Colin Carrasquillo’s guide to enhancing dealership performance via targeted marketing

In a hyper-competitive automotive sales environment, the power of first-party data cannot be overstated. Colin Carrasquillo, Digital Marketing Director of the Nielsen Automotive Group, dives deep into the essentials of managing, cleaning, and activating this valuable data for optimal marketing outcomes. In this episode of Marketing Matters, Carrasquillo offers practical insights that help dealers refine their marketing strategies and reach more qualified customers.

Colin Carasquillo emphasizes the value of first-party data for car dealerships in today’s fast-paced, competitive market. He starts by explaining how first-party data is the information that a dealership owns in its CRM system, including customer details such as names, contact information, and purchase histories. According to Carrasquillo, properly activating this data—by uploading it to advertising platforms like Google and Meta—can significantly improve marketing outcomes.

He outlines a step-by-step process for dealerships to make the most of their CRM data:  

1. Clean Your Data: First and foremost, it is essential to ensure your customer profiles are complete and accurate. Carrasquillo suggests hiring outside companies to help analyze and clean the data, as inaccurate or incomplete customer profiles can render marketing campaigns ineffective.  
2. Dissect Your Data: After cleaning, dealerships can break down their data into smaller, more relevant groups. For example, they can focus on active shoppers who have submitted leads or recently visited the website but have not yet made a purchase.  
3. Activate Your Data: With clean and dissected data, dealerships can upload customer lists to advertising platforms to target the right audience with the right message. Carrasquillo stresses the importance of targeting campaigns effectively to increase return on investment (ROI) and mitigate advertising waste.  

Finally, Carrasquillo emphasizes that clean data and precise targeting will yield a better return on investment and greater opportunities for dealership growth, both in sales and service. It’s not just about spending money—it’s about spending it wisely, with well-managed first-party data guiding the way.

“If your data isn't clean, your marketing is falling on deaf ears. Clean your data before you do anything else." – Colin Carrasquillo.