Have you taken the time to develop a dealership marketing strategy? If yes, well done! It's a great first step to attracting leads. But that leads to an even bigger question: how can you tell if your dealership marketing strategy is improving your lead generation efforts and winning more leads? Basically, the phrase “lead generation” encompasses a wide variety of marketing tactics aimed at moving prospects through your sales funnel to become car buyers. While the early stages of developing your lead generation strategy may involve experimentation, at some point you'll need a definitive answer on what works (and what doesn't). Understanding what brings prospects to your dealership is criticalAccording to a report, 92% of car buyers research online before buying - that's a large number of potential car buyers who regularly have micro-moments and dealer touchpoints .
These people are at the “interest” stage of the Employee Email Database customer journey and are wondering if they should move forward to make a purchase decision in the near future. However, your marketing tactics need to get them there. You will need to understand how to attract that 92% and get them to visit your dealership. It seems like a lot of work up front, but making this investment now will save you time and money in the short and long term. For example, you may be faced with the choice of investing in a social media marketing tool or stepping up your local SEO efforts. How do you decide which of these initiatives will have the most impact on your dealership? Understanding the activities of prospects and potential customers is part of this decision: 22% of automotive Internet buyers use social media to conduct research when buying a new vehicle. On the other hand, 76% of geolocated searches lead to a professional visit during the day. You need to meet car buyers where they are, and the data above reveals that many customers start with local search queries. If you want to have a better chance of attracting consumers, you want to be sure they can easily find your business on search engines like Google and use listings like GMB in order to appear in the local query pack. Your actual audience may be different, as many of your customers may find you on Facebook or Instagram. However, you won't know that unless you look at the data to see what attracts prospects. When is a lead generation activity successful? Every marketing tactic has the potential to go in a direction you didn't expect.
So, a successful lead generation strategy requires you to be adaptable. An email marketing campaign that worked last year may not get the same buzz right now. A paid ad that you think might resonate with customers may fall flat. Although you may not know why this is happening, you can make a decision based on the information you have. You need to know the marketing channels and tactics that contribute to the final sale. Metrics and analytics can allow you to assign monetary values to user actions that lead to sales based on the influence they have on consumers. From there, you can plan to spend your marketing dollars on only the most effective tactics. In short, metrics and analytics are your best friends in this step. Ultimately, a lead generation activity is successful if the metrics show that it's meeting your conversion goals. For example, if you installed a pop-up leading to an email signup landing page, you wouldn't just want to know the number of signups. Because while it's useful to know how many leads were generated through the pop-up, the metric you're really looking for is the number of signups that led to purchases at your dealership. If a marketing initiative isn't taking customers to at least the next stage of the customer journey within a set amount of time, it might be a good idea to revisit the campaign and see if you can improve it - or maybe even improve it. Stop. How to optimize activities that work Determine what works and what doesn't