealers Association (TADA).
Event speakers explored diverse topics such as the importance of VDP analytics, improving the customer experience in a digital marketplace, fixed ops marketing in a mobile-first reality and marketing to Millennials.
“Financing drives people crazy,” Sean Moffitt, Managing Director at Wikibrands told Toronto summit attendees.
Moffitt says he believes that the large number of Canadians who do their banking online would also be “100 per cent comfortable, and probably more comfortable” doing all of their financing online.
He underscored the importance of personalizing the customer experience based on customer preferences. Moffitt referred to Netflix throughout his presentation as a great example of how to cater to customer preferences. “There are 77,000 mini-categories on Netflix — what is the auto dealer equivalent to that?” he asked. “If someone’s coming in regularly for an oil check, what else are they interested in; what are your categories?”
Moffitt cited other examples, including: Hilton Hotels & Resorts, which now provides guests the ability to choose their exact hotel room; Coca-Cola, which personalized names on customer bottles, doubling their sales that summer; L’Oréal, which instituted a virtual tool allowing customers to personalize their shopping experience — the move increased shoppers’ purchasing amounts by 30 per cent; Mercedes-Benz, which has introduced the “Build Your Own” app, allowing potential customers to choose a car’s colour and other elements with the click of a mouse.
Moffitt also stressed the need for dealers to understand emerging technologies while guiding employees. “You need to invest in the process,” he said.
Measure everything
Ian Cruickshank, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing of Vancouver-based Speed Shift Media, tackled some of the difficulties associated with measuring Internet traffic and provided insights to recognize key digital metrics that bolster branding and awareness objectives.
He discussed the ins and outs of VDP analytics to give dealers a better understanding of how to evaluate ROI, and presented strategies to make sure they’re not being taken advantage of.
Is there a holy grail of Millennial marketing? “Absolutely not”, said Brent Wees, Director of First Impressions at Nextup.
Wees explained that every generation is suspicious of its younger element and believes that Millennials are just like all of us who “want to be respected and listened to.”
“If you can’t easily make a service appointment from your phone, ladies and gentlemen, you are losing not thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands of dollars — you are losing millions of dollars,” said Jeff Clark, Chief Sales Officer at DealerOn Inc., a U.S.-based car dealer marketing solutions firm.
Clark wrapped up the summit by posing some difficult questions to the audience, revealing the different changes dealers have yet to make to capitalize on the new realities shaping customer relations and automotive e-commerce.
“Anybody in here, by a show of hands, can tell me how many pages of service-related content you have on your website right now…get out of here…Not one of you in here know that!” exclaimed Clark.
“If more than half of your profit comes from service, why is on average less than three per cent of your content dedicated to service; does that make any sense?”
