Pub. 13 2023 Issue 3

How Automotive Digital Retailing Can Affect Your Dealership Digital retailing makes it easier and more exciting for customers to shop for cars. The physical and digital processes of buying a car are merged into one seamless experience for the customer, creating more engagement and more sales with the dealership. What is Automotive Digital Retailing? In the early 2000s, customers would visit, on average, five dealerships before purchasing a vehicle. Today, customers may visit two dealerships before making a decision. They know what they want to buy, and they know exactly where to go to get it. With this new age of consumers searching online for the car they want, dealerships need to change how they approach vehicle sales. Digital retailing is different from digital marketing. It’s more than just viewing an online inventory or marketing the dealership on social media. With digital retailing, customers can dive deeper into the car-buying process from the comfort of their homes. They want to buy a car the same way they buy every other product online: with an easy and streamlined checkout process and without pushy sales tactics or overly-complicated forms. They want to pick out exactly what they want and show up to your dealership ready for the keys. Even though it may feel like dealerships are losing influence and control in the car-buying process, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Omnichannel Digital Retailing Omnichannel is defined, in terms of business strategy, as a way to provide a seamless shopping experience from your phone to the store. There is no one right way to implement omnichannel because it depends on the needs of the business and the customer. No matter how the customer wants to shop, they should remain interested and engaged across all shopping avenues. Using omnichannel, your dealership can control how the customer interacts with your brand and inventory. You can guide customers to the general inventory, or you can be more specific and push them towards a specific model of car you are trying to sell. Customers then will have control over where they go to complete the process, but your dealership pushed them in the right direction. This way, customers create their own experience while digging deeper into the buying process. You are able to reach your customers directly without an email or phone call while the customer makes their own decisions. 22 Illinois Automobile Dealer News

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