How digital marketing keeps the buyers coming back

Automotive digital marketing companies provide latest updates, product releases and contract wins

Marketing Delivery

Social media as a sales tool continues to grow, while Marketing Delivery’s Social Stock product is now live with 100 dealerships. Social Stock promotes used car stock to targeted Facebook users who have looked at vehicles on a dealer’s website.

Marketing Delivery is also using Facebook to build a conquest audience by identifying car buyers looking at competitor models or dealers where the Facebook pixel is installed. The company is also working with the social media site on attribution tracking, to follow those recorded on the dealer’s customer relationship management (CRM) system through to enquiry and even sale.

Managing director Jeremy Evans said: “Facebook tracking is driving a lot of people to our clients’ websites. They are not just coming once to the dealer websites, but two or three times.”

The company launched its reporting platform, known as Brainbox, in September last year, enabling dealers to see key metrics in one area such as data capture, activity reports and sales and service retention.

Following two years of working directly with Volvo as a recommended partner for eCRM, Marketing Delivery now works with 30% of the network while its services are about to be rolled out to a major manufacturer network following a successful trial. A trial of Sales eCRM is about to begin with a selection of dealerships representing a renowned premium OEM for used vehicles.  Meanwhile, the Mercedes-Benz dealer network has extended its services by around 20% over the past year.

Recent wins include its appointment to provide aftersales eCRM and Social Stock to HR Owen’s Bentley division. Also, Marketing Delivery has celebrated winning its first independent business, Redline Specialist Cars in Knaresborough. Evans estimates existing customers have extended use of its services by around 20%.

 

GForces

A particular focus has been on the arrival of Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads to the UK market, launched last year. As an official listings partner, GForces uses its NetDirector Stock software to generate automated ads that deliver excellent return on investment and save retailers money, time and effort, it says.

A 46% improvement compared with previous Facebook campaigns and a 59% increase in revenue generated from Facebook advertising has been experienced. Highly successful campaigns include those on behalf of Townparks, Premier Ford and Marshall Motor Group.

GForces has also seen a rise in demand for its video marketing, with several product videos for Mazda. Clients have also opted to use video marketing to introduce their e-commerce offering via templated ‘how to’ videos.

Dealers can now take advantage of exclusive marketing resources such as Gubagoo live chat, and SnapCell, a video email marketing service. The arsenal of digital marketing services provided by GForces, such as search engine optimisation, paid advertising, social media and even a managed service for full campaign management, are now vital aspects of a retailer’s digital strategy.

GForces’ clients have experienced increased enquiries in recent months. These include PPC up by 13.6%, Google Display Network Remarketing up 60.8%, and YouTube TrueView up 27.4% in the months January-July 2019 compared with the same period for 2018.

 

Spidersnet

Spidersnet’s dealer management system, Autopromotor, has been completely redesigned and rebuilt. Faster and easier to use, the system is also 100% mobile responsive, and is future-proofed, as new features and improvements can be added at any time.

Spidersnet is about to launch its mobile app for Autopromotor which will allow its dealer clients to manage their business on the go, featuring new VRM lookup technology, access to vehicle data and sales reports and the ability to make changes to ads instantly. Other new features in progress include a 360-degree image app, a comprehensive video review package, Facebook Marketplace feeds and Cap data lookup.

Friday Media Group, Spidersnet’s umbrella company, has restructured to provide more autonomy to the company, which now has a managing director – Sam Kidger.

Kidger said: “One of the highlights of the past 12 months was being hand-chosen to feature in the Parliamentary Review’s technology sector. We were chosen, along with a handful of other businesses, to offer our insight into the industry as a whole, discussing what we feel the future holds for car dealers.

Around 500,000 copies of the publication were printed, and circulated among politicians, directors, CEOs and those in positions of leadership, in an attempt to help shape the future of business across Britain for the better.”

 

Bluesky Interactive

New products launched this year include AutoEdge, a behavioural website personalisation product that aims to anticipate visitor’s needs and serve the most relevant content; e-commerce platform AutoTransact including reservation-and-buy online options, valuation and part-exchange integrations and finance features creating a ‘build a deal’ process; and SuperSearch, its mobile-friendly car and vehicle search solution.

Head of marketing Lauren Cooke said: “We wanted to break the mould, challenge preconceptions and deliver a product that was as fast and responsive on mobile as on desktop. It needed to showcase dealer stock, offer visitors true flexibility and, of course, improve their website performance.”

Results are impressive, with 20% more VDP (vehicle details page) views and 22% growth in enquiries, improving interaction with stock and delivering more leads.

Page speed of its websites has been improved, making them more friendly to users and more likely to score well in Google rankings. Its Next Gen CMS solution is an enhancement to its existing system, while support teams have been restructured for a more comprehensive hierarchy of customer support.

In the past 12 months, Bluesky has made more than 50 websites live and supported more than 75,000 cars on its automotive platform. Contract wins to have gone live over the past 12 months include Allen Motor Group and Steven Eagell, with upcoming projects for MAN Trucks UK and Tom Hartley.

 

Autoweb Design

Following its move to new offices in Selby in February last year, Autoweb Design has grown  the number of its employees by 30% in the past year, including strengthening its account management team to further boost customer service.

The company welcomed Perrys Motor Group in April, providing a new website and other digital marketing services. Ancillary services such as PPC, SEO and Facebook Marketplace have experienced significant growth among current clients.

Digital solutions director Martin Dew said: “We are continuing our approach of moving clients away from the standard automotive website template to a web experience similar to that of other industries. We have seen web enquiries increase from between three and five times for some clients.”

At the end of this year, Autoweb Design will launch its new platform powered by the latest web technology with a number of enhancements including e-commerce functionality. Two years in the making, the new platform already has 14 new websites ready to go live after launch, a mix of new customers and existing clients.

Launched in August and averaging one new dealer a day so far, Autoweb Design spotted a gap in the market and created its entry-level digital marketing solution package. The package, which incorporates SEO Light and PPC Light, is designed to enable small independent businesses and single-site operators to take advantage of local markets, while investing modest amounts.