Is This Car Shopper Costing You Money?

by Brooke Jensen | Nov 14, 2022 | Advertising, Agency, Automotive, Social Media

Media dollars aren’t getting dealers as far as they used to, and automotive marketers everywhere are stuck asking themselves: Why is there a sudden shift in lead volume? 🧐 👎

When we break-down past events, you’ll find that it’s not as sudden as you think! There are a handful of factors that have been catalysts for this decrease in auto shopper leads…

It all started with the explosion of digital media – which soon created a much more complicated, costly customer – the Automotive Nomadic Customer.

But what is the origin of these Automotive Nomadic Customers? Why are these car shoppers so hard to reach? And how can auto marketers get ahead of them?

The Digital Media Explosion

Less than 20 years ago, the mobile phone didn’t really exist!

But in 2007, when the first truly groundbreaking mobile device was released (ever heard of the iPhone?! 😉), smartphones began paving the way to a monumental digital media evolution.

And each year, with more and more digital opportunities added to the stack – the digital landscape has become shockingly vast.

Ever since, there has been a seismic shift in the depth of the digital landscape.

The digital media timeline below speaks for itself:

Little did we know that as a result of these new, exciting developments in technology, auto marketers would be faced with two VERY costly challenges in the future.

2 Most Expensive Challenges For Auto Marketers Today

The two challenges are…

Challenge #1: The online / data privacy landscape, which has impacted the ability for advertisers to track users as they move nomadically across digital media.
Challenge #2: The ever-changing habits of today’s shoppers, which has sent advertisers on a wild goose chase, trying to blindly hunt down and reach this nomadic car shopper

Ask yourself: Have you noticed a change in lead volume for you or your clients over the past 2 years?

During the first webinar of our brand-new educational series, The Automotive Nomadic Customer Series, we asked our audience the above question, and 57% of auto marketers reported seeing a decrease in lead volume over the past 2 years!

Yet automotive marketers continue to invest more time and more money, arriving at the same destination…

In a 2021 survey from HubSpot: 44% of marketers predicted they would need to spend 5x more $$$ to hit the same goals in 2022 as they did in 2021.

But with BIG bucks at stake, do you really want to throw your ad dollars against the wall with the HOPE that they’ll stick?

The Shift: Traditional Digital vs. New Digital

Back to the Traditional Digital era, or what some might call, the era of “Spray & Pray” advertising: decisions were simpler, advertising was easier, and most importantly…advertisers could reach a larger audience for less money!

But that was before the shift to targeted digital advertising, which provided advertisers with an even better solution to reach the right audience, at the right time, for even CHEAPER!

…UNTIL the most unreachable car shopper, the Automotive Nomadic Customer, surfaced.

And with the recent discovery of this mysterious customer, alongside endless options of “New” Digital, dealers are in a frenzy – spending a ton more money in an effort to find this car shopper who is seemingly nowhere to be found.

In NADA’s Mid Market Report Analysis below, you can easily identify the large increase of ad spend being thrown at the internet in 2021, compared to 2016 (prior to the Automotive Nomadic Customer)!

Here’s the thing: going back to a “Spray & Pray” strategy in today’s NEW digital landscape, where there’s countless digital mediums, will simply not drive the same success it once did.

Instead, auto marketers need to dig deeper into how the Nomadic Customer consumes digital media.

How Does The Nomadic Customer Consume Digital Media?

On average, the automotive Nomadic Customer spends over 8 hours / day consuming digital media across social, search, games, OTT, messaging, news, etc.

Every year, the Nomadic car shopper is choosing to consume more and more “New” Digital media per day over “Traditional…”

And they’re doing it all on mobile, which to no surprise, the #1 most used mobile apps are those categorized as social media / chat apps.

How To Get Ahead Of The Most Unreachable Car Shopper

Understandably, the extensive number of “New” Digital mediums available for auto marketers to advertise on today can be overwhelming.

But you have to start somewhere…and in this case, the best place to start is with this quiz to determine whether or not you’re maximizing your organic exposure!

After you take the quiz, we’ll make sure to send you 20 FREE organic guides to help you get a jumpstart on the most unreachable car shopper today!

Key Takeaways

Consumers are congregating on a ton of common mediums – and this provides a unique opportunity to reach them – if you’re paying close enough attention.

Click here to watch our FULL webinar, “Why Is The Automotive Nomadic Customer Costing Dealerships BIG Bucks $$$” and learn more about out how auto marketers can reach these customers in hiding, without wasting ad media dollars along the way.

Find out everything you need to know to catch and convert the #1 most unreachable car shopper today.

Softening Automotive Markets Always Lead to Spray & Pray

by Brooke Jensen | Oct 19, 2022 | Advertising, Agency, Automotive, Social Media

Having lived through more than a few ups and downs in automotive retail, there is one constant about advertising that’s been true for decades. That is, when the market begins to soften, managers and dealers most often look for answers from (and place the blame on) their marketing budgets.

Whether they make knee-jerk vendor replacements or start chasing potential buyers across multiple channels, they usually do this without much data – these are gut decisions. Selling fewer vehicles? We need to spend more, be in more places, and/or fire our marketing vendors! Spray and pray, because if we throw enough crap against the wall, some of it will stick!

When coupled with the new norm of the Nomadic Customer, the current market softness is already leading to spray and pray decisions that are more costly than in the past and resulting in lower overall reach. That is, while dealers are ramping up spending, they’re connecting with fewer car buyers.

Today’s automotive Nomadic Customer is more than a moving target; they’re fleeting. Specifically, they never seem to be in any one place for very long. Additionally, the inventory shortages over the last 24+ months have taught today’s customers to look for vehicles in even more places than ever before.

Cross-Shopping is Creating Inefficiencies

In the past, dealers seeking additional exposure to their inventory could double-up (or triple-up) on classified websites, buy leads from other third-party providers, and spend more on Google Ads. These strategies offered some incremental exposure, as cross-shopping (consumers visiting multiple third-party sites) was limited, and Google provided search term-level data in Google Analytics dealers could use to fine tune their spend.

The problem with these strategies today is that the current low-funnel buyer is everywhere. They are, after all, the automotive Nomadic Customer. As these consumers cross-shop multiple classified websites, dealers end up paying double, triple, or even quadruple to reach the same potential buyer. Plus, Google Ads have become too expensive, and now – under the guise of “privacy” – Google hides nearly all consumer search terms from their advertisers’ Google Analytics.

Spray and pray in the past was just costly; today, it’s costly and inefficient.

Too Many Choices

In the past, car buyers had few available media options. Decades ago, there was likely one daily newspaper, three or four channels on television, and just a handful of popular radio stations in each market. Add in a couple of strategically placed billboards, and car dealers practicing spray and pray could afford to be nearly everywhere.

Today’s consumer has too many choices and a shortened attention span. To gain the same relative exposure now would bankrupt your dealership.

Whether online or the old fashioned way, relatively few consumers read their local paper daily; and almost no one reads it from cover-to-cover as they did in the past. Your online and offline ads are almost never seen by the Nomadic Customer.

Although about 80% of Americans watch television on a given day, they’re not all watching the same three or four channels – in fact, many are watching a premium streaming service without commercials. Even if you’re hyper-targeting with over-the-top media, between their shorter attention spans and the ease of channel surfing, the automotive Nomadic Customer is missing your messages.

An astonishing 88% of Americans still listen to more than twelve hours of radio each week. Of course, only about one of every six of these listeners is going to buy a car in the next twelve months. If your goal is to reach the in-market buyer – say, someone looking to buy in the next 30 days – then only about 1.5% of those hearing your ads today is likely to buy this month. There is no tangible ROI if your goal is to reach the Nomadic Customer.

It’s Digital or Bust

As most dealers already know, the remaining option is digital marketing. While digital marketing in the past promised lower acquisition costs coupled with superior tracking and measuring, the realities caused by the automotive Nomadic Customer and privacy challenges are leading to bloated budgets with little or no measurable return.

Reaching the Nomadic Customer without breaking the bank is the problem; and the answer – if there is going to be one – will depend on finding solutions that can effectively be everywhere at all the right times. Because the market will soften (if it hasn’t already for you), and dealers can no longer rely on their gut plus a little spray and pray to drive today’s buyers into their stores.

Find out everything you need to know to catch and convert the #1 most unreachable car shopper today.

What Is An Automotive Nomadic Customer?

by Brooke Jensen | Sep 27, 2022 | Advertising, Agency, Social Media

A few years ago, reaching automotive shoppers was much easier.

You knew exactly where to spend your ad dollars, because you had your “clear-cut YouTube watchers,” your “die-hard Facebook-ers”, and then “whatever the kids were using.”

But since the pandemic, shoppers have become nomadic with their digital usage.

And this makes it hard—impossible, really—to place a dealership’s ad exactly where auto shoppers are spending time.

Because nowadays, we simply can’t predict where that is. It’s almost as if we are back to the “spray and pray” days of advertising.

We call these impossible-to-reach customers “automotive Nomadic Customers,” and they are a key problem for dealerships today.

The Automotive Nomadic Customer – Defined

The automotive Nomadic Customer can be defined by 3 core traits:

Transient & Unreachable
The Nomadic Customer is unpredictable, unreachable, and difficult to track down.

Seeking Value—Fast!
Nomadic Customers are constantly in search of greener pastures and better resources.

Disloyal By Default
Nomadic Customers will quickly move if valuable resources aren’t found where they’re spending time.

These character traits are no doubt due to the explosion of digital over the past few years: A new report reveals that the average American spends 494 minutes (over 8 hours!) consuming digital media per day, up from 474 minutes in 2020. (Source: Insider Intelligence)

And with the incredible volume of new websites, apps, and networks today, these automotive Nomadic Customers are simply never where we expect them to be.

Where Does an Automotive Nomadic Customer Spend Time?

Instead of using 1 or 2 social apps consistently, automotive Nomadic Customers dabble in various apps unpredictably.

And it all comes down to mobile apps:

The average person has 40 mobile apps on their phone and spends 4.2 hours a day on mobile apps. Shockingly, 89% of that total time is split between 18 apps. (Source: TechJury)

So what are these 18 apps that are hogging all of these customers’ attention?

According to Statista, Social Media and Chat apps are #1 when it comes to where mobile US users spend the most time, ranking at 50% of total time spent compared to that spent on Browsers (42%) and Mail (36%).

But more importantly, which social apps are Nomadic Customers most loyal to?

Which Social Media Apps Do Automotive Nomadic Customers Use The Most?

One big assumption is that digital auto shoppers are just on Facebook and YouTube.

Wrong! Automotive Nomadic Customers are spending time across tons of different social platforms.

In fact, the average user today has a whopping 8.4 social media accounts and spends 4.5 hours on social media per day. (Source: Global Web Index)

It’s no longer a question of IF the Nomadic Customer is on social media, but a matter of WHICH apps they spend the most time on, and of course—reaching them before they relocate again…

And that’s why many automotive advertisers are missing the mark when they keep their marketing dollars corralled to just Facebook or YouTube.

How Do Automotive Nomadic Customers Shop For Cars?

Due to their digital obsession, it’s a no-brainer that automotive Nomadic Customers rely heavily on online research during the auto buyer journey.

19 of the 24 steps to buy a car are done online, from research, to price comparisons, to understanding financing options, and more. (Source: WardsAuto)

This presents a sea full of digital marketing opportunities, however, there’s a risk, too:

Since Nomadic Customers are always looking for greener pastures and better value, dealerships need to be everywhere these shoppers are hiding – because there’s no shortage of hiding spots.

But many automotive businesses feel that customers today are in plain sight, on major third-party platforms like Cars.com and Edmunds.

Truth is, they’re not…

Download our infographic now to see the full “In-Market Auto Shoppers By Platform (Reach In Millions” chart, and find out how sites like Cars.com are stacking up against platforms like Pinterest.

Ask yourself:

Are YOU one of those businesses missing out on getting in front of the most prevalent customers today, the automotive Nomadic Customer?

Uncover More About The Automotive Nomadic Customer

There’s an abundance of automotive Nomadic Customers who are in-market and ready to buy…

The problem is, that automotive Nomadic Customers are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “Catch-them-if-you-can…”

Nomads are never in one place for too long, and when they’re constantly roaming between 8+ apps, it makes finding them all the more difficult.

BuyerBridge is on a mission to pin down this Nomadic Customer and stop them in their tracks, no matter where they’re located. Throughout this mission, we’ve developed omnichannel AdTech solutions to help dealerships reach these customers through automation.

The first resource of our Nomadic Customer series, a massive infographic around “What Is An Automotive Nomadic Customer,” will help educate automotive dealerships and agencies on how to finally reach this unreachable shopper.

Find out everything you need to know to catch and convert the #1 most unreachable car shopper today.

Are Car Dealerships Back To “Spray and Pray” Advertising?

by Brooke Jensen | Sep 26, 2022 | Advertising, Automotive, Marketing

Remember back in the day when every digital marketing company pointed the finger and villainized “Spray and Pray” advertising?

It was the #1 topic at every conference, webinar, and forum:

“Stop blanketing your message!”
“Stop blindly throwing darts!”
“Attribution is the answer!”
“You can’t track TV, but you can track [Insert Digital Channel Here]!”

Ever since, dealers started spending ad dollars differently, and the results followed.

In just 5 years (between 2016 and 2021), dealership internet advertising expenditures nearly doubled. (Source: NADA Data)

And it is no secret why: Targeted digital advertising simply worked.

But today, there are 2 massive challenges for automotive businesses across the nation that are once again changing how we look at advertising:

Challenge #1: The online / data privacy landscape.

Challenge #2: The ever-changing habits of today’s digital shoppers.

Let’s take a closer look.

“Privacy First” Means Results Second

Have you noticed that your lead volume has become more and more unpredictable over the last year?

Are you frustrated that your ad dollars don’t seem to be going as far as they used to?

It is not a coincidence that you’re feeling this way when “privacy-first” and “a cookieless future” are the latest digital marketing buzzwords.

Google’s “death of the cookie”, iOS 14’s privacy lockdown, and policy changes like CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and GDPR are making it so that automotive marketers and General Managers alike are spending more valuable time than ever trying to hunt down where the leads and customers are hiding.

In fact, a 2021 survey from Hubspot and GetApp revealed that 41% of marketers believed their biggest challenge was the inability to track the right data. Additionally, 44% of marketers predicted they would need to quintuple their spending from 5% to 25% to hit the same goals in 2022 as they did in 2021.

The problem is, automotive customers aren’t all that easy to track anymore, and it’s only going to get harder.

Automotive Customers Are Unreachable

On your smartphone, I want you to run a quick drill:

Open your “Screentime” (iPhone users, go to Settings > Screen Time; Android users, go to Settings > Digital Wellbeing). How many apps have you used in the past week? How much time did you spend?

(Fun fact, we surveyed our VP of Product, CEO, and VP of Sales, and they use an average of 32 apps and spend an estimated 13 hours on their phone per week!)

The average user today has 40 apps on their phone, and spends a total of 494 minutes a day consuming information digitally, and automotive shoppers are no different.

Car shoppers today sporadically spend time across different mediums; there are no longer 2 or 3 core places they are hanging out.

To combat this, auto dealers and industry marketers are seemingly back to that Spray and Pray mentality:

“You need to be everywhere. Did you post to TikTok? Don’t forget YouTube! Repost that to Instagram. Are you doing OTT?”

But is that the best route?

How can we get back to targeted advertising, when we don’t truly understand where auto shoppers are spending time, and when we’re losing signals every day?

To start, we need to really understand this automotive “Nomadic Customer.”

Stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to our blog – over the next few weeks, we will be releasing everything we’ve learned about the automotive Nomadic Customer and how you can finally pin them down.

Find out everything you need to know to catch and convert the #1 most unreachable car shopper today.

6 Ways Auto Agencies Use BuyerBridge To Help Dealers Dominate Social

by Brooke Jensen | Sep 1, 2022 | Advertising, Agency, Social Media

1. To deploy pre-built, fully optimized social media ad campaigns

Manually creating advertising campaigns across social media takes a ton of time! That’s why we decided to do the work manually, so agencies like you can do it automatically.

(WITHOUT having to worry about if all of your i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed!)

BuyerBridge “Playbooks” give agencies a way to help dealers go to market faster than ever with 250+ ready-to-deploy ad campaigns, pre-built and fully optimized for social media.

Every single Playbook is built by our highly skilled ad ops + creative teams to include:

Audience targeting
Campaign strategy
Ad creative
Ad messaging/copy

And the best part? All it takes is 5 simple steps…

Whether your agency wants to help dealers showcase their brand, deliver their inventory to in-market shoppers, or needs more inventory – we have a solution waiting for you both.

2. To manage social ad campaigns from ONE central location

Do you have 10+ tabs open, jumping between a ton of different Business and Ads Managers to adjust social ad campaigns for your clients?

Agencies who use BuyerBridge do NOT – instead, they have the luxury of “ONE single Ads Manager to rule them all!” (AKA ONE tab open only!)

And with our Omni-Campaign Management Tool, you can join the club!

Our Omni-Campaign Management tool provides the ability to manage your clients’ social media ad campaigns at scale with ONE central location to:

👉 View any clients’ social media campaigns, budgets, and performance across social

👉Make real-time adjustments to the name, budget, or status of a client’s campaigns

👉Access Omni-Ad Previews for different ad placements

👉Unlock faster turnaround times!

Click here to schedule time for a quick demo and see how much happier both you + your clients will be…

3. To build custom social media advertising reports

We can all agree that most agencies wouldn’t call building performance reports for clients’ fun.

But it’s the 21st century, and BuyerBridge has made the task a “lotta” less daunting with our real-time reporting, which pulls a TON of important metrics and data…

More importantly, we have our Report Builder which offers agencies a way to create customizable social ad reports with your own branding, personalized metrics, and our pre-made templates.

Reporting on your clients’ ad performance has never been more effortless than with the BuyerBridge Report Builder.

4. To budget ad accounts across social at scale

Budgeting is a lot of pressure. It makes it even harder when your agency has to do it for multiple ad accounts, all with different budgets…

Plus, let’s be real – you can’t just “set it and forget it” and gamble using your client’s money – you have to constantly check on ad spending to ensure campaigns don’t over/under-spend!

That’s why we created our BuyerBridge Budgeting Tool – to make it easy.

With the BuyerBridge Budgeting Tool, your business will be able to optimize + monitor all of your client’s ad budgets and spend across social media at SCALE.

If you’re ready to save time, gain efficiency, and reduce churn rates associated with budgeting your client’s social ad campaigns, book a demo here and we’ll show you how.

5. To proactively monitor multiple ad accounts

Feel like your eyes are glued to your clients’ social media ad accounts in anticipation of something going wrong? Yet errors STILL manage to fly under the radar?

BuyerBridge’s 15-point Monitoring System helps agencies get ahead of today’s issues, yesterday. 😏

Catch problems with your clients’ ads in real-time, like:

🤦 A website change breaks the pixel (and prevents tracking results)
🤦 You randomly lose Ads Manager access
🤦 Your client’s Cost Per Lead is way too high
🤦 A campaign is spending over (or under!) budget for the month

And not only will you identify WHAT is wrong and detect errors before your clients do; you’ll get advice on HOW to fix it.

6. To determine ROI across social channels

Dealerships come to your auto agency for one thing and one thing only, to drive more unit sales from their social ad campaigns.

So how does your agency PROVE to clients that they’ve truly made the right decision investing with YOU? And that you invested their money the right way?

The answer’s simple: BuyerBridge’s Offline Event Reporting.

Here’s an example of what an Offline Event Report in BuyerBridge could look like for your client:

Based on the above example, you would be able to tell a dealer that in the past 90 days, 272 units sold were attributed to advertising efforts on Facebook, at a cost of $239.22 per unit sold.

This means that $239.22 of your dealer’s ad spend is all it took to result in a vehicle purchase…talk about a solid ROI!

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as being able to tell a dealer that the ads you ran for them resulted in a concrete number of units sold!

How you can help dealers dominate with social ads, too!

With fast and accurate Onboarding, ready-to-deploy social ad campaigns, access to robust reporting (+ prove ROI!) and the ability to quickly monitor accounts – it’s inevitable that your agency can help dealers dominate with social ads, WITHOUT the overhead, WITH BuyerBridge.