2017, Auto Dealership Best Practices Today!
At NADA convention held in Las Vegas, we learned about the four major trends that were emerging and that would have an impact for years to come:
Social networks are allies for dealerships, not just a branding tool.
Customer retention should be pursued by every department.
Customers want purchase processes like those offered by Amazon and Apple.
Data safety is crucial.
Now it’s one year later, and we ask ourselves:
Will these trends continue in 2017?
What new difficulties will arise this year?
What strategies should I adopt and which trends will stand out?
Here are our suggestions for automobile, equipment, motorcycle and truck dealers, on issues that they should continue to focus on.
Digital Marketing: A wider front door for prospects
Technology changes allow customers to do just about anything from their smartphones, so more and more phones are used to make quick decisions without middlemen. Some interesting stats:
87% of millennials carry their mobile phones with them all the time.
71% of buyers of any product search for information from their smartphones.
62% of buyers say their mobile search was useful to make a decision.
In 2017, dealers need to intensify their participation in social networks (or quickly start if they are not already on them), enter the world of mobile apps which is trending worldwide, and speed up their sales processes so as to be up to date with new customers.
Customer retention is still key to new sales
This was a main topic in 2016 and will continue to be so in 2017. Dealers must continue to achieving the full potential of parts and service sales for the entire lifecycle of each vehicle that they sell. In order to achieve this goal, they must adopt Service Marketing strategies.
Service Marketing includes a series of automated tasks that help dealers retain customers, such as:
Send reminders for upcoming maintenance services
Send suggestions for preventive services
Send special service promotions
Recommend seasonal services
Recommend tire rotation and similar jobs
Autologica DMS is a pioneer in Service Marketing and includes many features to help dealers capture the services needed by the cars, motorcycles, trucks or machinery they sell, throughout the entire lifecycle of the vehicle.
If you wish to learn more about Service Marketing, here are some articles and recorded courses.
Data safety is center stage
During the past year we detected an alarming number of cases of total data loss in dealerships around the world.
This data loss was mainly caused by two types of problems:
Database hacking
Hardware issues
These problems will persist and we believe will even increase, so it is essential that dealers implement all possible safety strategies in order to minimize their risk of data loss.
Source credit: Blog Autoblogica
