5 Must-Have Automotive Marketing Technologies to Drive New Business

Which marketing technologies really drive results? Vendors tell us to use this technology or that one to “increase your sales by 25% in 30 days or less.” And if you buy their technology in the next 30 minutes, you get the second solution for free. Okay, so maybe not to this extreme, but with so many promises and technologies to choose from, which ones actually deliver?

Let’s cut through the hype and examine five of the top marketing strategies that are producing measurable benefits for today’s companies.  We’re not promising an increase in sales by 25% in 30 days, but the statistics are quite compelling.

1. It All Begins with the Data:

As often as we may have heard this, it’s worth repeating. Your marketing insights are only as good as the marketing data feeding them. A house isn’t stable without a strong foundation. The same is true of your data – high quality data is the foundation of every marketing effort. And with faster and bigger data sets, the chance that something can go awry is very real.

Did you know that companies that put data at the center of the marketing decisions improve their marketing return on investment (MROI) by 20%? That adds up to $150 – $200 billion of additional value based on global annual marketing spend of an estimated $1 trillion. (McKinsey)

Experian reports that inaccurate data has a direct impact on the bottom line of 88% of companies, with the average company losing 12% of its revenue.

If you haven’t already done so, investing in a data quality and integration solution is more than worth the effort.

2. Get Faster Access to Bigger Data:

We have all heard of Big Data, but how many of us have heard of Data-as-a-Service (or DaaS)? Still a relatively new concept, DaaS is primed to make a huge entrance in 2015 – it is the new game changer that is completely revolutionizing marketing.

DaaS is a service approach in which unique and Hard-to-Find Data (HTFD) assets are sourced and structured to deliver a constant stream of qualified prospects, including a company’s own customers, who are actively searching for what they are selling. Distinctly different from list buying, these data sources are a highly customized marketing asset versus disconnected, one-time use prospect lists.

Marketers analyze the data and crunch the numbers – but how many can really say they know which consumers or businesses are in market for their products and services? Or how many companies are overly dependent on modeling what they think a prospect or customer may do versus having real-time insights into their actual behaviors? DaaS empowers companies with knowledge – not guesswork – for sustainable and immediate revenue.

3. Analyze This and Visualize That:

Marketers know that the vast volumes of data they are collecting leads to better opportunities and more revenue. And data visualization provides a powerful way to simplify the complexity of so much data.

Research has shown that when data is represented graphically, people are able to retain the information better, which in turn, speeds the time to insight.  So by visualizing data, people can more easily answer questions such as:

• “Which stores or product categories are generating the most revenue?”,
• “Which customers are ideal candidates for a cross-sell opportunity?”, or
• “Where do the highest concentration of my customers and prospects live?”

Traditional methods of analytics, based on reports and static graphs, are no longer enough to support quick decision-making. Data visualization allows a user to interact with data to explore multiple data sets, visualize correlations in data, and apply filters to quickly identify patterns. A report by Aberdeen found that managers in organizations using visual discovery tools are 28% more likely to find the right information than their colleagues who solely used reporting and dashboards.

When evaluating business intelligence tools, be sure data visualization in part of the package.

4. Onboard to Enhance Your Digital Marketing

At this point in the game, most marketers understand that traditional offline ways of marketing are simply not enough. Long gone are the days where marketers were limited to one-way broadcasting. As marketers strive for mass personalization, marketing has become savvier, digital marketing has become the new norm, and real-time is no longer an option.

While many companies are engaged in digital marketing in some form or another, marketers may be missing out on a huge digital opportunity in the form of their own customers and prospects. Data onboarding brings a company’s internal data into the digital world by creating digitally addressable identities. AdAge provides the following definition: “data onboarding, sometimes referred to as data on-ramping, is the transfer of data gathered offline to the digital realm.”

As part of a data onboarding process, a vendor makes matches between offline data and online user profiles. Data such as a phone number, email address, name, or a physical address are used as identifiers. These identifiers are then matched to online cookies, creating a universe of your digitally addressable prospects and customers.

Onboarding services have created huge opportunities for marketers. For example, targeted display campaigns can be displayed to specific customer and prospect segments. A financial company may want to target key customer groups with display ads that cross-sell another product. Or an auto company may show ads to people whose leases are up for renewal. Cross-channel campaigns are also more effective when sent to the same audience via email, direct mail, and display ads.

5. It’s Time to Get Personal

It’s the age of the consumer and if you aren’t highly customer-centric, it’s time to get so quickly. Consumers expect to be able to easily interact with their favorite brands according to their preferences. Whether they are in your store, shopping on-line or calling customer service, your customers want personalized and consistent experiences through each of these channels. Marketers who cut through the noise and connect with consumers on a more personal level are able to better understand consumers and deliver the products and services they are searching for.

Based on a report by Econsultancy, almost 6 in 10 marketers agree that personalization is crucial. Marketers are using a range of data types to achieve higher ROI, including purchase history, user preferences, brand interactions, and browser history.

Consumers are willing to pay for positive, personalized customer experiences. According to Oracle, 81% of consumers surveyed are willing to pay more for superior customer experience with nearly half (44%) willing to pay a premium of more than 5%.  Seventy percent of respondents have also stopped doing business with a brand following a poor customer experience. Importantly, 92% of this number have gone straight to a competing brand and made a purchase.

Not delivering highly personalized experiences is simply no longer an option. Investing in technologies that address customer analytics, social media strategies, marketing automation and loyalty marketing are must-haves.