Whilst 95% of all car sales today are finalised at dealerships, search is the first place people go to begin their buyer’s journey. What this tells us is that online advertising is key to bringing in new leads. However, marketers have to work hard to guide customers through the journey, and encourage them to make a purchase at the end.
Gaining trust is one of the biggest challenges automotive marketers will face. However, gaining insights into consumer behaviour is the key to finding a solution. Read on to discover how to gather this crucial data and therefore drive more sales for your dealership..
Utilise all call features
Phone calls are a common and important tool within the automotive industry, proving to be easier to turn into sales. But to get these sales, you need the calls, and there are various ways to increase call volume through your marketing techniques.
These include:
- Call-only campaigns: as the name suggests, these campaigns focus purely on getting calls, rather than visits to your website. Because of this, it’s important to recognise the difference between conducting call-only campaigns against regular search campaigns.
- Call extensions: these campaigns give the option to visit your website, as well as adding an extension that allows for instant phone calls with a click of a button. What’s more, some software even allows you to schedule these options to only show during business hours, when staff are actually available to take the calls.
- Call tracking: in order to make the most out of these features, you need to be tracking all calls. Only then will you understand where your Return on Investment (ROI) is actually coming from. To make this process easier, software like the Mediahawk call tracking dashboard can make data clearer to understand, and help you decide which techniques to try next.
In-depth call tracking
Call tracking allows you to monitor each part of the buyer’s journey, from the initial engagement to the final conversion step. Buying a car is all about building a relationship, and therefore trust.
And it can be hard to build a real connection through just digital marketing techniques. It’s important to manage these relationships, and employ call tracking solutions to merge your online and offline strategies. One way to do this is to utilise software that facilitates dynamic number insertion, which deploys unique, trackable numbers across each marketing asset. Then, automotive marketers can find out which channels drive the biggest engagement, including localised numbers to build a sense of familiarity between shoppers and dealerships.
Use customer reviews to build trust
Buying a car is a big deal – no matter your budget, preferences or how you like to make your purchases. No matter how much research you do, you never know if this car could be the perfect vehicle for you until you’ve laid down the cash. However, reading through customer reviews and getting a real-life account from real-life people who have completed the same transaction before you, could influence your decision.
Reviews are the most effective automotive marketing strategy there is – so it’s essential to ensure that they are not only good, but also on all outlets such as Google, social media and your company’s website.
And, if you want to take things even further, and have the resources to do so, you can also create customer success stories or testimonials to demonstrate exactly how happy your customers are!
Gaining trust is the quickest way to convert interest into sales, and the above methods are just some of the ways to achieve this.