We all know how to buy a car. Right? We go to a showroom if we are willing to buy a new car. Or we visit dealers’ locations to view the automobile. The next step in your purchase journey will be to gather information about the vehicle.
The information includes the vehicles’ maintenance report, insurance, and usage. Then, you test drive the car to know better regarding gears, steering, and brakes functioning.
Then after complete satisfaction, you purchase the car! Isn’t it so simple? However, two difficulties entered the process of purchasing a car.
First, is the worst trauma of the century, the Covid-19 pandemic. And the second is to enjoy the experience of smartphones and to include it in the purchase journey of cars.
The effect of these two methods completely helped dealership and physical purchase of cars (sale) disappear.
Consequently, the industry got divided into two categories.
- First Category involves the ones moving towards Digital Marketing.
- The second category is the ones lacking behind due to an immense amount of changes.
First Category members wanted to excel in the field of automation. Exporters are also divided into this category for example Japanese used cars exporter and BMW exporters also.
Second Category members failed to adapt to the digital change. The reason behind this is complex networks, sales and involvement of maverick dealers, the magnitude of automakers, and much more.
The three segments below must be under consideration by the automotive industry to gain customer loyalty and provide a better experience.
Building relationships with your customer
This is the first trick in the hat. Consider this, when you know your customer’s choices and preferences well. Then you will offer him categories suitable for him.
But the question is how can you understand your customer to build a better relationship?
First thing is to place joined infrastructure of technology aiding to track the customers’ traffic on social media or platforms.
The second thing is the sane utilization of content assets. This helps to vanish the distraction of internal team members from insane demands.
Second category members are still finding ways to lay down the foundation of the digital platform. To implement this, they must provide strong bonds for the improvement of initial channels.
The combo of physical dealing, digital marketing, and physical sales is boosting the experience of customers.
The goal of gaining customer loyalty requires the automotive industries to view the tracks of customers as every individual Japanese used cars Dealer performs.
The journey of customers usually involves:
- Searching for ads.
- Clicking the right & suitable ad.
- Ad guides the viewer to the particular website.
- Consequently, the website helps visitors visit many other cars also.
- The customer subscribes and starts the process of purchasing.
- If not interested, the cycle repeats.
The tracking of customers’ visits on ads and social media often helps a lot. This is usually done by allowing users’ cookies recorded by the website.
Utilizing the D2C model:
The initial users of the D2C channel have enjoyed the fruits of sales.
D2C usually decreases the cycle steps and helps in providing a better customer experience.
Hence, D2C is an everlasting major model for everyone.
This Is the perfect opportunity for second-category companies to invoke the better experience of customers. With the help of the particular model, business models of various ranges get unlocked.
Japanese used car companies around the globe are an example of this. Payment made by customers is every month. Customers receive the car without insurance processes.
Moreover, no service or registration is a requirement. This D2C helps to remove all the hard and slow processes.
Preference list topped by dealership:
AS the online marketing is still increasing day by day. But dealerships can never get extinct in the automotive industry.
These challenges automotive industries to blend both online marketing and dealing with physical dealerships.
Inchcape is the UK’s biggest car retailer. They comprise 100+ dealerships having multiple famous brands. This is the engagement of customer strategy.
The result on which everyone focuses is “Sales”. And this method boosts up sales.
Change happens:
Calling back to Henry Ford’s days. The automotive industry is highly based on the “supply and push” philosophy. An idea to fill up the factories and industries to cut huge fixed prices.
Networks were created for the extension of this supply and push policy and model. The chain of networks was expertly designed such that they could hold:
- Inventory
- Service
- Capital
- Support
That was highly considered as the less reliable & requiring huge maintenance.
Visiting the internet – huge profits:
The automotive industry has been highly influenced by the internet and digital marketing methods. Current first category automotive industries have started service based on websites.
This helps many to forecast that multiple industries around the globe will extend their business on the internet.
Industries are also expected to obtain almost 1 billion dollar sales by the year 2025. It has been widely studied that almost 40% of clients and customers search the internet to buy.
As mentioned earlier, the behavior and cycle of customers highly matter on the internet.
Dealers cannot be easily neglected:
With the additional changes in the automobile industry, dealers are now imagined to be more important.
The number of brands and companies has widely increased with digital marketing. With a smooth supply chain process from raw material to purchase, sales are quite high now.
Brand loyalty now depends on the customer experience and the process it takes to purchase one product. Instead of depending on products only.
Wrapping it up!
The effect of digital marketing on the automotive industry is quite high. To sum the effects in one collective report is not easy.
A few of the effects are:
- Sales boost up
- Products advertisements
- Less Time consuming
- Smooth process
- And much more to it.
It is not easy for many industries to convert their already based foundations of physical dealerships and marketing into the new technological method.
Few industries are still famous for their brand name and they do not require any sort of digital marketing for their sales.
But for the upcoming industries in the market. It is a global opportunity to showcase their brands.