10 Problems Causing Money Leakage in Your Dealership Marketing and How to Fix Them

To thrive in the highly competitive automotive market, dealerships must ensure that every marketing dollar invested delivers results. Here are the top 10 problems dealers face that cause money leakage in their marketing and the solutions you can implement to plug those holes:

Problem 1: 

Your digital ads are bleeding cash without delivering results.

Solution:

Create highly specific, defined, data-driven ad audiences.

Leveraging your dealership’s first and third party data to create hyper-specific audiences for your campaigns based on customer preferences, needs, behaviors, and demographics will immediately minimize wasteful ad spend and increase conversions from relevant, in-market shoppers. 

Problem 2: 

Your ads are not efficiently reaching your target audiences. 

Solution: 

Use identity resolution technology to ensure efficient targeting.

Implement identity resolution to track customers across various channels and devices to create a singular, unified profile for every shopper. This ensures you are not advertising to the same person twice and that you can target shoppers with personalized messaging using current data.  

Problem 3: 

Your ads performance is stagnant and you don’t know why. 

Solution:

Run frequent A/B tests. 

A/B test different elements like headlines, ad copy, images, and CTAs across different ad platforms to identify what resonates best with your dealership’s audience. Regular testing provides real-time insights that can help you fine-tune your digital advertising strategy.

Problem 4: 

You are losing millions to competitors on upsell opportunities. 

Solution: 

Leverage your dealership’s equity data to target equity positive customers. 

Tapping into your dealership’s equity data to understand your customers’ lifetime value, purchase history, and preferences enables you to craft personalized, equity-based offers, maximizing your chances of bringing your customers back into the dealership to make their next purchase. 

Problem 5: 

You are not reallocating your budgets and it’s tanking your ROI. 

Solution:

Monitor your ads and regularly shift your budget to support performance. 

Your budget is not written in stone. By regularly monitoring your campaign performance and reallocating your budgets cross-platform, you can better support successful ads and drive more results. Regularly adjusting your budgets ensures that your marketing dollars are spent where they’ll have the most impact.

Problem 6:

Your dealership’s data sources work in silos and do not speak to each other. 

Solution:

Implement a Customer Data Platform (CDP). 

Disconnected data means inefficient campaigns. Customer Data Platforms are designed to unify your dealership’s data sources into one consolidated platform allowing you to gain deep insights on your dealership operations and shopper behavior that you can leverage in your marketing strategy.

Problem 7:

Your ads are drowning in irrelevant audiences.

Solution: 

Leverage audience suppression techniques. 

Audience suppression enables dealers to exclude certain customer criteria from receiving specific ad campaigns. This ensures customers who purchased a car last week will not then be presented with an ad for a new car. This increases marketing efficiency while also improving your customer experience. 

Problem 8: 

You’re letting hot leads go cold. 

Solution: 

Leverage retargeting tools to keep potential buyers in your pipeline. 

Harness the power of retargeting to bring back potential buyers who’ve visited your website but didn’t make a purchase. Deploy retargeting ads to remind them of your dealership and incentivize them to come back with relevant deals and offers.

Problem 9: 

You’re not engaging your cold leads. 

Solution: 

Implement a lead nurture strategy to bring dead leads back to life. 

Abandoning leads that have gone cold is a critical mistake that can cost you millions. Implement re-engagement strategies specifically tailored to rekindle their interest in your dealership. Customize your messaging based on their past interactions to re-engage effectively.

Problem 10:

You are not monitoring your ad performance. 

Solution: 

Review ad content and metrics regularly to understand what is working. 

Keep a watchful eye on your ad campaigns. Analyze critical metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI. This data helps you identify underperforming campaigns and allows for timely adjustments.

Conclusion

By implementing these solutions at your dealership, you can ensure that every advertising dollar is a wise investment, ultimately driving potential customers into your showroom and keeping your revenue flowing. Fullpath’s Customer Data and Experience Platform is designed to optimize your dealership’s marketing strategy so you can sell more cars for less while providing an excellent customer experience at every touch point on the shopper journney. Visit fullpath.com or email us at get.started@fullpath.com to schedule a personalized demo today.