How to Improve Auto Dealership Efficiencies With Digital Tools
While customers may shop around for fuel efficiency, they have nothing on dealers who are seemingly on a constant search for operational efficiency. With razor-thin margins and cutthroat competition, dealers know they can’t afford to allow inefficiencies to build up in their operations if they want to protect and grow their bottom line.
A recent study by Automotive News found 88% of dealers are likely to increase their use of digital tools to increase customers as a result of COVID-19.
The digital revolution in the automotive industry has given dealers a whole new set of tools and capabilities to drive deep and meaningful gains in efficiency throughout their dealership operations. But for all the ways in which digital tools have improved auto dealer efficiency, possibly none has been as powerful as the revolution in auto dealer marketing.
The combination of high-quality digital marketing for car dealers, along with new capabilities in conquest marketing and the implications for the entire sales and service process, are driving powerful bottom-line changes for dealers who have embraced it.
In this post, we examine three key ways to improve auto dealer efficiency with the right digital tools by:
- Improving dealership marketing ROI with predictive analytics
- Reducing the time wasted on low-quality auto prospects
- Activating more service customers as conquest leads
Digital Automotive Tools – Not Just Digital Automotive Marketing
Dealership efficiencies from applying digital tools to auto dealer marketing aren’t found solely in cutting ad buys to print or TV in exchange for digital ads. Of course, automotive digital marketing is a powerful strategy that plays an important role in any dealer’s marketing portfolio, but the truly game-changing capabilities of digital tools when it comes to improving dealership efficiency is realized in the application of predictive analytics tools to create personalized predictive marketing campaigns.
Using high quality data sources and AI-powered analytics tools, predictive marketing personalizes and targets auto dealer marketing messages in a way that isn’t possible with a non-digital strategy. Each consumer touchpoint is targeted to its individual recipient based on channel, timing, messaging, offer and more to maximize the person’s potential engagement with the dealer and conversion into an active high-quality auto lead.
This one-on-one personalized outreach would be immensely expensive if your dealership had to do it manually but becomes less expensive than legacy auto dealer marketing campaign models – while also generating significantly more actionable auto leads – by automating the entire car sales process through the power of modern digital tools.
Virtually anything that would make a previous dealership process 15 times more efficient than before is worth embracing wholeheartedly, and that’s the kind of results Market EyeQ’s predictive auto dealer marketing solutions are generating for our dealer partners: 15x marketing ROI over industry averages.
Improve Dealership Employee Time Management
When it comes to improving dealership efficiency, the importance of dealership marketing isn’t just in how much it costs, but also in what kind of leads it generates.
Simply put, low-quality leads cost your dealership time and money. That might be time your dealership’s Business Development Center spends chasing down a weak online lead, or it might be wasted marketing spend reaching out to someone who seems like a good opportunity but already bought elsewhere because you are using a reactive dealership marketing approach versus a proactive dealership marketing approach.
Another important reason to improve your auto lead quality and reduce the time your salespeople spend on low-value prospects is to avoid the efficiency trap of constantly losing good people to greener pastures.
Great salespeople won’t stick around long in an environment where they aren’t being supported with the right tools. Research found that 61% of all dealership employees don’t think their dealership is using the latest technology, and 25% were considering leaving as a result to find a job somewhere with a brighter future. High performers don’t want to be left behind, especially in an industry as competitive as auto sales, and they want the tools they use to be effective and efficient in getting the job done.
This drive for efficiency is one factor of Market EyeQ’s Behavior Prediction Score® that ranks every prospect on a 0-100 scoring system. The simplicity of a single numeric score according to the likelihood of a sale allows salespeople to quickly and efficiently prioritize their leads and give each one a realistic share of their time and effort.
Activate Dealership Conquest Opportunities Through the Service Drive
Service drives have long been epicenters of key customer experience touchpoints at the dealership. Attracting new service customers through effective automotive digital marketing is not only key to running a profitable service department, it also serves as an increasingly valuable conquest marketing opportunity.
Conquesting service-not-sold leads has become a critical practice in the current automotive sales environment when the service drive is often the de-facto front door of the dealership, and digital tools like Market EyeQ’s Service Conquest functionality supercharge the process.
Market EyeQ automatically mines the service drive for sales opportunities by assessing each upcoming service appointment and every drive-up customer as a potential sales lead, combining information from your DMS and CMS with data from other sources – and factoring in what repairs their vehicle will need – to generate a ranked list of prospects for your team to engage with personalized offers.
This model is so efficient that Mastermind dealer partners who use Market EyeQ to convert service customers into new car buyers at a 4x higher activation rate compared to industry averages.
Interested in identifying how Market EyeQ’s digital tools could improve the efficiency of your dealership’s marketing, sales and service operations? Contact us for a free demo.
