By, Jeff Clark, President of SOCIALDEALER
Imagine the power of not only knowing every visitor on your lot, but also knowing if they visited your neighbor’s lot or independent service facility.
The automotive kingdom is ruled by data sourcing. Consumer data directs all the major decisions for our marketers, retailers, and suppliers. As the industry’s demand for more progressive and detailed data is increasing, the need for responsible marketers is also on the rise. With limitless data at our fingertips, the lines between what’s permissible and what’s not has become undoubtedly blurred. Recent technologies in the industry are challenging these data permissions, so how do you know that your data partner is sourcing this data legally? Do you trust your marketing agency to use this customer information appropriately?
Our job as marketers is to understand and persuade the customer journey – from interest to purchase. Until now, we have had access to only two buckets of data through our industry sources. First, online data. With digital cookie tracking, our data partners are able to tell the beginning of the customer’s story. As a result, we may receive an IP address that we can remarket to. Second, transactional data. After sourcing registration data, we are able to tell the end of the customer’s story with a record of their purchase. But what about the blind spots? We never had access to personal identifiable information (PII) while they are shopping… until now.
Our industry now has access to detailed on the lot shopper data. We not only know who is shopping, but we also know where and when. Our cell phones are sending marketers more information than we may realize with enabled location services. And, there are sources that have legally collected personal information for marketing purposes. With this information, we now have the power of not only knowing every visitor on your lot, but also knowing if they visited your neighbor’s lot or independent service facility. The benefits to utilizing this data as an automotive retailer is undeniable. If you were aware of the conditions of your planted seed, you could better plan for a more successful harvest.
As a marketer, we can adjust our communications, budgets, and engagement strategy in real-time to appeal to your customers based on their current shopping behavior. That being said, automotive retailers need to proceed with caution with their marketing partners. Just knowing “who is winning the foot traffic battle in my market” is not enough… you need to know “how are we going to communicate with our customers after knowing who is winning”.
Having a marketing partner that you trust to act, communicate, and respond responsibly to this data is key. We can all imagine the negative responses that could await at the other end of your communication strategy from irresponsible use of this data: “How did you get my information? How did you know where I was shopping on Saturday? I don’t want you to contact me!” A responsible marketer will use this data to communicate with relevance rather than with specific details that could creep out your customers. After all, our industry has enough battles with trust, we don’t need to offer yet another reason for consumers to dread car shopping.
Even though we can complete the customer journey with this new shopper data, it is becoming increasingly critical for marketers to be responsible with how we communicate and use this sensitive customer information.
As dealers, it’s easy to get lost in the few opportunities we see in hand when in reality, we have an entire field of golden opportunities- we might just not be able to see all of them…until now. It’s time to harvest – responsibly!
Join Jeff Clark in his upcoming Digital Dealer 26 session on Wednesday, April 10, 2019: 2:25 PM – 3:15 PM to discover new technologies for data monitoring. It’s one you won’t want to miss!
