The market shift from brick and mortar dealerships to virtual on the web showrooms has been confirmed with 93% of car shoppers turning for the World wide web Super Highway vs. their neighborhood auto dealership or neighborhood car row to shop for any new or made use of automobile. Of equal interest to auto dealers who’ve shifted their automotive marketing dollars to the Internet to adhere to their customers, there is certainly that automotive marketing agencies have confirmed that on the web car shoppers are generally working with the search engines like google to try to find a precise car, not an auto dealership. Consequently, automotive marketing agencies have shifted their online messages to match the consumer’s request for facts in far more of a pull/push marketing strategy to promote their inventory working with neighborhood search words and meta tags attached to personal videos of their cars vs. the old college push/pull procedures that focused on delivering an auto dealer marketing message created to drive buyers straight for the dealers’ website, this term is Automobile SEO
The part of your actual globe auto dealership is maturing into an encounter center to test-drive vehicles, take delivery — for now — and service the cars in the course of their life cycle. Newly developed virtual planet auto dealerships are also taking on a brand new role within the retail auto industry with new technologies that can be crashing through the glass wall that used to limit what could be achieved around the World Wide Internet.
Marketing tools working with Search engine optimization and SEM methods tied to individual car videos linked to micro-sites with specialized info is much more transparent and relevant than driving internet shoppers to a residence web page on an auto dealer’s website that requires additional actions by the buyer to drill down to what they have to have — information and facts on a vehicle that they are serious about purchasing. Online shoppers are much less usually in search of an auto dealer than they’re on the lookout for a car so why not reduce towards the chase and take them there straight? Google and also other search engines have recognized the worth of video and much more targeted vehicle focused search final results with indexable automobile videos taking a priority position more than traditional postings and sites with comparable regional search criteria.
After a shopper has landed on an automobile why would an auto dealer want to drive them to an email, a telephone call, or any similar disconnect within the method directing them to their true or virtual showroom when new technology can answer all of the customer’s questions directly from the video player applying integrated on the web transaction tools? Reside two-way video client interaction platforms, like Argistics AutoTransaXion, and third-celebration sources like CarFax reports coupled with the potential to deliver credit applications, payment calculators, and in some cases a comprehensive buyers order — actual time — with CRM/DMS integration allowing a complete desking tool for the auto dealer to push/pull all related details necessary to essentially sell the car online as well as the expected types for the consumer to purchase it suggest that there is no longer a requirement to take the client back up the sales funnel towards the auto dealer’s website.
Complete auto dealership internet websites are no longer the best — or a minimum of the only — spot for automotive marketing agencies to drive on the net consumers to. Auto dealers who want to survive inside the developing virtual world online ought to be far more focused on worldwide web-based tools and approaches that enable them to accomplish it the customer’s way. They need to supply on the web car shoppers with all of the facts that they have to have to find and purchase the vehicle they want without needing to match the auto dealers’ promoting processes based on old and dated adversarial negotiation processes in either their true or virtual showroom exactly where shoppers perceive that auto dealers will try to sell them something that they don’t want for more than they will afford?
Numerous vendor applications are at the moment out there and getting applied by automotive marketing agencies to achieve all the above. AutoNation, for example, has recently announced their shift to centralized on the web transactions applying Argistics AutoTransaXion’s buyer interaction platform with their two-way video transaction capabilities and Sonic Automotive has confirmed the role of video to enhance conversions working with SiSTer Technologies Video CarLot. Equivalent announcements by OEM and other technologies vendors towards the auto industry are expected to become released throughout the upcoming 2010 NADA Convention in Orlando Florida. Because of this, the part of the brick and mortar dealership and their online marketing messages advertising the auto dealership vs. satisfying the requirements with the towards the consumer have to alter — and they’re going to mainly because they already are.
Similarly, the role of social networking for automotive marketing agencies anxious to monetize this new consumer-driven media is also being accelerated by new technologies and automotive marketing vendor applications. Efforts by Automotive Advertising Agencies to market directly to customers by way of social media, B2C, have matured to far more productive customer-driven marketing messages. New inventory drove third party sites like ronsmap.com to apply new technologies that develop word of mouth, W.O.M., and buyer to buyer suggestions, C2C, which promise to become the preferred process of promoting cars on the net within the foreseeable future.
