The Role of Marketing in Boosting the Automotive Industry

Increasing sales and customer reach in the automotive industry requires reworking the existing processes to benefit companies and franchises.

FREMONT, CA: As car sales rebound following recent global events, the automotive industry must focus on its marketing tactics. In an ever-changing industry, marketing is extremely different. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for automotive marketing since the needs of dealerships, third-party dealers, and large brands differ.

Owners of franchises or groups must base their sales efforts on the needs of their customers rather than on the brand they have chosen. The needs of an audience change with time, and it is essential for marketing and sales techniques to adapt accordingly to a changing audience.

The flaw in current marketing efforts: The need for more cooperation between dealers and larger automotive organizations results in intra-brand competition between dealership owners and vehicle manufacturers. Studies show that vehicle manufacturers invest millions in marketing campaigns intended to sell their vehicles but ultimately end up referring customers to individual dealers. Dealers spend their marketing budgets, which must be more balanced and wasteful. As a result, the industry and the customer suffer when franchise owners fail to refer customers to other dealerships if they do not have adequate stock. When a customer enters a Mercedes Benz dealership, the dealer group should keep them from walking away because they might better satisfy their needs with a BMW, even though the same person franchises them and predominantly holds luxury car brands. In most cases, BMW dealerships should be referred to customers if they exist within the group, but this is only sometimes true.

Understanding the customer: Marketing in the automotive industry differs from other industries in several ways, including customers' loyalty to their brands. While the occasional buyer will be brand-insistent, most people shopping for cars seek the best deal on a specific set of requirements across brands. Customers' needs, budgets, and brands change when buying a car. They also take different routes to buy a car. The prospect may have searched for various cars online, compare information on the manufacturer's website, consumed advertisements and engaged with social media when they walked into a dealership. The customer might be standing in your showroom, but the manufacturer's marketing budget probably got them there.

A disjointed process: Dealerships don't know where their customers are coming from, and manufacturers don't know the results of their marketing campaigns. There is a high probability that incorrect attribution will still occur in the digital world, where the ties that bind should be easier to trace. Customers must click through from a manufacturer's website to the dealership for a manufacturer to track a digital thread. In this case, the manufacturer will never know that the manufacturer referred business to the dealership if they conduct a separate search for that dealership's website.