In recent years, the automotive industry has undergone a digital revolution, and the way customers buy cars has also changed drastically. With the rise of automotive digital retailing, car buyers can complete most of the purchase process online without ever stepping foot in a dealership. This shift in consumer behavior has forced automotive dealerships to adapt their sales process and embrace digital retailing to remain competitive.
However, implementing digital retailing can be a daunting task for car dealerships. With so many tools and strategies available, knowing where to start or what steps to take can be difficult. That’s where secret tips and steps come into play. In this blog, we will explore some secret tips and steps that automotive dealerships can implement to improve their digital retailing strategy.
What is Automotive Digital Retailing?
The practice of “automotive digital retailing” is changing how auto dealers sell cars! To better serve all consumers, dealers use it to combine online resources with their standard in-person customer service. Thanks to these tools, customers can get cars online, or start the purchase journey on the internet and then visit the dealership in the later stages.
Every sales team member becomes a digital retail agent for dealers who practice effective automotive digital retailing. All consumers receive hands-on assistance from car dealerships. However, they also provide seamless support to clients who started shopping on the dealer’s website and progressed through the purchasing process using the dealer’s online tools. As a car dealership, your traditional marketing and sales must seamlessly integrate with online marketing and sales to practice good automotive digital retailing.
Connecting this online experience to the dealer showroom is another aspect of digital retailing. According to the 2018 Cox Automotive Future of Digital Retail Study, more than 80% of consumers say they want to complete one or more phases of the car-buying process online, while almost 90% still want to sign the final contract in person.
There should be no need to enter data again or update a sales representative on preferences when a customer visits the dealership; they should be able to carry over their online purchasing experience. The information gained from digital retailing technologies can help dealers relate to customers in a more informed and empowered manner.
Advantages of Automotive Digital Retailing for Dealers:
Automotive digital retailing has several advantages for dealers that can help them improve their business operations, increase sales, and create a better customer experience. Some car dealers are hesitant to to go online, but at its finest, digital retailing extends the experience to a potent new channel for reaching more people rather than replacing the showroom.
Customers can buy cars the way they want, thanks to digital retailing! They are free to hunt for and acquire their next vehicle at their convenience. Because the customer has a consistent online and in-person experience, it fosters transparency and builds trust. It also expedites the process for the car buyer and dealer. According to the Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey, nearly three-quarters of car purchasers who completed paperwork online in 2019 were pleased & satisfied with the process.
Dealers already spend a lot of money promoting their web presence and luring customers. They can use digital retailing and automotive marketing to reach a bigger audience of customers and design an experience that sets their dealership apart from competitors. They can give customers a more satisfying, frictionless, and personalized experience while preserving their sense of control.
How to Implement Digital Retailing at Your Dealership?
It takes more than just building a new website and waiting for customers to show up to launch a digital retailing system for your dealership. You must establish important objectives and work to achieve them.
- First things first: assess your unique needs. Just like any other system, you want to make sure that the digital retailing solutions you choose are tailored to your dealership’s specific requirements.
- Once you’ve done that, it’s time to dive into the technical setup. Fortunately, the best digital retailing providers do all the heavy lifting for you. All you need to do is provide some basic information, and your client success manager will handle the rest. You’ll have a functional, impressive shopping experience up and running in no time.
- Next up: pricing configuration. You have a few options here, including defining finance and lease terms to reflect what you offer in-store. This is an important step in creating a seamless customer experience.
- Protection plans are another essential component of your digital retailing setup. You want to ensure that your customers feel confident in their purchase, so your F&I manager will coordinate with the provider to attach brochures and videos to your protection plan options. This helps customers self-educate and understand the value of your offerings.
- Accessories are another key aspect of the digital retailing experience. While you don’t need to include a complete list of available items, highlighting a few high-volume products like roof rails or locking nuts can be effective. You’ll have another chance to promote accessories when the deal is closed in-store.
With these components in place, it’s time to sell some cars! Your specific ecommerce platform may have a few additional tweaks, but the hard work is already done. The best digital retailing solutions not only improve the customer experience, but also make things easier for you.
Wrapping Up
Automotive digital retailing is a quickly expanding trend in the market that offers car consumers and dealerships various benefits. However, it takes careful planning and execution to integrate digital retailing into the automotive business. Dealerships must make the appropriate technological investments, train personnel on new procedures, and provide customers with a smooth online-to-offline transition. But most importantly, you need high-quality images and 360-degree car videos to list your cars on the internet.
Spyne offers you one of the best 360-degree car photography services, along with virtual studio photography. They specialize in providing high-quality visual content for businesses and dealerships. With their 360-degree car photography service, Spyne uses advanced equipment and techniques to capture a complete and detailed view of a car’s interior and exterior, allowing potential customers to explore and experience the vehicle in a virtual setting fully. Using specialized cameras and software, Spyne can capture multiple images of a car from various angles and seamlessly stitch them together to create a fully interactive, 360-degree view.
