"TICK-TOCK" Part 3 - An Engaging & Interactive CX Is Your Dealership's Key To Growth

Your dealership’s website and online shopping experience should be a living extension of your brand. It should properly merchandise your product and service offerings, answer questions for serious shoppers, and offer compelling stories and conversion pathways that connect shoppers with your friendly staff to complete the purchase.

As we illustrated in Part 1 & Part 2, modern car shoppers have evolved their expectations, the key takeaway is that they have less patience for spinning their wheels than ever. Unfortunately, there are still many large marketing and website providers who have not received the message. We want to go into that a little deeper and then offer some ideas to help you optimize your website and customer journey, so your dealership will stand out for shoppers in your area.

On the road to the sale, car dealers need to remember that they are not just a cash register at the END of the customer journey, Dealers ARE the customer journey.

The pandemic-inspired pivot from ‘consulting’ to ‘retailing’ has left significant gaps in the shopping experience for mid and high-funnel shoppers, the types of people who might require a little more education and persuasion before they complete one of the largest purchases of their lives. These shoppers typically aren’t well served by the sophisticated and intimidating Digital Retail solutions that currently dominate most automotive marketing conversations.

The trouble is, the average shopper isn’t nearly as desperate or “ready” to buy today as they were 2-3 years ago, so a lot more shoppers find themselves spinning their wheels, stuck in the interest phase.

Dealers can cultivate more efficient sales outcomes, by providing a relevant and engaging experience for shoppers at every stage of the customer journey.

Engage High-Funnel Shoppers

(Awareness & Interest Stage)

This is where buyers first become aware of your dealership/brand, and begin to compare different models or features. At this stage, you should be personalizing your website experience in a way that optimizes traffic coming from digital advertising channels and recognizes the individual shopper’s likely intent prior to landing on your site.

Our complete website solution accomplishes this by utilizing features like the Intent A.I.dynamic content engine to create a more relevant and seamless cross-channel experience. Great storytelling and content marketing via local and comprehensive SEO can further clarify your dealerships why-buys, and help shoppers determine where they want to buy.

Engage Mid-Funnel Shoppers

(Consideration stage)

These shoppers are now seriously considering doing business with you. They may have already checked out reviews, they are aware of your general product offering, and are becoming more interested in specific models found on your SERP and VDP.

At this stage, relevant information like high quality images, factory-accurate vehicle features, and up-to-date pricing with enhancements for incentives and promotions are key. We optimize this stage of the funnel with a highly engaging VDP experience, as well as product-focused shopping tools like our Build & Price product-configurator or Factory Reserve software, all to drive a deeper level of engagement and help shoppers determine what they want to buy.

Engage Low-Funnel Shoppers

(Intent & Purchase stage)

These shoppers have landed themselves on specific models (maybe even specific units), and feel ready to move forward. So how do most dealership website providers tend to handle these ‘ready to buy’ shoppers? They just drop them off at a sterile contact form and cross their fingers in the hopes that enough visitors will volunteer their personal information to keep the sales team busy playing phone tag.

The most critical phase of the sales funnel is still being (mostly) outsourced to silly contact forms and boiler plate chat bots.

Autofusion optimizes for this stage in a number of ways, most effectively with a conversational commerce platform we developed, called TalkExpress. Just like a handshake on your physical showroom, TalkExpress breaks the ice between your professional in-house staff and helps influence online shoppers not only on what and where to buy, but when to buy.

Connecting local buyers with local sellers, to facilitate incremental growth, is the entire reason the dealership business-model exists.

Buying a vehicle is still a daunting process for a lot of shoppers, and if your website isn’t trying to emulate the most valuable and engaging parts of the consultative sales experience, it’s just acting as a glorified billboard that collects customer pii from time to time. Spend more time thinking about how to make your website more interactive and engaging, and your dealership’s sales growth will surely follow.

If you’d like to schedule a consultation and demo with one of our digital marketing experts to help optimize your own customer journey, Click, Call 800-410-7354, or email sales@autofusion.com