How To Maximize Customer-Centric Marketing Across Tiers

During a time in history when we have more data available to us than ever before, efficiently and effectively targeting customers across tiers throughout their entire buying journey is a reality.

The number of marketing channels available today has exploded. The digital revolution allows consumers who are in the market for a new vehicle to choose exactly where, how and when they interact with brands.

Customer-centric marketing achieves consistency across tiers

Channel-centric messaging is fading away as a new customer-centric model of communication helps all three tiers get a close look at their customer's journey. Delivering a message that resonates with and motivates consumers to action is possible when automotive marketing practitioners focus on creating and executing a message that is consistent and coordinated across tiers.

Executing a consistent message across tiers isn't easy, however. In many cases, issues with lost data, unreliable lead transmission across tiers, a lack of cross-departmental synergies, limited functionality and flexibility and even problems with lost data prevent marketers from targeting customers across the entire sales funnel.

In the past, local auto dealerships, regional dealer groups and automakers didn't consider integrating their ads across tiers a priority. In the pre-digital revolution world, channel-centric marketing was an effective way to drive traffic to dealerships and raise overall awareness of a brand.

Making the switch to customer-centric messaging can be messy and expensive; stretching tight budgets and challenging deeply held beliefs about "what works" in automotive marketing campaigns.

As a brand, being relevant to an audience starts with acknowledging that putting the features and design of the newest model before the needs and desires of the customer is a mistake.

Customers want the most advanced technology

The digital transformation of car companies is upon us. New technologies like self-driving cars require auto brands to partner with tech giants just to keep up with the competition. General Motors and Ford partnered with Lyft's driverless initiative. The World Economic Forum's Digital Transformation Initiative (DTI) and Accenture report that partnerships like this will be worth over $144 billion during the next 10 years.

Automakers have a golden opportunity to influence consumers before they physically enter a car dealership. Research by HIS Automotive and Cox Automotive indicates that only 32 percent of people shopping for a new car know what they are looking for, 60 percent of the process of choosing a car is spent online and 52 percent of car buyers use more than one device throughout their shopping experience.

Car buyers understand that they'll have to live with (and drive) the car they choose for years. They pour energy and time into researching brands and making a final decision. When an automotive marketer fails to engage that customer across all tiers, they may not get another chance.

Understanding where and how car buyers engage with the brand helps brands tailor their marketing and sales efforts in the most efficient way. Tracking trends in website traffic, requests for quotes, event attendance, news coverage and visits to the dealership gives marketers the data they need to make important decisions about how to best engage their future customers.

According to Cox Automotive, while shopping online, consumers spend 54 percent of their time on dealership websites and 35 percent on OEM sites. The average car shopper visits 5.5 different websites.

To ensure success, a unified data-collection process is crucial to breaking down the divide between marketing strategies within each tier.

Leading brands provide a seamless customer journey across tiers

Jaguar is bringing dealership data, mobile and social media together to track trends in their customers' journey. They are also working with Nielsen to discover how their creative ad campaigns may contribute to brand lift.

The brand makes it simple for future Jaguar drivers to find their ideal model and trim level on the OEM site and contact a local dealership. They use award-winning segmented direct mail, targeted email campaigns and post-purchase communications to create and keep their customers for life.

Porsche has a new corporate identity as of September 2017. It provides a framework for the future of the brand. Gearing their message and driving experience to the expectations of their ideal customer is the cornerstone of their marketing strategy.

As they shift their focus to digital promotion across tiers, including social media and OEM websites, they do so with the understanding that 60 percent of the customers who walk into a Porsche dealership have conducted such extensive research that they know exactly which car they want. Porsche Canada is a lean organization, but they created a dedicated position in marketing for digital promotion early in 2016.

Post-digital revolution, consumers interact with a brand in many ways and at many points throughout their buying journey. For a brand to be able to deliver the experience the customer wants at every point along the way is a huge challenge.

Unified data collection tactics and coordinating a seamless customer journey between all three tiers is the goal of the leading brands. Marketers in all tiers must be able to access information about customers in a centralized data hub to maximize the impact of their message.

Delivering personalized messages at every point through all channels throughout the customer's journey with the brand is the heart of customer-centric marketing.