Millennial Automotive Shoppers

Kicking Tires 

It's no secret that marketing to the next generation of car buyers has changed.  Gone are the days of consumers visiting a dealership to kick tires, and learn about the features of a car through first hand interactions with a sales associate. Today's car buyer is well informed, and prepared prior to walking into the dealership. Let's examine how to reach these consumers and make an impression on them before they set foot in the door.

Buyers of Today and Tomorrow

First we need to understand who Millennials are, and why they're so important. Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y are the demographic following Generation X. There are no exact dates when the generation begins and ends but most researchers use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

Millennials represent one trillion dollars in US spending. They're also 40 percent of today's car buying public and will be 75 percent of the car buying public by 2025. Millennials visit an average of twenty five websites before buying a vehicle, and the number one reason Millennials visit the dealership is to perform a test drive, not gather more information. Today, 94 percent of Millennial car buyers gather their information online. According to a Google study 49 percent of consumers click on a review sites from a Google search, and the average car buyer visits 2.1 review sites. Think about that for a minute, half of all consumers are reading online social reviews about dealerships before they even set foot in the door. Dealers could be losing customers and not know it. Now ask yourself, do you know what your online reputation looks like, and what people are saying about your dealership on sites like Yelp, Google My Business, Cars.com and Facebook? If not, you really should. 

Where to begin? 

Social media is a complex venue because it consists of many moving parts including public relations, crisis management, media, customer service, CRM, and marketing all in one medium. It's a two way conversation many are not prepared to deal with. It's no wonder people often ask, "where should we start first?". 

To establish a proper social media foundation one must first understand the current state of their social media presence, in other words... what does your business look like online, and what is being said about it. Use free online tools like Topsy and KnowEm to help you identify and secure your brand on over 500 social media networks. After securing your business on some of the more popular social and review sites like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Google My Business, and Merchant Circle be sure to look for consumer reviews and be prepared to reply to any of the more recent reviews (from the last 30 days).  It's critical to setup email alerts to inform stakeholders when reviews are submitted about the organization, this will afford the dealership an opportunity to respond to these reviews as soon as possible. Potential customers are checking to see if negative review get responded to because it indicates to them how important customer service is to the business. Also, don't forget to ask happy customers to leave reviews online about their experience. Customers like to see recent reviews, which also happen to push the negative reviews further down the page where they fall out of sight.

A Dedicated Resource 

If you don't have the resources in house to manage your businesses social media presence, you should hire someone to do it.  White glove services are also available to help manage online reputation, many of which are cost effective and can rapidly improve your current online reputation standing by automating the online review process.   

Following these recommendations will put any organization in a position to compete for Millennials attention in the fast changing environment that is social media. 

     

    

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