How to Achieve Digital Success? Use Traditional Media

This issue comes up a lot at auto dealership group meetings. Why does Amazon.com spend over 2 million dollars weekly in TV ads? In this digital shopping world isn’t traditional media dead? No it’s not.

Amazon buys so much TV because traditional media, when done properly, triggers digital-shopping action.

Traditional media is alive and well and clearly successfully is used by digital companies. Just watch TV, and you’ll see plenty of ads for digital players in the auto industry, such as Carvana, Cargurus, Autortrader, KBB, TrueCar, CarFax, CarMax and Edmunds.

So, there is a way to use traditional media in today’s non-traditional shopping environment. How can an auto dealer do it?

Let’s take a look at traditional media. Broadcast network TV affiliates (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) still have massive live reach of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of local consumers, depending on market size.

Using the average SAAR, factor in that about 0.3% of this live audience is buying a vehicle each week. These live viewers can be reached for as little as a penny a person.

But dealers may be thinking all these viewers are not bottom-of-the-funnel auto shoppers. Well, that is true, there are people in these massive audiences who are at all points in the buying funnel.

Through sheer scale of reach, you can win substantial market share with a long-term and consistent plan. That’s because every 90 days, a market’s buying cycle resets. If you have a high-reach plan while the competition only targets buyers at the bottom of the funnel, you’ll win share.

One of the most common misses in marketing today is the importance of scale and timing. We coined the term “AdverTiming” to emphasize how important it is that a message shows up at the time of consumer interest in a product. It’s critical for lasting results.

With just a few keystrokes, a business development center can discover key shopping patterns that we use to develop and execute traditional media strategy for generating high-quality sales leads.

A little homework in Google data also will show terms and timing data used to forecast what to expect in specific markets.

Using traditional media today has different benefits. In the past, it was for branding or image enhancement. Those days are gone. Dealers do not have the luxury of time to brand their stores. It seems today’s consumers only care about a dealer when they want to buy a car. And, they only care about what the dealer can do for them right now.

Dealer lessons have been learned in the past few years. Some digital tools have made dealers money. Some have left them flat. Traditional media has held strong throughout this evolution. Even though it has gotten a bit of a bum rap, it can be a fast and effective way to get people on a dealer website and ultimately into the store.

Adam Armbruster is a senior partner in the business growth firm Eckstein, Summers, Armbruster & Company located in Red Bank, New Jersey and can be reached at 941-928-7192.