6 Creative Solutions to Drive Customer Engagement in the Auto Industry

The automotive industry of the United States is expected to spend $14 billion on its digital advertising by the year 2020, with a growth of 13% every year. This fact only implies that digital advertising will have a vital role in the automotive industry, especially when it comes to customer engagement.

A recent study made by Autotrader revealed that 70% of the younger millennials are more likely to buy a car through infotainment and 61% of the shoppers watch videos before they decide. From this alone, you can see that more and more people are relying on digital content to help them choose the car that they will buy and whoever managed to get their attention, wins the game.

It is not easy to drive customer engagement, but it is possible with the help of these simple tips.

1. Engaging and Informative Videos

According to Autotrader, 61% of shoppers usually watch videos before they decide to buy a car. This is a fact because a car is also a huge investment. People learned to be very meticulous when they buy stuff and cars are so expensive that they would literally spend days watching different videos just to make sure that they would buy a car that would fit their preferences.

One way to drive customer engagement to your business is to make sure that you focus on providing informative videos to the customers. Explain a specific model of car in a single video and start explaining everything in a way that the customer would understand.

Remember that some car shoppers have literally no idea about the features of a car so you need to explain clearly what it means and why they have to choose that specific car model.

Your videos should focus on test drives, features and options, and walkthroughs as they are the most viewed automotive videos online. You will need a big capital for this to happen and through personal loans for fair credit, you can get the funding that you need to create informative and engaging videos.

Related: The Case For Creating A Director Of Customer Engagement Position

2. Start a Survey

You cannot blindly offer something to your customers without knowing what they really want. If you offered them something that is too expensive or the model of the car is not something that they want, they might go to another dealer to ask.

Use your social media accounts and start asking questions to your fans so you would have an idea about what they want from a car if they are going to buy one. You will encounter answers that are beyond their financial capabilities and there are answers that are pretty practical.

Basically, the survey should focus on pricing preferences, models of the cars, color, trunk space, and of course fuel efficiency (the primary concern of car buyers).

3. 3D Car Models

If you want to let the consumers see the actual car without going to the business area, you can create 3D car models that they can check out. This would allow the consumers to see a 3D car model and they can view it like they are actually checking out the car in real life.

4. Check the Weather to Sell Cars

The weather does not have a direct influence on the selling of cars, but you can use the weather to determine the cars that would sell well. During the summer season, convertible cars are very in demand and many people consider buying them.

During the winter season, most people would prefer bigger cars, especially those that can thread the snow without problems. You have to check the weather to figure out the type of marketing strategy that you will use.

5. Focus on the Location

Even if you are doing some marketing campaigns online, it doesn’t mean that you can target all the people around the United States. Consumers will look at the closest dealership in their area and they only look for other dealerships if they can’t find the car that they want.

If you are going to advertise your cars, make sure that it is targeting the people within your area.

6. Using Beacons in Auto Shows

Most car shoppers only spend around two visits to a car dealership so you have to make every moment count. You can set up beacons to gather data about the potential customers including how long they stayed and if they took a test drive. Check how many minutes they stayed in front of the car model and other important behaviors of your prospective clients.

Through this, you can easily know how to approach the customers and advise the sales agent to do the same.

Related: 5 Things That Inhibit Engagement With Your Customers

Conclusion

Driving customer engagement in your car dealership is not easy and there are so many things that you have to keep in mind to make sure that the customer will choose your car business instead of the others.

With all these creative solutions, you will easily know what they want and you can provide an offer that would be very hard to resist.

Did you enjoy this article from Mike Austin? Read other articles from him here.

Car Biz Today, the official resource of the retail automotive industry.