Automotive marketing has evolved to allow marketers to map the journey a customer takes through the website and various ads from a dealership.
Advanced digital analytics allows automotive marketing teams to track an entire path that a potential buyer takes online. This begins from the time a customer engages with a dealership website page, or advertisement and follows the customer journey through each page until they leave the website. This customer journey mapping allows dealerships to have a much greater chance of closing sales and helping customers complete the journey with a vehicle purchase.
Here are some ways automotive marketing agencies help dealers improve their digital marketing, leading to customer journey mapping.
Increase online presence
Car buying can be a lengthy process, and often, it has very little success. Currently, more than 95% of car shoppers go online to answer their questions and gather information regarding their next vehicle purchase. Its important dealerships are present in the places where customers will search for answers, including YouTube, Facebook, and at the top of Google pages. The foundation of this online presence is the dealership’s website, which should be credible, easy to use, and visible.
SEO is still a big deal
Although SEO has evolved, every page of a dealership website must be optimized. Without optimization, the customer journey mapping will be a short trail if there’s a trail to map and follow at all. SEO continues to be a popular digital marketing strategy that’s used by big and small businesses to bring website pages to the top of search engines. Although Google is the largest of these, Bing and Yahoo cannot be ignored when creating SEO-optimized website pages.
High-quality content matters
The right content is required to support SEO strategies and provide consumers with the information they desire. This means including high-quality content that’s informative and useful. The better the content is, the more it will support and improve the SERP ranking of the website. Typically, a dealership’s blog page is where supporting written content will land, and videos can help support bringing the dealership’s website to the top of search engines as well. Regularly publishing high-quality content online will help establish trust with consumers.
Reviews are extremely important
Some customer journey mapping might end at the review pages, which means a customer found something on these pages they weren’t pleased with. It’s important that dealerships ask for reviews from customers, especially from those shoppers who have had a positive experience. It’s also important that dealerships have someone assigned to respond to positive and negative reviews. Posting how a negative situation has been resolved can be an important part of turning a bad review into a good one. Asking for reviews is a must for car dealers in today’s market.
Improve the test drive experience
It’s important for customers to take a test drive in a vehicle. This is one of the most important aspects of the car-buying process, but the traditional test drive has evolved into something new. Some dealerships offer unaccompanied test drives to allow consumers to drive without the salesperson. Even if the salesperson rides along, it’s important that the test drive is a time for the potential customer, not the salesperson. This means allowing the customer to try things out and ask questions without a sales pitch.
Lead response should be immediate
Many dealership marketing teams have begun to implement and employ chatbots to answer customer inquiries after business hours. This allows customers to feel like they have gotten an answer right away. For questions that cannot be answered by chatbots, informing the customer they will receive an answer the next day is important. It’s also important for the dealership staff to follow up on these inquiries and take the lead forward. This is one of the most important points in customer journey mapping, and it should be treated as such.
Be easy to contact
Once a customer is matched up with a salesperson, they don’t want to be passed off to other people. Although everyone takes days off from work, customers want to be able to reach the same salesperson regularly. This should be another focus, and your sales staff needs to be accessible to customers. This means returning calls, texts, and emails before the end of the day. Being easy to contact is extremely important to today’s car shoppers.
Automotive marketing teams can show the path customers take through ads and websites. This is called customer journey mapping, and it helps dealerships understand why they are closing some sales and not others.
