There’s a good reason why location marketing can help auto dealerships and brands drive success — and that has everything to do with reaching the right people at the right time. While in the market for a car, the average auto-shopper will visit 3.4 dealerships prior to purchasing a vehicle, and those visits represent an invaluable opportunity to connect with potential customers when it matters most.
Because location-based marketing relies on physical behaviors versus online aspirations, it allows marketers to act with greater precision, ultimately driving more results with increased effectiveness. When leveraging location technology, you can base your marketing and ad campaigns on where consumers go in their day-to-day life, connecting with them when they’re close to your store and car buying is top of mind.
Top 2 benefits of location marketing for auto industry advertising
There are several advantages to relying on location marketing for your automotive marketing campaigns.
1. More targeted marketing – the end to “spray and pray” tactics
For starters, you can put an end to the old “Spray and Pray” tactics marketers have used in the past. Instead of making a mass market media buy and hoping a car shopper takes notice, advertisers can reach potential car buyers with precision, targeting only those consumers who are most likely to become customers.
2. Improved ROI with more accurate, actionable data and measurable results
Location marketing also allows you to drive results that matter. From visits to a dealership to actual sales, this approach enables marketers to make the most of their advertising budgets and ensure a return on investment.
In the past, marketers had to make do with “vanity metrics” — numbers like impressions that may look good on paper but don’t provide any actionable information about campaign performance. This data leaves gaps in both reporting and attribution and can’t provide the ROI assurances that marketers need.
Location-based marketing, on the other hand, can provide you with accurate data to power highly targeted campaigns built to engage and convert auto intenders. It also allows you to measure the impact of physical visits to a dealership.
To dig a little deeper into the value of location marketing to dealerships and auto brands, let’s talk about the truths and myths of this strategy.
4 Truths and Myths of Location Advertising
Myth: All location data provides the same value to advertising campaigns
The fact is, not all location-based marketing solutions are built the same. Over the past five years, studies on location-data accuracy done by location-intelligence companies all present the same argument. Almost without exception, they make the case that most location data out there is of mediocre or dubious quality, but their data is much better and more accurate.
This is a mirror and microcosm of a larger problem for marketers: how to tell location data vendors apart and choose the right one. Leveraging location data that has been verified by reputable third-party institutions such as the Media Rating Council (MRC) offers brands accuracy, transparency, and the ability to effectively measure campaign performance.
Myth: By the time a person has visited a car dealership, it’s too late to market to them
Remember that data point about dealership visits? Car buyers average more than three dealership visits before making a purchase, so acting quickly on an intent signal allows you to get your message in front of a hyper-focused audience that’s ready to buy. According to Deloitte, while online sales may be gaining traction, the majority of US car shoppers (75%) still want an in-person experience, compared with just 17% who prefer a partially virtual experience, and 6% who would rather go fully virtual.
Truth: In-person visitation can be attributed to ads
With location-based marketing, auto marketers can link dealership visits to ads. It all starts with defining the key performance indicators that are important to reaching and attracting auto shoppers. For example, while digital-ad impressions can provide some insight into the reach of an ad, they don’t give auto marketers the complete picture of buying intent.
Understanding incremental visitation to dealerships can provide critical insights into, not only post-ad exposure but also how those campaigns impact car sales. Those same insights can then help auto marketers lower acquisition costs. They can do this by improving targeting tactics and segmenting audiences, based on past purchases, and determining which consumers are currently in the market for a car. For auto marketers that are investing in connected TV, post-campaign visitation insights can improve video-ad performance and target reach.
Truth: Location marketing is more than just Geofencing
Sure, geofencing is part of the location-based marketing equation. If you’re an auto dealer and you want to create meaningful engagement with potential car buyers and lapsed customers, a majority of your marketing budget should go toward performance-driven campaigns. This is especially important for auto marketers with multiple locations. That’s because where and when they reach specific communities within their geographic locations is crucial for generating visitation to the right dealerships.
So, while mass-market campaigns will help sustain a high level of awareness for dealerships, location-based marketing campaigns will help them grow their business by generating actual sales leads. This is true whether they’re trying to drive overall sales, promote new models, or generate foot traffic during seasonal promotions.
Conclusion
There’s no question about it: offline behavioral data is critical for local and national auto marketers. It lets you zero in on consumers who are in your regional market and reach those likely to visit a specific dealership in your area. Highly accurate and scalable location data has led to new performance-based advertising models. Not only is location marketing a better way to target your automotive buying audiences, but it gives you insight into the impact and ROI of your advertising channels.
