Do you know that automotive marketers were one of the early adopters of hyperlocal mobile advertising?
Over the years, the location-based strategy has evolved with mobile technology and data science. However, not many auto dealers or dealer groups follow the changes. It has evolved from mere location targeting to becoming more sophisticated like hyperlocal, geofencing, geo-conquest, geo-aware, and many others.
Auto dealers can now effectively leverage on mobile rich media components, user and location data with creative tactics to generate more sales leads, build brand affinity or drive sales, depending on which tier you are in.
Also, as dealerships tend to be clustered geographically in an area, location targeted strategies like geo-fencing and geo-conquesting becomes even more imminent to reap your ad investment.
Each tier has its target and objective. Hence, distinct strategies are required to reach out to your customers effectively.
For example:
Brands (Tier 1)
Brands will need to focus on location-based demographic targeting. This means, your ad will need to gear towards a group of customers from a particular age group and location to build brand awareness. A video content is your best bet.
Regional Dealer Groups (Tier 2)
For regional dealer groups, you will need to focus on the larger scale of inventory sales. Thus, you should work on regional targeting with the focus on incentive programs that can help improve the evaluation phase of a buyer journey.
Individual Dealers (Tier 3)
Individual dealers are usually clustered together. Hence, you will need hyperlocal or proximity targeting with super creative conquesting strategy. You should highlight your location, offer easy access to your services or market your best selling vehicles.
Used Cars Dealers / Second-Hand Auto Dealers
Similar to Tier 3, dealers for used cars need proximity strategy to create awareness and drive sales. You can focus your targeting on your inventory and the deals you are offering. Include store locator, online reviews, and images to help your target consumer make informed decisions in their buying journey.
Table of Content
Hyperlocal Mobile Advertising Ideas for Auto Dealers
Check out the location-based mobile ads we’ve created for our clients so far. We have helped our clients with creative directions and productions. Some variety of rich media elements we’ve applied are like videos, store locator, social media feeds, photo gallery, leads generator form, and many others.
Ultimately, regardless of which tier you are in, you need to know these important things to achieve your goals.
Data: Car shoppers’ behavioral trend
1. Modern car shoppers are researching on mobile devices
- Millennials are more comfortable with the tiny smartphone screens, 55% of Edmunds.com’s smartphone users (Edmunds.com)
- 70% of people search for particular car model via smartphone (Edmunds.com)
2. Dealership reviews is an essential criterion for consumer research process and decision-making
It’s a common behavior for consumers today to read and write online reviews. Hence, requesting for reviews becomes a significant step for businesses.
- 7 over 10 auto shoppers believe that dealership reviews are either “very” or “extremely” important (ReviewTrackers)
- Car buyers are 5.3 times more likely to convert to lead when dealers have positive online reviews (DealerRate, Dataium)
Using rich media component, you can display your online reviews feed on your ad. This way, car shoppers who stumble upon your ad, gets all the necessary information timely for decision making. The risk of losing them as they leave your ad to browse for more info is too high to take.
3. Getting high ratings through direct responses and positive engagements are increasingly important
Agencies that respond to reviews left by car buyers enjoy higher engagement and better ratings. It is no rocket science that when they get a direct positive response from you, it makes them feel good; when they feel good they give you a better score.
When your rating is high, it is more likely to influence buyers to decide on your brand or outlet. Also, they are more likely to check out reviews made by others who have experienced dealing with you. This allows other potential car buyers to analyze real-life experiences to make decisions.
Rich Media Creative: Components and impact
Mobile rich media ads are known to drive results. xAd manage to achieve up to 40 million calls, navigation, and in-store visits annually. However, it can give adverse impact if it is not designed properly. You need to plan your mobile ad campaign well to achieve your objectives.
With mobile rich media, your ads now can be designed to give maximum immersive experience to your target consumers. Your ad can be designed into a mini “web page” that offers a variety of experience and information that can be very helpful as they journey through the buying process. There are various rich components you can apply, and some of them are outlined below.
Location on Map is an important navigation component for proximity targeting, especially Tier 3 dealers. Take, for instance, after successfully targeting your competitors’ audience through geo-conquesting, take them to your store with a store locator on your ad, which could be just a few doors down the road.
Tap-to-Call is a simple function where it allows consumers to make a call to your store with just a tap. As mentioned above, engagement is key. Hence, this feature is important for your target audience to have easy means to reach out to you, perhaps to inquire about your service or make appointment bookings.
Request for Callback is another easy feature for your consumers to engage with you. Given that your store may constantly have high traffic and your sales rep may not always be available. To ensure constant exceptional servicing, you can have your prospects to submit a callback request easily. This way, you can better manage your customer service and as well as keeping track of all your leads.
Request for Reviews can be incorporated into your ad, where your target customers can provide comments or ratings on your Facebook page via the ad.
Photo Gallery / Images are vital to showcase your products. You can include an album where they can swipe left or right to view featured vehicles or the interior views of one of your promo car.
Videos are the best to show driving experience. You can also create emotional-relevant video clips to create strong affinity towards your brand. Your video should not exceed 30 seconds.
360-degree Video / Spherical Camera is one of the latest technologies that offers immersive user experience. It could be pricey to implement but gives great results. Best for tier 1 to run branding campaigns. Spherical camera works best for vehicles in two ways: (1) driving experience where users navigate the driving via video (think of the latest Star Wars video on Facebook); and (2) product experience where users are placed in a vehicle, where they can experience “realistic look and feel” in a car.
Coupons works best for Tier 2 or Tier 3 dealers who can give away coupons on their ads. Consumers can easily claim free maintenance services or warranty top-up promo at the nearest auto outlet.
You can have multiple components combined in an ad to deliver your message and achieve your goals. To achieve this, you just need to engage a rich media vendor. Share with them your objective and creative plans and they will realize your plan. Some vendors provide creative directions too. Depending on your budget, you just need to talk to them, and they can walk you through the entire process, from buying media space to targeting strategy, creating rich media ads and serving your ads to the right party.
Targeting strategy: Objective and approaches using Location-based services.
Geofencing
A geofence is a virtual boundary set in a defined area using longitude and latitude data. When your target audience enters or exits your geofence area, you can target specific ads to them. For example, you can display your ad within 1 km radius of your outlet to encourage in-store visits.
Geo-conquesting
Geo-conquest is a tactic where you hyper-target consumers who appear in the vicinity of your competitors. This allows you to pull the business away from your competitors.
Location-aware / Beacons
Location-aware uses beacons, unlike geofence which uses GPS coordinate, to push specific ads to consumers. The beacons detect mobile devices’ Bluetooth, which is good for proximity targeting. When consumers are just around the corner of your store, you can push a limited-time promo content to them.
Hyper-contextual
Contextual advertising uses contextual data such as user’s current location’s weather, temperature, dissipation; time of the day the ad is viewed, browsing behavior and purchase intent.
A study shows that hyper-contextual can be very effective when targeted consumers are in crowded environments. Perhaps, this calls for a hyper-contextual ad during an automotive event.
If you haven’t already done so…
Investing on effective hyperlocal strategy can lead to building stronger brand engagement, generate more sales leads, increase in-store visitation or drive better sales. Today, with vast access to data, technology, and creative solutions, you should leverage on hyperlocal mobile advertising to scale your business further.
If you have questions, get in touch with us via [email protected]. We’d love to help you get started.
Alternatively, you can take a read of the step-by-step guide to location-based mobile advertising here and learn how to start your campaign today. Feel free to reach out to us, a complete mobile advertising platform to help you.
Additional Resources:
– What is O2O Marketing?
– Online-to-Offline (O2O) Strategies to Grow your Retail Business
– O2O Commerce: The Challenges of an Online-to_Offline Business
