3 Reasons Why Mobile Is The Future Of The Auto Industry

Whether researching brands while commuting to work or comparing prices while at the dealership, consumers are relying on mobile through each step of the purchasing process.

3 Reasons Why Mobile Is The Future Of The Auto Industry

This article is part of CMO.com’s February series about mobile. Click here for more.

Whether researching brands while commuting to work or comparing prices while at the dealership, consumers are relying on mobile to steer them through each step of the car-purchasing process.

The onus, now, is on brands to stay ahead of that behavioral curve using mobile to drive deeper consideration, dealership foot traffic, and sales.

Here are three points they should consider.

1. With more digital paths to purchase than ever before, mobile is essential to influence how people shop for cars: A full 95% of auto shoppers now start their research online. Additionally, six out of 10 car shoppers enter the market without knowing which automobile they are going to purchase.

This data indicates a great opportunity for auto brands to connect with in-market shoppers at the beginning stages of the shopping process.

Mobile browsing behaviors provide rich context into what consumers are looking to find. According to Google, auto shoppers turn to mobile to answer the following questions via search:

Auto brands should help customers during these early moments by optimizing content and delivering digital marketing campaigns at the right time—whether it’s images of your car models, dealership location information, pricing offers, or anything in between.

2. With a better understanding of audiences through mobile devices, auto brands can deliver more personalized, hyper-local marketing:30% of all mobile searches are related to location or “near me” queries. Therefore, it’s essential for auto dealerships to combine mobile insights with offline in-market profiles to identify people who are located nearby and deliver relevant offers to drive foot traffic at dealerships in real time.

Put another way, the merging of the digital world and physical worlds through real-time mobile location data enables brands to leverage and optimize offers to the right audiences, in the right place, and at the right time.

It’s essential for brands to understand how their consumers are interacting with mobile while at their physical retail location so that they can send in-store push notifications for personalized offers directly to their phones. In fact, consumers redeem mobile offers 10 times more frequently than they do print offers.

Identifying a hyper-local target audience and delivering geofenced campaigns can have a drastic impact on ROI and dealership visits.

3. A one-to-one mobile link provides advanced attribution tools to accurately measure your success: Today’s data-driven marketers have a one-to-one link with individual consumers through mobile device IDs.

Geofenced listening allows auto brands to detect all nearby mobile devices within proximity of specific retail locations. By identifying unique individuals and their mobile devices at the beginning stages of the purchase journey, marketers can track every click, engagement, and conversion, to a real, verified person for a true attribution method.

Auto brands now have the power to accurately measure point-of-sale matchback and foot traffic through mobile data. Real-time metrics on how digital marketing campaigns are influencing in-store visits and sales provide auto brands with more transparency into what really works and what doesn’t.

With mobile-driven insights, auto brands drive continuous improvement in strategy, increase ROI, and engage consumers in a personalized way.