By Kyle Keogh, Automotive Industry Director, Google

Technology is changing the car-buying experience. Consumers are no longer taking a linear path to purchase. Today’s consumer journey just isn’t that simple. Our research shows that there can be up to 120 online touchpoints with a single shopper before they enter the showroom floor.⁽¹⁾ 

This complexity means that you – the dealer – must think beyond the traditional path to purchase and create a holistic view of the customer in order to help him or her in their journey.

The following are three steps automotive marketing leaders should take in order to build this holistic view and cohesive strategy.

Connect your data

The first step to creating a holistic view of the customer is to partner with your OEM counterparts in order to connect your data. Customers don’t distinguish between tiers so when their previous interactions with your brand – even if it’s not with your dealership – go unnoticed, they become frustrated. And a poor experience at any point in the customer journey is a poor experience for your overall brand – dealer included.

FCA corporate recognized the need to align its data across tiers in order to deliver a seamless and helpful customer experience. It started by partnering with 2,600 of its dealers who are part of its co-op program. In this partnership, they built a foundation to bring all of their customer data onto a single platform called Google Analytics 360. Doing this not only gave FCA and its dealers the opportunity to better understand and respond to customer needs, but also enabled FCA corporate to eventually tie its brand marketing back to dealership visits. We see that on average, marketing leaders are 1.6X more likely than laggards to prioritize integrating technology.⁽²⁾

Activate your data

The second step is to activate your data. There’s more to reaching the right customer than looking at basic demographics. For instance, if you’re promoting a new line of mid-size SUVs, traditionally your marketing team would advertise towards a consumer age group or household income. Today, we can do much better.

Now, you can overlay search data to find buyers signaling purchase intent. For example, if a user searches for “SUVs under $40K” on Google.com then goes to watch a video review on YouTube, Google will place that user in an “in-market SUV shopper” category. You can then reach that same user with a video spot on YouTube. By layering these intent signals you’re able to create a more helpful and relevant experience for potential customers.

In addition to layering Google data onto your marketing campaigns, you should be using your own customer data, like website visits, to reach high-value customers across Google. For example, let’s say a user is browsing your new SUV inventory on your website. A few days later, that same user goes to YouTube to watch a recap of last night’s big game. In that moment, your SUV ad can appear, reminding the user to continue his/her research with you.

Using a combination of Google’s audience data and your own can enable you to get the right message to the right customer, at the right moment.

Improve your measurement

The final step to drive growth through digital is to align your marketing metrics to business outcomes. Gone are the days of only tracking clicks and lead form submissions on your websites. If you can start to connect marketing back to tangible business outcomes, like foot traffic into the dealership, you’ll be able to measure the true impact of your marketing.

In the past year, we’ve made significant progress to help connect your digital impact to local showrooms with store visits reporting, a measurement solution in Google Ads. With store visits reporting, eligible dealers can see when a user clicks on a Search ad and then visits a dealership within 30 days.

Park Place, a prominent dealer group in Texas, began using store visits reporting to measure the impact of their digital campaigns on actual business metrics. With store visits, they saw that one in five people who clicked on a Search ad ended up visiting their dealership within 30 days. This helped Park Place optimize their marketing to drive more store visits and ultimately more sales.

To build the most comprehensive digital strategy, these three areas work together. As you start to create a holistic view of your customers, re-engage with them throughout their purchase journey, and improve the way you measure your marketing, you can build a strong foundation to drive more vehicle sales.

Source/Notes:

(1) Google/Verto, Journey Finder, March 2018 – July 2018, U.S., n=4,486 census balanced, A18+, web-based activity

(2) Source: Bain/Google Marketing Leaders Study, North America, n=516 marketing and advertising media and technology executive decision makers. North America Leaders (n=123) are defined using a composite score of self-reported revenue and market share growth, Nov. 2017.

About the Author

Kyle Keogh currently leads Google’s Media Sales relationships with the Automotive Industry, working with clients to drive sales, improve their Brand, and maximize product launches.