By: Earl Brown, Autofusion (2023)
As you no-doubt already know, it’s been a historically volatile few years in Automotive. It really does feel as if everything is changing at an incredible pace. Between the global COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting shutdowns throughout our society, and the burgeoning supply chain crisis in retail automotive: many dealers are left wondering how to adapt to this ‘new normal’.
One of the areas where these changes are most obvious is in our digital marketing practices. Many dealers, possibly yourself included, have seen their digital marketing budgets cut right in half during the last 18 months or so while the inventory crunch has changed the way our industry does business. However, while a lot of dealers seem to believe that the simple act of arbitrarily cutting their marketing budget is the way to solve these new challenges; we believe that optimization is the key factor in reducing your ad spend without reducing your sales results.
It’s important to be able to navigate this new stretch of pavement and adapt not only to changing market conditions, but to evolving consumer behaviors as well. We want to take a minute to give your dealership a few tips on how to do more with less, how to hit your digital marketing sweet spot and deliver better results for your sales operations.
Think about retargeting like this: If a customer drives onto your lot, and spends time with a salesperson looking at vehicles, looks at numbers, but doesn’t buy today, you wouldn’t just cease communication and give up, would you? No! Your salesperson would follow up with that prospect to bring them back in to complete the purchase. Retargeting is just another name for follow-up. It cost’s far less and produces better overall results, which benefits your overall budget.
We hope these simple tips will give your dealership something to think about the next time you’re planning out digital marketing budgets. If you’d like some help executing on these strategies and others, reach out to the Autofusion sales team for a free digital marketing consultation today!