CANADIAN DEALERS MADE THE TRIP TO LAS VEGAS, NEVADA TO LEARN FROM TOP DIGITAL EXPERTS
Dealers were checking out a new virtual reality app
Canada Day at the DrivingSales Executive Summit is typically held over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. But not this year.
The 2015 DrivingSales Executive Summit fell on the weekend after Thanksgiving, prompting even more Canadian dealers to make the trek to Las Vegas, Nev. to attend the event.
“We’ve always had a lot of relationships with some wonderful dealers up in Canada, so you’re seeing us invest more to take care of them,” said Jared Hamilton, CEO and Founder of DrivingSales, in an interview with Canadian auto dealer.
“There are intricacies to the market and we just want to make sure we can serve them with all of the value we can,” added Hamilton.
Most of the content focuses on digital marketing, using Canadian data to help drive home concepts.
“The morning is always jam-packed and informative. It really hits home. There’s a lot that you can take back,” said Jim Williamson, Dealer Principal and General Manager for Williamson Chrysler in Uxbridge, Ont.
“The keynotes are always good. There’s some good leadership messages there,” Williamson added.
CAPITALIZE ON CLOSING
“They call me the chemist,” said Mitch Gallant, Director of eCommerce at Capital Auto Group in Regina, Sask.
Gallant shared his recipe for success on how to close more deals. He subscribes to “Caffeine,” which stands for connection with customers, confirming appointments, fast, fun, acting excited, never give up and emotional by getting your employees amped up.
He also encourages dealers to document their lead processes, including how to handle long-term followup, active leads, appointments and confirmation, and processes for no shows, sold and unsold inventory.
Deepak Anand, Head of Industry for the Auto vertical at Google Canada
GET MILLENNIALS ON BOARD
Millennials are a lot different than generations that have gone before them, said Duncan Cochrane, President at Strathcom Media.
Cochrane explored the ways dealers can market to Millennials, the demographic between the ages of 18-34. It’s all about doing what the Millennial customer wants, added Cochrane.
That means posting quality content on your website and showing a cool video — not just a montage of pictures tuned to a robotic voiceover. Millennials also like receiving text messages, as opposed to emails.
Things Millennials usually don’t like? Filling out a postal code as a required field or getting spammed with coupons, said Cochrane. A better approach, said Cochrane, would be to offer two free movie tickets or a dinner to test drive a vehicle at the dealership.
But Cochrane had one message of caution: “It’s dangerous sometimes to look at Millennials in a box,” he said, noting there can be a big difference between an 18-year-old and a 34-year-old buyer.
Aleksandra Banas, Digital Marketing Manager for Lexus of Edmonton, was one
of the all-female panelists
ALL THINGS SOCIAL
A panel of female dealers also took to the stage to talk about social strategies.
The panel included Susan Gubasta, President and CEO of Mississauga Toyota, Aleksandra Banas, Digital Marketing Manager at Lexus of Edmonton and Brenda Niedermaier, Marketing and Business Development Manager for Mills Motors. Kate Frost, President of Kate Frost Inc. moderated the discussion.
The panelists all agreed social media shouldn’t be used primarily for selling. “It’s social media, not selling media,” said Frost.
FOLLOW THE BUYER’S JOURNEY
Deepak Anand wasn’t afraid to tell dealers that they needed to ramp up their digital strategies. Anand, Head of Industry for the Auto vertical at Google Canada, is a numbers guy. And the numbers from Google Canada’s recent Think Auto research don’t lie:
Almost two-thirds of customers were not happy with the quality of the response from the dealership, yet still bought from them. That meant 54 per cent of customers ended up switching brands or OEMs;
The DealerOn team at the Canadian session
53 per cent service their vehicles from the same brand or dealers (when it should be 100%, said Anand).
But Anand said there are some simple things dealers can do to attract customers.
Duncan Cochrane presented on millennials and text messaging
One is to improve the mobile experience, said Anand. “The year of mobile was 2011,” he said. It should be easy for customers to be able to book a test drive on mobile, which should also display the date of the appointment and contact name. He also said that dealers should make it easy for customers to locate promotions and incentives on mobile devices. Anand also suggested that dealers should be open on Sundays — and that caused some heated discussion in the room. He said dealers could take another day off in the week instead of Sunday, and offer a weekend blowout sale.
Panelists shared their social media strategies
On the service side, Anand said dealers should be offering online service appointment booking, live status updates during the service appointment, online parts purchase and regular satisfaction check-ins between appointments.
After the Canadian session, dealers then headed off to join the rest of the delegates for the official DrivingSales Executive Summit kickoff. “It’s great that they have put the Canadian session in place. They are slowly getting it that we are important and we are a huge market,” said Jay Goldberg, Manager of Customer Experience Centre at Weins Canada.
