October 3, 2019

6 Ways to the Auto Industry is Changing & How You Can Adapt

As a general manager or sales professional, you need to keep up with the latest and greatest technology and digital advancements in the auto industry in order to maintain an edge over the competition and develop efficient, reliable buying and selling strategies.

There’s been a lot of change happening in recent months, and it’s your job to keep up with the times. Luckily, we’ve been keeping track for you, and would love to share.

Here are six ways you can adjust your dealership’s digital marketing strategies to stay on-trend, land the sale, and even reduce the manual work required on your end:

1. Responsive Websites

People are no longer viewing your inventory or website exclusively on their desktop computers. In fact, over 47% of all global traffic came from mobile searches in 2018. No one wants to zoom into small text or struggle with a dysfunctional contact us form on their smartphone.

There’s strong evidence that a responsive website can help to lower your bounce rates, improve the user experience and get you more site conversions. If your current auto site isn’t mobile-friendly, now is the time to upgrade.

2. Heat Map Tracking

What are your customers doing when poking around on your website? Simply add a little tracking code to the backend of your website to find out. Software like Lucky Orange can record your website visitors, sharing videos of real people scrolling and clicking through your site.

You can use this data and other helpful heat map tracking results to see what pages or inventory visitors are most interested in, as well as determine where they’re abandoning your site to improve your user experience/sales approach.

3. Image Optimization

Currently, Google Image searches account for 22.6% of all queries on the search engine, according to data tracking by Moz. When it comes to the auto industry, it’s no shock that both dealers and customers want to see visuals of your inventory.

Now, more than ever, it’s pertinent to optimize your images for web by properly naming your files and adding relevant alt text to help search engines accurately serve your cars for image search queries. Even images you post on your Instagram or social outlets should be optimized to gain more traffic.

Properly naming your images can also help with ad targeting, such as with Pearl Proximity’s keyword search feature. When someone searches for, say, a 2018 Subaru Impreza, you can serve this person in-line ads featuring a specific car in your inventory.

4. Live Chat

Have you ever noticed a small chat widget in the bottom corner of a website? Usually, a messaging box will appear, where a person often asks if you need help with anything.

These live messaging bots can really open a channel of communication and encourage site visitors to get quick answers, without wasting time on the phone. Various platforms like Drift can help you transform the way you interact with prospective buyers, with the power of “conversational marketing.”

5. Competitive Dealer Targeting

What if you could attract your competitors’ customers right from under their noses? Technology is evolving and allowing you to track other dealerships’ foot traffic. Pearl Proximity, for instance, allows dealers to target every mobile device that walks into a competitor’s showroom for thirty days.

By sending your ads to consumers that walk into a competing dealership, Proximity puts an electronic fence around your rival dealership and boosts your chance of landing the sale.

6. Instant Trade-ins

Going to car auctions to acquire or sell used inventory is a real headache. You’ll pay through the nose in prices and fees; $675 is the average cost per unit to buy at auction.

Fortunately, some software leaders are developing a solution, like our team at CarOffer. Through our online automotive trade platform, we take out the transaction fees, cut the auction fees by two-thirds, and can give you instant, high-return offers in seconds.