Understanding the consumer journey to buying a new car has never been more crucial. Long gone are the days where people turn up unannounced to forecourts in droves to make a decision that day. As the consumer journey has changed, often with weeks spent online before even speaking with a dealer, so to must the practices of automotive dealers.
The past few years have seen sweeping change in the way consumers shop for their big purchases, and in the automotive sector. With interest in electric vehicles stalling towards the end of 2024, change of government and policy and a cost of living crisis to contend with, being as flexible as possible in your business is crucial to continuing to trade.
WHY IS THE BUYER’S JOURNEY SO IMPORTANT?
The way in which consumers buy cars has drastically changed over the last ten years or more.
The majority of car buyers, in fact a whopping 70%, actually begin their journey online, at a search engine like Google. These consumers can thoroughly research the cars they need, without the necessity of ever contacting a sales team. When they do contact a sales person they are usually much closer to the point of purchase, know what they want, and are considerably harder to upsell to.
For car dealers, understanding the journey towards purchase is an important framework for creating a marketing strategy. Ensuring your dealership has all the answers to the buyers’ questions at each stage of the buying journey could work wonders for your automotive sales.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER’S JOURNEY LOOK LIKE?
So how do buyers go from not even knowing what car they want, to being handed the keys by you at your dealership? The journey can be broken down into 3 stages:
1 – Awareness
This is the initial stage of their buying journey. At this point, they are likely to be unaware of two things – what car they need, and which dealerships to go to. For the customer this stage is all about research.
For 72% of buyers, they’ll turn to Google and explore options. They’ll then have an idea of a few brands they’d like and it’s here they’ll also look for educational material, customer reviews and testimonials. By the end of this stage they should have a clearer understanding of what car they want. But they might not know where to find it.
2 – Consideration
The consumer will now have their choices narrowed down to just a few makes and models, and might even know the specific car they want. It’s here they head back to Google to research where they can make their purchase, and who’s offering the best prices.
At this stage most vehicle consumers will be presented with third party automotive sales platforms such as Gumtree or Autotrader. Therefore as a dealer, feeding onto these sites is crucial. Customers will then shortlist a few independent dealerships, and may spend time visiting their websites, social media pages, and reading their reviews online.
3 – Decision
The time has come, the consumer now knows the exact car they want. The only thing holding them back is the final few questions they need to be answered. It’s down to you to answer their final questions. They want immediate answers, so make sure your website is designed to make communication easy.
Have you got live chat? Are they able to call you instantly though a clickable number on your site? Does your website have enough information present to fill them in on details such as finance, warranties and part exchange offerings?
WHAT IS THE FUTURE GOING TO LOOK LIKE?
More and more actions carried out online
Since the pandemic, an increasing proportion of the purchasing journey is being carried out online. As much as 80% of users either have or would like to use the internet to check availability of vehicles, compare prices across dealers, identify information and features about makes and models and get a guide price value for their current car.
Even 66% of users polled have either said they would like or have previously carried out inspections of the car they want to buy online, viewing scratches and imperfections, and watch walkaround videos. In fact, as much as 35% of users polled would consider completing a full purchase online of a vehicle, site unseen, versus 40% who still prefer an aspect of in-person selling.
Blended retail journeys
All this points to a growing interest in online retail, which is why your website and digital marketing strategy must be stronger than ever going into a new year. Whilst some early digital adopters may seek out high-end online-only experiences for their purchase, Auto Trader predicts that 60% of car buyers would prefer to essentially build their own experience – combining aspects of online research, online shopping and in-person visits to a dealership.
This means that flexibility is critical, and offering multiple avenues to purchase is the best way to convert sales. For example, in terms of communication and media, it could mean including video as part of vehicle listings will become increasingly important (where we have seen that over 70% of every action carried out on the internet in 2023 was watching video) or adding live chat to ensure questions can be answered any time of the day or night, ensuring you can capture the all-important consumers researching on the sofa after a full day of work.
And, in this difficult economic climate with consumer behaviour shifting every day, adding functions such as part exchange, finance calculators and even full digital online purchasing journeys insures that no matter what the customer wants, you offer them a way to get it.
Spidersnet digital retail journeys
Launching in 2025, we will be offering our customers the opportunity to have a fully integrated secure digital retail journey on their site. This means allowing card transactions for reservations, a feature we already offer and has grown in popularity, but also including part exchange evaluations and collection or delivery processes in the journey. This fully optimised user experience can turn your website into an additional salesman, allowing customers to complete as much of their purchase online as they want.
ADAPTING YOUR DEALERSHIP’S MARKETING PLAN TO THIS BUYING BEHAVIOUR
1 – Be the inspiration for their decision!
We know that most consumers begin their journey online, without knowing what car they want. During the research stage, they consume large amounts of content. According to statistics, video research is seen as the most popular and effective format for encouraging brand consideration. For car dealers it’s important to bear this in mind. Producing videos and posting them on social channels could help influence a customer’s decision to choose your brand and buy from you.
2 – Remember consumers don’t start at dealerships anymore
When researching, consumers are unlikely to begin at your dealership’s website. They will probably visit comparison sites, check prices, and compare user reviews first. In the UK 56% of new buyers most commonly begin at a third party site like Autotrader and then travel onto the individual dealership site.
The key takeaway from this is that it’s essential that automotive dealers have an extremely strong presence on third party sites both locally and nationally. Ensure you choose a website provider that has the technology to feed to as many car sales platforms as possible.
3 – Ensure your website provokes their final decision
When the time comes for them to land on your website, it’s essential that yours is better than your competitors’. Not only does its design need to leave a strong first impression, but it’s also important to remember that most people are very impatient. Therefore, your site needs to be very user-friendly and have all of the technical functionality to stop consumers going elsewhere. Your site should have the tools to make the consumer’s life easy, below are some of the key elements for automotive websites.
- Fast website loading speed
- HTTPS secure
- Engaging and Informative content
- Easy communication/live chat
- Access to social channels
- Strong imagery/videography
- Customer reviews
- Finance calculator integration
- Mobile optimised
- Easy to navigate
- Plenty of useful written information on each page
4 – Carry out powerful digital marketing
Whether you opt for a website provider, or build your website independently, digital marketing is a crucial tool for automotive sales success. Strong search engine optimisation (SEO), will ensure that car-buyers find your dealership in the search results pages of search engines. To learn more about SEO be sure to read our car dealer’s introduction to SEO.
You may also wish to invest in paid media. By investing in paid media campaigns, carried out by digital marketing experts, you can target people searching for the stock you have, and cleverly introducing them to your dealership online. You may also wish to spend time on social media marketing, putting your dealership in front of your target audience on social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or X.
IN CONCLUSION…
Digital marketing, social media and online communication is here to stay when it comes to car buying. Using the above strategy will help you get in on the ground floor and be present throughout the majority, if not all, of the customer journey. In fact, the earlier that they come into contact with you the better! Through social media, YouTube videos, SEO and PPC, and a strong presence on third party sites, then local buyers are much more likely to happen across you whilst looking for what they want. Adding multiple purchase options such as part exchange, finance, vehicle reservations and online transactions opens you up to every type of customer, and future-proofs your business.