Car dealer marketing - 'appointing the customer' is daft
Last weekend, kids and dog braved the weather; really a case of needs must having been cooped up for much of the time.
Whilst ‘hiding and seeking’, I came across this gate. I’ve seen it many times before but it always makes me smile, because it’s daft. This time, I decided to take a picture, as you can see.
The gate is very, well, gate-like, sturdy and robust, up for the job in hand of opening and closing for walkers.
What makes me smile is that within 2 metres of the gate the fence runs out and everyone can walk in or out without climbing the fence. What’s the point?
It’s this daftness, that we see a lot of in car dealers. Whenever, they receive a new sales enquiry, the first step after qualifying the customer is to try and appoint them. There is a saying, ‘bums on seats’ sells cars - which has become a used car marketing mantra.
This reminds me of the gate - it’s a control mechanism. If I can only get them into the dealership, then I can sell them a car.
The problem is, car dealer marketing needs to change in order to fit in with the way that consumers now prefer to shop. Look at these stats from a recent internet car conference:
51% of UK consumers shop online now, 82.5% have got internet access with 15% using their mobile phones.
12.4% of all internet traffic in the UK is around social networking -
Experian HitwiseThere are 175 million Twitter users worldwide with 1 billion tweets every day.
Most dealers are still standing at that gate, trying to control the sales situation. Years ago that worked, but now consumers can resist the gatekeepers by harnessing the power of the internet. The fence has now gone and the gate gets used less and less.
What do you think? What is your no show percentage on an average week? Do you regularly convert more than 20% of your sales enquiries?
