With the Facebook data dilemma, marketing to more of your own website traffic is now a viable option
While everyone is focusing on the traffic to show up every day on-line or in person, other dealers that are aggressive are now looking at the their own website for leads to invite in early to close or get to know then better.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Facebook will limit the information it will be sharing with data brokers" This may put dealers and agencies in a sticky situation of where to turn to next for sales.
Leads that come from brokers are sold to not just one dealer, but sometimes to many, If that is to now come to a close, what is a dealer to do?
The information highway has a tendency to over educate and prolong the sales cycle, some dealers tell me. Most consumers start out re-searching for a car, but receive so much information, that they may continue researching for several days if not weeks or months.
Some dealers have asked us to pixelate their website to identify the home addresses of customers that are shopping or educating themselves with product information to start focusing on their own leads.
We can harvest the 95% that visit a typical companies website without the customer leaving any information and match about 70% of all actual human visitors. The dealer then has us send out a personalized postcard first class the next day as they are looking online at a model of vehicle and visit several different sites or come back to the dealers site.
In the meantime, 3 days later, in the mailbox, comes a private offer to visit the dealership to redeem a gift card such as Amazon, or receive an additional amount off the internet price. Different stores offer different incentives that match the lifestyle or interest of the savvy internet researcher.
Durning the casual redemption and visit, the dealership puts them out in a car of choice while their Amazon account is getting populated with $25-$100 dollar credit from the offer.
Some, not all customers, will write an offer that day, others will leave with their insight of how one store will treat them and how the car of choice performs. Will they come back when they are ready to write? That may be up to their experience and timeline.
They seem to have a higher propensity to return and deal with someone they already know, even though the experience may be less than stellar or the final numbers not in their shopping budget.
Programmatic technology is now available to harvest the many leads that come to your website door that the dealership is not identifying. What a waste. It seems less expensive then what they maybe doing to re-target the customer digitally and continue to promote education and price choices and of course, third party programs. Other dealers are reporting a cost of sale that can be attributed to daily programmatic mailing to $130 a car sold.
Word of warning; you better be creating an outstanding customer experience for these early to mid-cycle consumers, as you might be their first impression of their new age buying choices and if your not as good as you think you are, you may be sending customers into the arms of your competitors.
Bill Sattree