Building Better Automotive Leads for 2016

There’s no time like the end of the year to revisit your lead generation processes – especially heading into 2016. Right now, it’s forecasted to be the highest-selling year since 2005, with 16.9 million new cars forecasted to sell. If you’ve been putting a lot of resources and effort into gathering leads, but haven’t been experiencing a level of results that justifies those expenditures, you might want to consider a new approach going into 2016 to capture some of those sales for your dealership. When you start to reconsider your lead generation process, it’s important that you think about how your leads are generated, exactly what you’re looking for in a lead, and how you can make the leads you get even better and more useful.

How are your leads generated?

If you’ve been working with a third-party lead aggregator, when was the last time you really stopped to think about the value of the service they are providing for you? If a lead aggregator isn’t providing you with high-quality leads that are likely to result in sales, then you must stop to consider why you are paying to work with them in the first place. Just because third-party aggregators have a lot of data doesn’t mean they’re the best. Quality of the data, scrubbing technology, and what types of data all play into what makes data good.

Lead aggregation services use scrubbing technology to separate the good leads from the bad. The quality of the scrubbing technology a lead generator uses can have a huge effect on the quality of the leads the provider turns out. The scrubbing must strike a delicate balance by being strong enough to remove any bad leads, but not so strong that it cuts out legitimate good leads (remember – sometimes, less can be more!). Make sure you ask your lead provider what goes into their scrubbing process, as it can help determine the quality of the leads you end up with.

Plus, keep this in mind: Forecasts are showing a total of 1.3 million cars sold in November alone. That’s 43,000 cars a day that are going into new hands, leaving people with cars to sell or even a second car. The ownership landscape changes every day, and if your lead aggregator doesn’t at least remove new owners daily, then you’re definitely paying extra money for bad leads. Make sure you’re looking not just at the scrubbing process, but also how often it happens and what is removed (or, conversely, what is kept).

What is your dealership looking for in a lead?

It’s important to remember that not all leads are created equally, and that’s not just true when it comes to obvious characteristics such as propensity to buy. For example, somebody looking for a Subaru Impreza hatchback is very different from somebody looking for a Lexus GS – and knowing the difference is key. Fortunately, your lead aggregator can let you in on a key secret to selling: What cars your ideal customers already own. For example, with Relevate’s Auto ID, we can provide records 100% populated with make, model, year, and other premium data selects, like demographics, wealth modeling and more. When you know what kind of car your customer has, you can amplify your marketing to the next level with tactics like…

·       Capitalizing on loyalty incentives

·       Use competing model incentives to entice them to buy

·       Calculating the equity on their existing car and offer a high-value trade-in incentive

·       Providing personalized marketing messages that resonate

That’s because a mid-20s college graduate who’s looking to upgrade from her first car is way different from an early 40s CEO with 2 kids. Knowing what car they currently drive, along with other pieces of data, can assist you in reaching out to either of them.

When you’re talking to lead aggregators, it’s important to know what data they have surrounding existing vehicles. Do they know the exact make and model of the car, or just the modeled, or likely, make and model, down to a zip-4 level? Getting the exact model and model year gives you so much more power. It elevates your marketing efforts beyond guesswork, letting you exactly fit your marketing exactly to a customer.  At Relevate, we pride ourselves that our make and model is exact to the household as we derive from actual VINs of the owner/driver.

In addition, the model a lead is looking for says a lot about how valuable the lead is. If you have a particular model that’s been sitting in inventory for a while, finding a lead that’s interested in it would be extremely valuable to you. On the other hand, you don’t need as much help selling very popular models. Take the time to think about what your dealership has in terms of inventory, and what that says about the buyer you’re looking for.

How can you make your leads even better?

Improving the quality of your leads is a very simple proposition: just add more data about the individual leads using a data append service. The more you know about a lead, the better you are able to find out exactly what they want, send them the right message at exactly the right time, and react quickly to turn the lead into a sale. Appending data to your existing leads is like putting your leads on steroids. No matter what service you’re using to generate your leads, appending data to them can make them even more valuable and useful. For example, instead of just knowing somebody’s in the market to buy a car, you can find out their age, number of children, and preferred make and model of car. Appending services can give you robust data with which to target the right customers.

Getting the best results out of your leads has a lot to do with understanding the specific needs of your dealership.For example, if you have a high volume of inventory of a certain make and model, you want to reach the right customers who want that car. Or, if you’re looking to find new prospects from past customers, it helps to know who the best prospects are.

To learn how to generate quality automotive leads, click here to learn about Relevate Auto’s automotive marketing data solutions.