Seasonal sales events long have been one of the most popular tools for automotive advertising.
Big and bold on every level, they leverage everything from discounts and nationwide ad spends, to expensive dealership decorations to get consumers excited and motivated to visit their local dealer.
The excitement of holiday advertising comes at a price. The feeding frenzy spurred by this surge in consumerism creates competition for attention that reverberates throughout multiple categories including: big box retail, consumer packaged goods and entertainment. This competition increases cost, creating margin compression that cuts into return on investment.
While other categories may benefit from monetization via e-commerce platforms, the auto industry, with an inherently high price point, must move people out of their seats and into their local dealerships for sales conversion.
This, coupled with the rising cost for impressions, makes it all the more imperative to say something impactful once you’ve won a consumer’s attention. That said, nationwide messaging is ill-calibrated to deliver local results. Stimulating local action is the only way for auto marketers to prevent ROI erosion at the national level.
While it may be cost-prohibitive and/or highly labor-intensive to roll out new TV ads with countdowns or inventory updates at the dealership level on a daily basis, this type of dynamic messaging can be accomplished easily in the digital space, particularly through video that drives bottom-line results.
Analytics have shown that emphasizing factors such as those below can result in significant upticks in tying performance back to sales seen through these types of events:
- Dynamic countdowns. Studies have shown that referencing how many days or even hours are left in an event will increase website lead-generation actions by over 15%.
- Real-time inventory. Showing a number that truly corresponds to inventory at a certain dealership indicates high demand and can provide the final kick in the pants someone needs to get them to act – or otherwise miss out.
- Targeting capabilities. With the range of customer data now available, it’s possible to serve messages about specific designs and features that most appeal directly to an individual buyer.
- More accurate measurement. Automotive marketers can learn from retailers, which measure post-impression activity to get a truly accurate picture of the ROI behind a promotional event. Knowing that something like a car-customization feature on a website often serves as a powerful lead-gen source, it’s imperative marketers be able to relate eventual purchases back to the original piece of content that drove someone to the website.
While automotive advertisers are facing major challenges as demands for consumers’ time and attention increase exponentially, seasonal sales events still provide great opportunities to engage and convert target audiences.
The real challenge is in breaking from traditional mindsets around how to best promote these events and taking full advantage of the powerful new tools of digital advertising.
Creating a sense of urgency motivates consumers to act when they might otherwise procrastinate.
Amit Nigam is director-account strategy for automotive at Eyeview. He works with automotive companies to develop and deploy personalized advertising strategies focused on driving measurable performance and bottom-line sales.
