Online advertising attracts big spend from some of the world’s largest automotive companies, with the likes of Audi and BMW vying to raise their brand awareness with online consumers. In the US in particular, spend is rising fast. The sector is now the second biggest in digital advertising, set to reach US$7.30bn this year, a rise of 17.3%, according to eMarketer.
Online brand exposure and research often makes a big contribution to a consumer’s decision to purchase, even though customers typically visit showrooms to book a test drive or make a purchase. Additionally, long purchase cycles make it tough for automotive brands to know whether their online spend is affecting the bottom line.
Nevertheless, understanding the relationship of online behaviours and offline patterns of purchase has never been more important, as the 2014 Autoshopper Study results by JD Power shows. People who use the Internet to shop for a car spend on average nearly 14 hours doing so before they buy. Furthermore, those spending more time online tend to visit more dealerships before they make a decision to purchase. And the study reported that nearly four-fifths visit not just the manufacturer, but also third-party, websites to browse information like vehicle ratings and reviews.
Fortunately, marketers now have available the technology to collect, integrate and analyse online and offline data, giving automotive brands an opportunity to gain a holistic, single view of customers − revealing why, when, where and how they make purchase decisions.
purchase, even though customers typically visit showrooms to book a test drive or make a purchase
How do online behaviours drive automotive purchases?
Online platforms and advertising plays a unique role in the automotive sector. Automotive advertising, for example, doesn’t result in ecommerce sales as it does for a fashion retailers or travel companies. Instead, it is often responsible for upper-funnel marketing actions, such as strengthening brand awareness and reputation. Therefore an inherent understanding of what constitutes a ‘desired action online’ is crucial, especially in terms of what is largely known as lower-funnel marketing activity – something usually measured by click-through and conversion rates.
For automotive brands, marketers need to assess and measure the value of online behaviours less in actual purchases and more based on how a customer uses online information such as clicking on advertising, configuring a car on the manufacturer’s website, using tools like model comparisons or booking a test drive online at a local dealership.
Savvy automotive marketers are beginning to use this kind of online activity as a precursor and predictor for offline behaviour, often long before a buyer visits a showroom. This involves looking at consumer online behaviour − for example, configuring a car – and comparing it directly to offline sales to identify how much a particular type of online activity affects the sales of a specific model.
Here’s what a best-practice, marketing technology platform can support in the automotive space:
- Identify which vehicles are being viewed and researched within specific geographic territories, down to postal code regions;
- Evaluate campaign performance and spend at any campaign tier from global, country and region, down to postal code – empowering in-market teams;
- Understand which ads, both online and offline, are driving website traffic, showroom visits and vehicle purchases at the national and local levels;
- Understand how social media activity impacts brand awareness and sentiment, as well as advertising effectiveness;
- Learn which campaigns are resonating with consumer segments and geographic territories;
- Track consumer behaviors across website visits to understand the stages of purchase consideration;
- Target specific promotions for models and specific dealerships that will likely fall below sales goals based on website leading indicators, such as online car configuration trends;
- Plan local inventory to match consumer interest, which makes dealers more efficient and ultimately drives down costs.
How can manufacturers and dealers work together?
Many dealerships are independently owned, and it is therefore important to overcome ‘disconnects’ between franchisees and manufacturers − just as it is between upper-funnel branding activity online and offline sales. By uniting sources of online and corporate data, dealerships can run many types of analyses, yielding critical information about prospective buyers and how these consumers are motivated to purchase. For example, local dealerships need to have access to data and analytics revealing which local TV, radio and newspaper ads are driving website traffic, showroom visits and actual purchases.
They also need to correlate showroom traffic and call centre volume to web, social and mobile behaviours.
Processes and technology that support a shared view of the consumer, including internal portals that drive performance and accountability, will enable manufacturers and franchisees to avoid the duplication of efforts that is rife across the automotive industry – as they will instead be empowered with a full picture of the customer across all touchpoints.
Marketing teams have the technology required to fully harness the power of online data and integrate it with offline data, enabling the auto industry to better understand buyers as they interact online, respond to local and national advertising, visit showrooms, take test drives and make purchases. From this foundation, manufacturers and dealers can work jointly to personalise and optimise the customer experience – wherever and whenever consumers interact with the brand. After all, that is the Holy Grail in today’s marketing, regardless of industry.
