LeadsBest Practices

The title may have seemed confusing. If we’re going to take a dive into a  future  ecosystem, how can it also be available  today ? The answer is simple: adoption rate. The capabilities outlined in this article are available right now; however, many dealers are not embracing them and continue to advertise on Facebook as they always have. You have an opportunity to do today what all of your competitors will — or at least should — be doing in the future. Here’s what we’ve been so accustomed to do … Create a carousel ad. Send the consumer to the website. Retarget those who don’t engage. The second step is problematic. It’s important that we break the cycle of thinking that all traffic must go to the website. With a 3-5% opt-in rate of Apple users deciding to share their data with Facebook and its applications and losing 85% of website-based conversion data because of this and other privacy constraints, continuing to advertise on Facebook as we always have is already outdated thinking.  Facebook has products that allow advertisers to embrace a completely native ecosystem.  Here’s a question: If a consumer is choosing to be on Facebook, why would we remove them from that place of comfort and take them to a website? Here’s a second question: Isn’t our role as advertisers to meet where consumers want to engage with us and offer a seamless experience?  So here’s how we do that. A Breakdown of the On-Facebook Ecosystem Branding — Top-of-the-Funnel Let’s first caveat this part of the ecosystem. Branding lives outside of the 30-day cycle, and you don’t want to hold these ads accountable to metrics beyond reach, impressions, and frequency. While these will create clicks and drive traffic to your online properties — mostly your website — these ads are intended to keep your dealership top-of-mind as consumers who aren’t quite in-market spend their time on the Facebook platform and its network partners. Your branding ads should communicate your differentiators, value propositions, and culture. They should also communicate facets of your business that are evergreen, such as your ability to purchase consumer cars or the loyalty programs and free estimates that your fixed operations may offer. Such as with Douglas Volkswagen, who’s inviting local potential shoppers to come experience the “Douglas Difference,” which has been nurtured for nearly 70 years. Or you may want the local community to know that you’ll buy their vehicle — whether or not they bought one from your dealership. Regardless of the ad’s message, you want to make sure that the page they land on when they click the call-to-action — in these cases, “Learn More” — is directly aligned with the content of the advertisement.  AIAs and Service Ads — Middle-of-the-Funnel As you continually hold a presence with branding ads, you’ll want to capture those local shoppers who are in-market.  Side Note — We recommend that you don’t rely solely on Facebook targeting as you can add layers of depth and precision to this with a partner like IHS/Polk, who can provide an accurate number of households based on parameters you set — and this data isn’t affected by privacy updates or website data-loss as it’s based on actual sales and credit reporting data, not on online signals like pixels. The ability to create hyper-local, highly targeted audiences will make creating ad sets and ad copy easier as you’ll have a clear understanding to whom you’re delivering those ads. Automotive Inventory Ads (AIAs) are a carousel of vehicles that are relevant to the targeted audience, except these offer advertisers the capability to keep consumers on Facebook for a streamlined experience. The carousel ad gets delivered to the audience to browse the relevant vehicles that are available for purchase at your dealership. When they click a vehicle that interests them, a VDP-like page near instantaneously appears. It has all of the information that your traditional VDP contains, it has deep links to your dealership’s website and onsite VDP for dealers who need a little comfort in making this transition — and most importantly, it has different actions to actually capture a lead, including click-to-call, directions request, and chat. This method keeps consumers within the Facebook ecosystem, so we don’t lose any conversion data. Facebook collects the information on how consumers are behaving, what different attributes and facets of the VDP are most effective, and other pieces that can better inform them and us on what works. The more data that we can feed Facebook, the more accurately they can update this content and assist us as advertisers to make more strategic decisions. Here are the results when we looked at all campaigns that took consumers to the dealership website (non-AIA) compared to campaigns that kept consumers on Facebook (AIA). Significantly more content viewed, significantly lower costs, and significantly more actual leads from Facebook — people chatting, calling, and requesting directions from the on-Facebook VDPs.  I wrote that this is also applicable to service. It’s true: we currently use IHS/Polk ownership data to layer onto native Facebook targeting to create a more accurate picture of the audiences to whom our ads will be the most relevant, breaking these ads out into the big four — brakes, batteries, tires, oil changes — and general service ads. At this moment, we do not have the mechanisms in place to keep consumers on Facebook and embrace the new ecosystem; however, our Social Media Director wanted to be deliberate in getting the sales portion fine-tuned before diving into fixed operations. What I can say at this moment is that there are more sophisticated schedulers that can integrate with your dealership’s internal systems to create the same experience in service as we have in sales. Now not every customer in-market or near-market will become an immediate lead. Just like as with website visitors in the past, the consumers who click on one of your ads will be placed into a retargeting pool. This is where our strategic approach to the Facebook ecosystem has evolved the most. Retargeting Lead Generation Ads — Bottom-of-the-Funnel This is where I may lose you because you’ve done lead generation ads before on Facebook. I’m going to challenge that pushback. The approach is where we, as advertisers, went wrong in leveraging lead generation objectives on Facebook. We cast a wide net and hit people with ads who had potentially never engaged with any of our content — and we expected them to simply opt in to sharing their information. That’s unproductive. It yields spammy leads. It wastes your time and your budget. It was a shiny “instant lead retrieval” object that had foregone deliberate strategy.  The correct philosophy is to understand that consumers who have demonstrated intent and interest in our inventory and services — with our middle-of-funnel ads — are more likely to see a lead generation ad as relevant to their interests and, thus, is much more likely to be a qualified lead.  So using lead generation as your measured and deliberate retargeting campaign will work in your favor because the element of intent or interest is at play. They’ve clicked through one of your middle-of-funnel ads and browsed the VDP but didn’t contact the dealership via Messenger within the last 30 days.   That, however, isn’t the only parameter (intent/interest) that makes an effective lead generation retargeting campaign. It’s also important to still task the consumer to take an action without putting an undue burden on them. We want to pose a question that gauges the urgency of their purchase intent. So when the consumer has engaged the lead generation ad, their name and email is automatically populated — but to ensure that a click isn’t merely accidental, the consumer has to actively select an option from a dropdown menu.  When they have done that and done any necessary changes to email, name, or even add their phone number, they are opted into terms and conditions that they have to accept, and then are given a notification that they will be contacted — that information all gets routed to your CRM so that you can track it from form submission to the sale of the vehicle. Our team uses  LeadsBridge  for this capability. So you’ve ensured that the consumer has chosen to engage with the lead generation ad and has taken actual actions to share their information, which demonstrates several layers of intent.  It’s all a matter of keeping things simple and structured. When our team put this into a beta test, it generated an average of  83 qualified leads  per month at a cost of around  $8 per lead .  The On-Facebook Ecosystem Facebook has adapted in the face of privacy constraints and the eventual deprecation of the third-party cookie. It’s important that we embrace the future Facebook ecosystem of today because this is the environment in which we will all compete. By understanding how consumers want to engage with us, as well as the fact that platforms like Facebook and Google are creating ecosystems that keep consumers within their own properties, we will be better equipped to produce content that better resonates with them. If you have any further questions regarding this evolution or the different tactics presented in this article, please feel free to reach out to me, Dane Saville, at dane@reunionmarketing.com.

It seems like a simple concept.  Take care of people’s needs first and foremost.  Yet, it continuously falls short on the planning and execution when the transactional mindset and objectives take over. We spent decades instituting and enforcing a “customer satisfaction” survey process.  That was supposed to put the customer first right?  But that was a post-mortem grade on how a dealer rated versus other dealers, in most cases on a transactional process, not really aimed at customer’s true needs in the first place.  We have now evolved to the concept of “customer experience.”  But we still chase it as if it is something we can develop and invoke upon the customer.   When in reality it is the “customer’s experience.”  They own it.   They dictate how they will perceive it and value it.  We merely need to be able to be flexible and personalized in our approach to their needs. I would argue vigorously that the future of retail, the success of the dealer footprint going forward will depend much more on Need Management versus Lead Management.  By its very nature leads are cold, transactional, and aimed at getting people into a car within the current sales month.  Needs are obviously more personal, more relevant and contextual to the exact need for the interaction and engagement.  Needs may not be aimed at a traditional sale either, but perhaps a service, or a question for now, or a more personal approach to the right vehicle and right financial arrangement. This proposition may sound basic, but the entire retail industry is built on a sales leads funnel to get people in and through the process and then survey them and ask how we did.  Our focus must shift if we hope to have long-term sustainability in retail in an industry and a function that is fast transforming.   As EV’s and other digital services and subscription models enter the scene, as new car inventories will be in flux through 2022 and used cars become an option, we must personalize the experience to focus on customer mobility and transportation needs. Even in the traditional new car sales process, we often miss the need.  As more customers move to digital shopping and retailing (you all know the increasing numbers), they are required to figure out their own need before they hit a human or the store.  We ask them to figure it out through a wonky pricing and configuration tool where they must select option codes and packages they are not even sure they want or need.  Most of us in the industry struggle knowing the difference between a trim level, model level or an option package.  The customer often muscles their way through it and lands on a “build and price” vehicle.  That then becomes the lead!  But have we really identified and resolved the need? I believe the whole process needs to be tipped upside down to start the with the need.  What does the customer (The “UP”) need?  It may sometimes be information they want to support some decision making that is hard to find in a sales brochure online system.  It may be information about best mobility options.  Assuming for a moment it is a vehicle that they want to own and acquire, is a new or used vehicle the best fit?  What type of driving will they do?  What are their weekly commuting needs?  What is their budget target?  Are they better of buying, leasing or even subscribing where available? I am not naïve enough to believe that the very process of moving inventory, monthly sales targets, transactional commission-based sales people are supportive of the idea of taking the necessary time to understand the customer need and taking the appropriate actions to deliver on that expectation.  What is success in automotive retail and sales will have to change. I would argue it already has changed.  Good dealers were already transforming processes and success metrics to understand that the future retail sustainability will be based on lifetime value, products and services, experiences and customer affinity to the dealer brand and experience.  The past year and a half with a global pandemic that changed customer expectations and mobility needs, and also disrupted supply chains for the foreseeable future, have all created more value on build-to-order (personalized orders) and personalized engagement for customer fulfillment of needs (not just sales). The new business imperatives that will drive success in the auto retail industry include: Access over Assets  The importance of the ability to engage the customer where they are in their journey as opposed to simply having inventory available.  That “permission” and capability for access and engagement is move valuable (even on a balance sheet) than the physical assets. Personalization over Transaction How much of the customer’s true needs were met versus our simple goal of a unit sale.  Transaction may help the monthly sales quota, but personalization will contribute to the customer lifetime value and the business sustainability. Service is not an event, it is an experience Treating every service experience as an opportunity to engage the customer deeper in their needs fulfillment entirely as opposed to a maintain or repair the product only mindset Users over Owners Leverage any and every customer who may want to engage with us at the retail level whether that be for product information, used cars, mini-fleet access or subscription models, digital services, maintenance and updates, charging, or future services as the goal over simply supporting owners only with the basic vehicle services.  They may not even be a “customer” in the traditional sense, but every interaction is of potential value for both parties in building a long-term relationship. Retail is not a location, it is an action and a relationship This means more than mobile delivery or service pick-up and drop-off.  How do we use retail experiences, which should include every interaction through every channel, to build a relationship and understand the customer’s context and needs?  Retail, and all it entails, is an experience building opportunity. While I mention these as imperatives, there are objectives and measurables that should be assigned to these efforts.  There should be focus on the people, processes and technology all aligning to this mission as the North Star experience.   It’s always easy to raise issues, but what are the solutions?  There is no one path forward to achieve these objectives and each dealership will need different focus and transformation depending on its maturity towards this goal. Let me offer a few thoughts and enablers I would consider critical to pivoting to need over lead. Define your North Star customer experience.  Clearly and concisely.  Is it well understood and communicated through the organization? Is the North Star experience supported by the right processes and measurables? Personalization not Transaction focus.  Do we really know and understand the customer needs? Do we have the right data and information to understand and respond appropriately to the need?   Are we asking the right questions and capturing the information? Does our technology share actionable insight, or does it just enable transactional processing? I would not suggest that this initiative mandates and overhaul of your technology platform and entire business processes.  But could they all be sharpened and aimed at the right objective?  I would suggest they could be optimized for this long-term success strategy.  Let’s utilize customer management systems and data across the organization (regardless of department or function) to create additive customer journey and customer need insight at each interaction.   Let’s evolve our business processes to be “customer-centric” and not functional-based or organizationally standard. Overall, the future of retail success will be predicated on the ability to deliver personalized, valuable engagements on the terms of the customer.  Their needs being fulfilled is the future of retail, not transactional exchanges.  That includes the what, where and how.  Retail is not a physical location; it must be an experience.  Customer needs will be met by somebody, it is up to you to make sure that somebody is you.  

The title may have seemed confusing. If we’re going to take a dive into a future ecosystem, how can it also be available today ? The answer is simple: adoption rate. The capabilities outlined in this article are available right now; however, many dealers are not embracing them and continue to advertise on Facebook as they always have. You have an opportunity to do today what all of your competitors will — or at least should — be doing in the future. Here’s what we’ve been so accustomed to do … Create a carousel ad. Send the consumer to the website. Retarget those who don’t engage. The second step is problematic. It’s important that we break the cycle of thinking that all traffic must go to the website. With a 3-5% opt-in rate of Apple users deciding to share their data with Facebook and its applications and losing 85% of website-based conversion data because of this and other privacy constraints, continuing to advertise on Facebook as we always have is already outdated thinking.  Facebook has products that allow advertisers to embrace a completely native ecosystem.  Here’s a question: If a consumer is choosing to be on Facebook, why would we remove them from that place of comfort and take them to a website? Here’s a second question: Isn’t our role as advertisers to meet where consumers want to engage with us and offer a seamless experience?  So here’s how we do that. A Breakdown of the On-Facebook Ecosystem Branding — Top-of-the-Funnel Let’s first caveat this part of the ecosystem. Branding lives outside of the 30-day cycle, and you don’t want to hold these ads accountable to metrics beyond reach, impressions, and frequency. While these will create clicks and drive traffic to your online properties — mostly your website — these ads are intended to keep your dealership top-of-mind as consumers who aren’t quite in-market spend their time on the Facebook platform and its network partners. Your branding ads should communicate your differentiators, value propositions, and culture. They should also communicate facets of your business that are evergreen, such as your ability to purchase consumer cars or the loyalty programs and free estimates that your fixed operations may offer. Such as with Douglas Volkswagen, who’s inviting local potential shoppers to come experience the “Douglas Difference,” which has been nurtured for nearly 70 years. Or you may want the local community to know that you’ll buy their vehicle — whether or not they bought one from your dealership. Regardless of the ad’s message, you want to make sure that the page they land on when they click the call-to-action — in these cases, “Learn More” — is directly aligned with the content of the advertisement.  AIAs and Service Ads — Middle-of-the-Funnel As you continually hold a presence with branding ads, you’ll want to capture those local shoppers who are in-market.  Side Note — We recommend that you don’t rely solely on Facebook targeting as you can add layers of depth and precision to this with a partner like IHS/Polk, who can provide an accurate number of households based on parameters you set — and this data isn’t affected by privacy updates or website data-loss as it’s based on actual sales and credit reporting data, not on online signals like pixels. The ability to create hyper-local, highly targeted audiences will make creating ad sets and ad copy easier as you’ll have a clear understanding to whom you’re delivering those ads. Automotive Inventory Ads (AIAs) are a carousel of vehicles that are relevant to the targeted audience, except these offer advertisers the capability to keep consumers on Facebook for a streamlined experience. The carousel ad gets delivered to the audience to browse the relevant vehicles that are available for purchase at your dealership. When they click a vehicle that interests them, a VDP-like page near instantaneously appears. It has all of the information that your traditional VDP contains, it has deep links to your dealership’s website and onsite VDP for dealers who need a little comfort in making this transition — and most importantly, it has different actions to actually capture a lead, including click-to-call, directions request, and chat. This method keeps consumers within the Facebook ecosystem, so we don’t lose any conversion data. Facebook collects the information on how consumers are behaving, what different attributes and facets of the VDP are most effective, and other pieces that can better inform them and us on what works. The more data that we can feed Facebook, the more accurately they can update this content and assist us as advertisers to make more strategic decisions. Here are the results when we looked at all campaigns that took consumers to the dealership website (non-AIA) compared to campaigns that kept consumers on Facebook (AIA). Significantly more content viewed, significantly lower costs, and significantly more actual leads from Facebook — people chatting, calling, and requesting directions from the on-Facebook VDPs.  I wrote that this is also applicable to service. It’s true: we currently use IHS/Polk ownership data to layer onto native Facebook targeting to create a more accurate picture of the audiences to whom our ads will be the most relevant, breaking these ads out into the big four — brakes, batteries, tires, oil changes — and general service ads. At this moment, we do not have the mechanisms in place to keep consumers on Facebook and embrace the new ecosystem; however, our Social Media Director wanted to be deliberate in getting the sales portion fine-tuned before diving into fixed operations. What I can say at this moment is that there are more sophisticated schedulers that can integrate with your dealership’s internal systems to create the same experience in service as we have in sales. Now not every customer in-market or near-market will become an immediate lead. Just like as with website visitors in the past, the consumers who click on one of your ads will be placed into a retargeting pool. This is where our strategic approach to the Facebook ecosystem has evolved the most. Retargeting Lead Generation Ads — Bottom-of-the-Funnel This is where I may lose you because you’ve done lead generation ads before on Facebook. I’m going to challenge that pushback. The approach is where we, as advertisers, went wrong in leveraging lead generation objectives on Facebook. We cast a wide net and hit people with ads who had potentially never engaged with any of our content — and we expected them to simply opt in to sharing their information. That’s unproductive. It yields spammy leads. It wastes your time and your budget. It was a shiny “instant lead retrieval” object that had foregone deliberate strategy.  The correct philosophy is to understand that consumers who have demonstrated intent and interest in our inventory and services — with our middle-of-funnel ads — are more likely to see a lead generation ad as relevant to their interests and, thus, is much more likely to be a qualified lead.  So using lead generation as your measured and deliberate retargeting campaign will work in your favor because the element of intent or interest is at play. They’ve clicked through one of your middle-of-funnel ads and browsed the VDP but didn’t contact the dealership via Messenger within the last 30 days.   That, however, isn’t the only parameter (intent/interest) that makes an effective lead generation retargeting campaign. It’s also important to still task the consumer to take an action without putting an undue burden on them. We want to pose a question that gauges the urgency of their purchase intent. So when the consumer has engaged the lead generation ad, their name and email is automatically populated — but to ensure that a click isn’t merely accidental, the consumer has to actively select an option from a dropdown menu.  When they have done that and done any necessary changes to email, name, or even add their phone number, they are opted into terms and conditions that they have to accept, and then are given a notification that they will be contacted — that information all gets routed to your CRM so that you can track it from form submission to the sale of the vehicle. Our team uses LeadsBridge for this capability. So you’ve ensured that the consumer has chosen to engage with the lead generation ad and has taken actual actions to share their information, which demonstrates several layers of intent.  It’s all a matter of keeping things simple and structured. When our team put this into a beta test, it generated an average of 83 qualified leads per month at a cost of around $8 per lead .  The On-Facebook Ecosystem Facebook has adapted in the face of privacy constraints and the eventual deprecation of the third-party cookie. It’s important that we embrace the future Facebook ecosystem of today because this is the environment in which we will all compete. By understanding how consumers want to engage with us, as well as the fact that platforms like Facebook and Google are creating ecosystems that keep consumers within their own properties, we will be better equipped to produce content that better resonates with them. If you have any further questions regarding this evolution or the different tactics presented in this article, please feel free to reach out to me, Dane Saville, at dane@reunionmarketing.com.

2020 was a year wrought with upheaval and change. In the automotive industry, all that we knew about dealership traffic patterns and buying patterns no longer hold true. With regard to internet lead process and management, there are almost as many "insights" and opinions as to how things should change as there are people offering said insights and recommendations. Before you turn your process on end and completely "reinvent the wheel," take a good look at some of the things that have remained constant, but you simply had not implemented pre or post-pandemic. The better part of the following was written in March 2020. I was about ready to submit it for publication and the pandemic happened. Now, as the dust is settling somewhat, I want to share with you what I still see as one of the most important parts of the Customer Service Experience in the dealership, or any industry, really. The initial inquiry and the first steps on the road to the appointment and, ultimately, to the sale. Internet lead management, whether you are in internet sales or business development, is best done using a combination of a number of tools that we have at our fingertips. Many new technologies are just coming out, with only the most progressive of teams already implementing the use of apps, AI, and new software. Many of the basic tools needed we already have in our toolbox. In addition to our word tracks, scripts, and phone skills are email, text, video, and ringless voicemail, not necessarily in that order. Each of those has(have?) extreme value when used properly and strategically. There is a certain skill involved for each one individually, and when used together they are an unstoppable force and direct path to optimal performance in your department by way of a streamlined, transparent process that results in a pleasant, quality experience for your customers. However, if not used strategically, your customers will feel as though you had not even paid attention to what sparked their interest in your dealership or what they are trying to accomplish. Are they credit challenged, vehicle specific, or a new driver in the household? Figure out what it is. When trying to establish contact AND after making contact, make your efforts relevant and consistent toward providing a streamlined solution for your shoppers, whether online or via telephone. It is more important now than ever, when we must step up our game with regard to the customer service experience from the initial inquiry through to sale and delivery. We must no longer take advantage of the opportunities before us, and realize that each and every inquiry or potential customer is a person waiting for us to help with their automotive needs. How we respond, how we serve them, will blaze a trail toward customer loyalty and a place for our dealerships in our local communities and beyond. Who is this? Where are you calling from? What car was it? How many times has this been said to a business development representative (BDR) or an internet representative making outbound calls?! Are you reading the comments and the source of each and every lead BEFORE you reach out to the customer? Following are some tips to earn the right to a green light to schedule an appointment for a dealership visit. GREEN LIGHT to an appointment GREET the customer with excitement! You are someone he/she wants to talk to! You have four seconds to get their attention. RELEVANCE is this a vehicle specific lead? Credit application or trade inquiry from the dealer website? Third-party leads - CarGurus, CarFax, Facebook Messenger? Use ad-specific/relevant script/verbiage, text snippet, and email... EXCITEMENT this is the MOST important call of the day! Use your voice inflection and tonality to "bring it" each and every time, whether a live engagement or a voicemail. EMAIL address? Text opt-in? Correct spelling of first and last name? NOW .....have you established rapport? Or do you need to ask a few fact finding questions to be sure that you are setting up the right experience for THIS customer or situation? By the way, Mr. Customer, where are you coming from? What's your zip code? Are you trading a vehicle? Are you Interested in our finance programs for people with all types of credit? When you know all of this, THEN you can ask...what's the best time to come in? NOW or later today? Go for the appointment. CREATE URGENCY! Today, tomorrow, next day. It will GREATLY affect your show rate! LISTEN to what the customer is telling you. INFORM the customer, answer any questions he/she has. GO for the appointment AGAIN if you have not already! HANDLE all objections, control the conversation. Ask, Answer, Ask. The customer asks a question, you answer. Then YOU ask a closed-ended question. "Isn't that great?" Customer agrees. You ask for the appointment with two options. Morning or afternoon? Today or tomorrow? TOO much information (TMI) will KILL your appointment. Don't answer questions that are NOT asked. Sell the Appointment, Not the Car With the '4 W's' WHEN? Is the appointment? WHERE? Is the dealership? USE landmarks! WHO? Are they asking for? Your name, spell it! Give a phone number. WHAT? Do they need to bring with them? Stips? Make sure you have the opt-in to text and the email address. If not, do not end the call or text volley without them. Schedule the Appointment in the CRM Send email confirmation AND text confirmation of appointment. In EVERY call...............name, number, email address, zip code/where is a customer coming from? The protocol you use to drive them to your showroom or work them virtually first will depend upon their distance from the dealership. If it is NOT in the CRM, it did not happen. Work with your team, leave notes in the CRM. A lot has changed in the aftermath of 2020 and CoVid, but a lot has remained constant. The main difference between then and now as far as phone skills and the customer experience pre-visit is that we can no longer "get them it, get them in" and do that without ensuring a quality customer experience complete with active listening and empathy. Although those are things that should have always been in the road to the appointment, we were lacking in that respect. We must implement it and be consistent about it. In the end, we are, after all, people helping people. Not trying to shove a hurried, non-transparent process down their throats. We are all consumers at some point. Take a moment and ask yourself, if you were on the receiving end of your internet process would you be satisfied and eager to purchase a vehicle from your team and establishment? If the answer is no, then you already know where to begin.

The idea that car researching, shopping, and purchasing is moving online is not a new story, but Covid-19 accelerated that trend in a significant way. As the retail environment returns to a more normal state, one change that is likely to stick around is consumers' increasing preference for completing financing pre-qualification online. That means connecting with those pre-qualified shoppers is an essential skill for today's dealers. Changing preference due to Covid  During the Covid crisis, prospective buyers increasingly turned to digital tools and resources for safer car shopping. According to CarGurus' most recent Consumer Sentiment Study from November 2020, a fully digital auto purchase has become a more palatable option to many buyers, but it's still not the preference for most. 60% of shoppers say they're open to the idea, vs. 32% before the pandemic, but only 37% say they  prefer  buying online. 1   On the other hand, the same study showed that more than half of car shoppers (52%) say that they now prefer financing online (compared to only 36% pre-pandemic). It's true that the safety concerns that contributed to these changes are likely to fade, but shoppers' increased openness to financing online is also a result of their desire to save time and feel more financially prepared – and those factors do not seem to be going anywhere.  The idea of online financing can feel threatening to some dealers: financing is a crucial profit center. While shifting the process online can feel uncomfortable, providing shoppers with remote financing solutions and pre-qualification resources can improve your overall lead quality and in-store efficiency while also ensuring that you maintain control and profitability within those critical financing operations.  The key takeaway is that pre-qualified leads are 60% more likely to purchase and close faster 2 . When this is combined with a pre-qualified process that incorporates lenders you already work with, it means these leads can actually be more profitable and efficient than others.  Here are three key best practices to help close more pre-qualified leads faster 1) Offer more transparency to appeal to financially prepared shoppers According to our recent Consumer Financing Study ,  69% of those who will be purchasing a car in the next year reported a high likelihood to pursue pre-qualification . The leading barriers to pre-qualification come from consumer fears of rates not being "real" or changing. So – make sure your shoppers have access to your most accurate offers and rates during the pre-qualification process to help set the right expectations and minimize shopper objections during the sale.  2) Identify and prioritize pre-qualified leads 66% of shoppers find value in completing more of the car shopping process before they step foot in the dealership, which indicates that many are eager to speed up the car buying process. 3 This means these pre-qualified shoppers should be met with the same level of urgency that they're putting in by making sure you get those leads in front of your sales team as quickly as possible and that the sales team jumps on them. That last part shouldn't be hard, given that they are more likely to close and close more quickly! 3) Create a seamless online to in-store experience Another potential barrier to pre-qualification among shoppers is the fear that they will have to repeat their work and it's understandable since having to re-do an application in person is incredibly frustrating. Save time for your staff and the shopper by making sure they won't have to repeat pre-qualification process in-store by pulling the customer's information in advance and making it easily accessible by your team. And unless you can really offer them better financing, don't try to switch them to other loans or lenders, even if your take is slightly more.  While they may not be a significant chunk of your leads yet, indications are that the share will continue to increase. At CarGurus, we saw a 78% increase in pre-qualified leads between January and September 2020. 4 If handled right, pre-qualified leads can provide quicker closes and consistent back-end profit. 1  CarGurus Consumer Financing Study, November 2020 [N=754] All survey respondents were considered in-market car-shopper that either financed or are at least considering financing their purchase.4 CarGurus email leads submitted by pre-qualified shoppers to financing-enabled paying and Restricted dealers from January – September 2020. Includes content supplied by IHS Markit; Copyright © IHS Markit 2021. All rights reserved. Lead analysis based on IHS Markit 2019 & 202 Registration Data.

It’s no secret that every car buyer is different. They have specific tastes. Some look for a particular model and make, and some prefer buying their vehicles from local car dealers. The list of preferences each buyer has is quite vast. However, these buyers have one thing in common, and that is, most of them search for their preferred vehicles on the internet. With technology becoming easily accessible to almost everyone, potential vehicle buyers resort to search engines to find vehicle dealers. The car businesses that they come across online are the ones that utilize search engine marketing for car dealerships. Are You a Digital Focused Dealer? Otherwise, your marketing campaign will be fruitless. It is precisely why car dealerships can utilize SEO in their favor. Automotive SEO – What is it? Automotive Search Engine Optimization is an excellent digital marketing strategy for a car dealership. It incorporates off-page and on-page optimizations to improve your service’s website ranking in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). With these optimizations, you can significantly increase your website’s online conversions, traffic, and, most importantly, sales. Why You Should Take Advantage of SEO No one has the time to go through an endless list of websites to find a car dealer that suits them. Most likely, they will look at four or five links and ignore the other sites. According to research, more than seventy-five percent of the clicks on various search engines do not go beyond the first two or three results. It highlights why you should give SEO a chance. If this was not enough to convince you to try this online marketing strategy, here are some significant reasons that could change your mind: It Provides You with Targeted Leads Incorporating broad keywords such as “car dealerships” does not work anymore. You have to use a more detailed strategy to improve your rankings on top search engines. Try adding keywords that are pertinent to your inventory and location. It is an excellent way to enhance your vehicle dealership’s overall ranking, especially for local searches. It helps to achieve targeted traffic after some time, which results in higher conversion rates. SEO assists you in targeting specific audiences with the help of long-haul keywords. They are quite distinct and help you get your desired leads. Some examples of these keywords are: “white Toyota corolla” or “2009 used Jeep.” Of course, far fewer people will search for terms like these. However, the ones that do will be ready to buy. You Get the Upper Hand over Your Competition Using the right keywords can significantly improve your website’s ranking and make your dealership more searchable in comparison to your competitors. Of course, it leads to better leads and improved sales. If you are serious about improving footfall in your car dealership, automotive SEO is arguably the best way to achieve that goal. You Gain More Authority People view high-ranking websites more favorably. Why? They appear to be more authoritative and respectable than the rest. Once your car dealership website starts to rank higher, its online authority will improve as well, making sure that it becomes the go-to online destination for people searching for vehicle dealers. People see higher-ranked websites as industry leaders that can provide them beneficial information, which gives you all the more reason to try car dealer SEO. Helpful Tips for Your SEO Strategy If you are new to this online marketing technique, Automotive SEO will probably seem like a complicated procedure. Sure, the beginning will be slightly challenging, but if you work with an experienced team, you will ease into it in no time. The experts can walk you through the procedure, giving you a more detailed understanding of how SEO for car dealers works. With that said, here are some tried and tested tips that can help you execute your strategy with extra finesse: Focus on Content Quality Search engines love quality content as much as we do. Potential buyers will likely want to read about what your dealership offers after they come across the content you posted online. One of the best ways to increase traffic through content is by creating a blog. Create blogs that address various topics about your industry, and it will attract interest and increase conversions. Track your SEO Results Sure, you took the time to choose keywords, but are they working? You must have a tactical plan to monitor and track the SEO efforts of your car dealership. Once you determine your rate of progress, you can develop a plan to make the necessary adjustments. Be Consistent with SEO  SEO is an ongoing process. You cannot ignore this strategy after implementing your keywords. Search engine requirements and people’s interests change very quickly, and you must be able to incorporate new keywords accordingly. Making search engine optimization a regular plan of your marketing strategy is the only way to succeed in the online car dealing industry. Success is a Step Away Successful car dealers do not get to the top of SERPs by accident. They have some of the best SEO experts on their side, optimizing their blogs and other online content. You can do the same and improve your automotive dealership’s ranking tenfold.