Car buyers.
That’s what matters the most in automotive business after all, right? We need car buyers to buy the vehicles we’re selling.
And throughout the years — from flyers, to radio ads, to billboards, to online marketing, and basically every other channel you can think of — dealers have done whatever they can to find new ways to attract car buyers. But while the marketing channel (and method) for winning car buyers has changed over time, the overall strategy has not.
Attracting car buyers is all about being whether potential car buyers are. And in today’s digital world, there’s only one channel car buyers are using more than any other: Messaging.
Over 70% of car buyers prefer messaging as over any other traditional communication channel when it comes to connecting with dealers. Which is why it has the potential to be one of your best sales channels.
But the reason why messaging can be your dealership’s greatest sales channel goes beyond this stat— it’s not just because that’s where everyone is spending their time today.
Messaging as a sales channel
In a nutshell, here’s the main reason why messaging can be your greatest sales asset:
Messaging matches the way that people want to buy.
Just think about the way you communicate with people on a daily basis.
If you’re anything like me then chances are you use WhatsApp to message loved ones, hop on Facebook Messenger to connect with old classmates and spend endless hours at work talking to teammates on an internal messaging channel like Slack or HipChat.
And because we communicate via messaging channels all day, we’ve evolved to expect businesses to communicate that way too.
According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound report, less than 20% of consumers said they rely on sales people for their purchase decisions.
That’s because we can dig through reviews to find out just about everything we need to know about the car we want — and with the rise of free trials and “try before you buy” offers we can try products for weeks before ever having to hand over credit card details.
So it’s no surprise that consumers don’t want to fill out a form, wait for a response, and then worry about getting hounded with endless phone calls from sales reps.
We know that there’s a better way to do business today.
And as a business, this is where you can use messaging to your advantage.
You can start adapting to this shift in how people buy and opening your business up to messaging — and the easiest way to do this is by using live chat on your website. On-site messaging gives you the ability to respond in real-time to questions (or issues) from car buyers who are live on your website.
Take Von Rotz Autowelt for example.
They’re a Switzerland based dealership using messaging as a competitive advantage. A few months ago, they got a message from a potential car buyer who had a few questions while browsing for a new car on their website. This was someone who was basically in their showroom, ready to buy a car — and had a few questions before they purchased.
But because Von Rotz Autowelt uses messaging to talk to potential car buyers on their website, they were able to quickly answer the buyers question and win over a customer with a great real-time service. Turning an almost lost sale into a car purchase.
And here’s the other thing about messaging: it puts people back at the center of the car buying journey. After all there’s just something about filling out forms and waiting for a response that seems so impersonal. And today, relationships are more important than ever.
With Web1on1’s automotive messaging platform and managed live chat services you can take advantage of the messaging revolution and start making messaging your competitive advantage. Chat with an automotive messaging expert today and find out just how easy it is to get started.
Spoiler alert: the CTA above triggers a message rather than a form 😉
