Tag: automotive advertising

By Erik Hjermstad, VP of Product Management for Experian Automotive In today's digital landscape, where consumers increasingly turn to connected TV and addressable TV for entertainment, precision targeting has become more critical than ever for automotive advertisers. By delivering highly relevant ads to the most likely potential customers, advertisers can maximize campaign effectiveness, increase conversion rates, and ultimately drive a better return on investment (ROI). The following is a summary from a recent article I wrote for Ad Age. The Power of Precision Targeting Precision targeting allows advertisers to focus their efforts on the right people with the right message at the right time. This targeted approach helps minimize wasted ad spend and ensures that every dollar invested makes a meaningful impact. By understanding an audience's demographics, interests, and behaviors, automotive marketers can tailor their messaging to resonate with specific consumer segments and pointedly reach those ready to purchase. Leveraging Data Intelligence for Competitive Advantage To stay competitive, automotive marketers must stay on top of the latest data intelligence. Agencies and marketers have turned to data-driven strategies to set their campaigns apart and increase the likelihood of a consumer purchasing a vehicle. When choosing their consumer audiences, automotive marketers turn to companies like Experian Automotive for data like license, registration, and title. They utilize models based on actual vehicle sales and ownership to target the right audience and measure effectiveness more accurately. Measuring Success: Key Metrics and Omnichannel Measurement To ensure that advertising campaigns deliver results, automotive marketers must have a robust measurement strategy. This involves tracking key metrics such as: Sales: Did the buyer purchase a vehicle? Impressions: The number of times an ad is seen. Clicks: The number of times an ad is clicked on. Conversions: The number of people who take a desired action, such as purchasing. Cost per acquisition (CPA): The cost of acquiring a new customer. Return on ad spend (ROAS): The revenue generated by an ad campaign divided by the cost of the campaign. Experian Automotive offers advertisers a robust measurement solution that provides omnichannel measurement, connecting website visitation and ad exposures to automotive sales. Analysis includes make, model, and vehicle class reporting, competitive analysis, and 30-, 60-, and 90-day vehicle sales projections. The Importance of Omnichannel Measurement In today's interconnected world, automotive consumers interact with brands across multiple channels, including TV, digital, social media, and in-store. Advertisers must adopt an omnichannel measurement approach to truly understand their audience and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. By tracking consumer behavior across all channels, advertisers can gain a more complete picture of the customer journey and identify opportunities for optimization. Omnichannel measurement integrates data from various sources, such as website analytics, social media metrics, and point-of-sale data. This allows advertisers to understand how consumers interact with their brand at different stages of the buying process and attribute conversions to specific channels and touchpoints. By leveraging omnichannel measurement, advertisers can make more informed decisions about their marketing investments and deliver a more cohesive and personalized customer experience. Measurement is critical to advertising success for several reasons: Optimization: By tracking key metrics, advertisers can identify what is working versus what is not and make necessary adjustments to improve campaign performance. Attribution: Measurement helps determine which marketing channels and tactics drive the most conversions. ROI analysis: By measuring the ROI of their campaigns, advertisers can justify their marketing investments and demonstrate the value they bring to the business. Navigating the Challenges of the Streaming Era While precision targeting and measurement are essential in the streaming era, advertisers face unique challenges. The fragmented nature of the streaming landscape, with its multiple platforms and devices, can make it challenging to track consumer behavior and measure campaign effectiveness. However, advancements in data technology and measurement tools provide advertisers with many new opportunities to overcome these challenges. By leveraging data intelligence, using deterministic data models to understand their audience, and tracking key metrics, advertisers can deliver highly relevant ads that drive results and maximize their ROI.

Are you ready to talk football? And read some Taylor Swift puns? And hear about a big automotive ad measurement success story? 'Don’t Blame Me’, I warned you…. As we are all aware, Travis Kelce will be playing for the Chiefs on Superbowl Sunday. Whether you are cheering for the Chiefs, the 49er’s, or you’re just there to watch the commercials and half-time show, ‘You Need to Calm Down’ and just expect to hear a couple references during the game about Taylor and Travis’ ‘Love Story’. Ad Measurement at the Top of Its Game Before the final match-up of this season though, let’s go ‘Back to December’ and talk about a “Red” hot advertising success story from Thursday Night Football. An automotive advertiser wanted to better understand the impact of advertising frequency on vehicle purchase activity. To do this, the advertiser initiated an Amazon Prime streaming advertising campaign to reach Thursday Night Football (TNF) audience viewers. They reached these viewers by leveraging in-game media to raise awareness with new and TNF-engaged audience viewers. In addition, the advertiser used remarketing techniques and other Amazon ads to re-engage the previously exposed TNF viewers. Campaign Results—More Than Just Karma! After the campaign was over, the automotive advertiser wanted to learn whether the results were more than just ‘Karma’. They used Experian’s Vehicle Purchase Insights data within Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) to fill in the ‘Blank Space’ and attribute vehicle sales to the exposed TNF audience. Customers exposed 2-3 times to their ads were 1.3X more likely to purchase a vehicle than viewers who were exposed to the advertising only once Customers exposed to their ads 4 times were 1.6X more likely to purchase a vehicle than viewers who were exposed to the advertising only once The advertiser understood ‘All Too Well’ the results, the campaign was a success! Even if you’re over all the pop culture references and the Swift romance, ‘Shake it Off’, there’s no reason for any ‘Bad Blood.” The ‘Fearless’ leader of the scoreboard will have their ‘Wildest Dreams’ come true and be named the Super Bowl LVIII champion. To read more about this case study, (without the Taylor Swift song title puns), click here.  

While dealers wait out the chip shortage, many are looking for new revenue streams and creative ways to maintain profit levels. Dealers understand that used vehicles are more valuable than ever and that savvy consumers who are near their lease term can purchase their vehicle with a much higher book value than their negotiated residual and capitalize on that extra equity. At Experian Automotive, we help dealers analyze consumer and market data insights so they can develop marketing strategies that more effectively engage consumers. In today’s market, we recommend dealers focus on targeting consumers who are nearing the term of their lease—because the end of a lease forces consumers to either turn in the vehicle or purchase it—and many consumers realize they can purchase their equity rich vehicle and trade it in anywhere. Dealers desiring to conquest customers would benefit from using data insights to develop marketing strategies to help educate consumers of their options. So, how do dealers make sure their lease customers remain loyal to their dealership? One way is to target those customers that are near term and recommend a trade in. In many cases, the customer can upgrade to a model with more features or a model in a different class—both of which may be compelling, even if the newer vehicle is an older model year than the trade in. This way, the dealer obtains the later model, lower mileage vehicle and the customer gets a model with the extra features they want or an entirely new class of vehicle. Both parties are happy. What about third party lease buy outs? In response to the inventory shortage, many captive lenders are no longer permitting 3rd party lease buy outs. In other words, consumers are required to purchase their leased vehicle at an in-brand dealership. Initially, this would appear to bolster brand loyalty by making it more challenging to switch brands. However, educated consumers know they can simply purchase the vehicle and drive it to another dealership as a trade. We recommend automotive dealers educate consumers on their options through effective marketing strategies that offer options and more freedom in their car purchasing. Dealers looking for every sales opportunity are utilizing data sources such as Experian’s Automotive Intelligence Engine™ (AIE) to identify all consumers with leased vehicles for their brands. Because the OEM will not share lease customer information for neighboring stores, dealers must seek out this information on their own. Experian’s Automotive Intelligence Engine provides off lease consumer information for conquest brands as well as dealer brands. The OEM still expects each store to be successful and using data-driven insights to uncover opportunities in this tight market is one critical way dealers can stay competitive and increase brand loyalty. The chip shortage will eventually recede but until then dealers can use automotive data insights that can help them remain profitable. Learn more about Experian’s Automotive Intelligence Engine.

When we look at how automotive manufacturers and dealers have marketed vehicles over the last few decades, we can see how through every decade, and every learning, it has led to data-driven marketing strategies that are powering success today. Let’s take a look: Strategic marketing in the 1990’s In the 1990’s dealership marketing included mainly newspaper and radio advertisements complimented by occasional direct mail pieces mailing to every home in a zip code. OEMs purchased ad time on popular Television and their dealer associations and local dealers had an option to do the same. Because the 1990’s was the age of “mass media,” marketing was based off geography. There was less attention on channel or audience and a good deal of spending! Cars were sold. Strategic marketing in the 2000’s The new millennium brought advancements in computers and databases. Dealerships explored the exciting world of internet promotion and email marketing and continued using traditional newspaper, radio and television to drive traffic. mail programs such as the “scratch and win” or the “key to a car you can win” efforts were common, resulting in massive mail-based marketing campaigns. Then came 2008, when many dealers drastically cut back on spending and were focused mainly on surviving the Great Recession. As we all know, many dealers, and even vehicle makes, did not. Strategic marketing in the 2010’s In the beginning of the decade, manufacturers and dealers were still recovering from the recession but were slowly feeling more optimistic about the economy. If there is one thing the industry learned from the recession, it was to be much more strategic when it came to spending. During this decade, ad technology advanced, as did the ability to evaluate marketing spend. Dealers became aware of the true cost of their traditional marketing ways and embarked on new paths of marketing to a smaller but more specific audience. Equity mining and greatly advanced revolutionized the direct mail and related online arena. As the decade drew to a close, marketers leveraged solutions where merge fields enabled customization and personalization for both direct mail and email marketing. With the ability to deliver massive volumes at a lower cost, email blasts grew in popularity. Social media platforms emerged as a force, and dealers experimented to invent new ways to leverage them. Television marketing underwent a massive facelift as consumers left cable for streaming services resulting in new advertising strategies such as addressable and connected TV, OTT (Over The Top) advertising. Strategic marketing in 2020 2020 will forever be remembered as the year of the pandemic. In automotive marketing, it was also the year of reinvention! With many showroom closures, dealers and OEMs found themselves with a reduced advertising budget and a greater need to find more targeted audiences with more effective marketing messaging. How do I master my market share? Who is in-market for my vehicles? How is my website performing? Which customers are in equity? Which customers have added a child to the household? How do I reach them in a digital world? This is where Experian has helped both manufacturers and dealers. Experian’s automotive marketing solutions help marketers utilize vehicle, consumer, lender, and market data to leverage market insights, target the right audience, develop effective messaging strategies, and measure outcomes to continually optimize results. Over the last four decades, automotive marketing strategies have become much more data driven, so having a solution that uses data insights to help retain loyal customers and win new conquest customers, all while reducing total marketing spend, is a key requirement for success in this decade…and beyond. If you're a marketer at a Dealership, learn more about our marketing solutions here. If you're an Auto OEM marketer, learn more about our marketing solutions here.

Leveraging data to eliminate wasted ad spend will set your dealership up for success in the new year.

Auto dealers need to move their dealerships forward through hyper-local advertising that helps them connect with the right audiences at the right time.