Forming and maintaining relationships is a huge part of running a successful business – especially for local dealerships that rely on business from members of the community. But the relationships with prospects and customers that are so important to the success of your business are harder to manage in today’s online world. With so much of marketing strategy operating digitally, there needs to be a digital solution for cultivating relationships with prospects and customers.
Lead Nurturing allows your dealership to provide a personalized customer journey to each person who visits your website and begins to engage with your marketing efforts. It also connects each individual lead’s experience across channels – considering the actions they take with your dealership’s email campaigns, on your social media platforms, and on your website.
Consider a typical customer journey in today’s world. Nearly unlimited online resources give prospects access to more information than ever before, and buyers can take more time researching and exploring their options before coming to a purchase decision. Throughout that process, it’s important to stay in front of those prospects (aka leads) and offer relevant, engaging content that will encourage them to follow through with a sale. As effective as Lead Nurturing is, it gets complicated quickly and it’s nearly impossible to execute manually. That’s where Marketing Automation comes in.
Marketing Automation offers a way for your dealership to give every website visitor (lead) a personalized and relevant experience with your business. Identified once they fill out any lead form on your site, Marketing Automation then tracks the lead’s actions, also taking into account the actions they took before they were identified. This includes the different website pages they visit, the frequency of their visits, the units they view, and more. With a full picture of what that lead is interested in based on the actions they take, the automated process facilitates a customized email campaign that matches the level of that person’s interest as well as the type of content they are likely to be interested in.
- For example, a lead who has only browsed brand-new flatbed trailers isn’t going to receive an email advertising used stock trailers. On the other hand, a lead who has browsed Big Tex dump trailers on your site several times will receive an email announcing a Big Tex sale at your dealership.
Lead Nurturing isn’t just limited to personalized email campaigns. The insight garnered through tracking and scoring lead activity across multiple channels gives your sales team the ability to present the perfect pitch to prospects. Sales representatives already know what the prospect is interested in, so it’s easy to start a conversation and move toward closing a sale. Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation strategy builds a level of trust between your dealership and your leads – these prospects realize that you understand them and will only offer them relevant materials. Their customer journey feels logical and connected, because your strategy goes across multiple platforms. Your efforts make an impact because they make sense for each lead on an individual level.
Ninety-eight percent of leads will visit your website without converting to a sale¹. Most of these leads will never end up buying from you without some type of Lead Nurturing in place. Research shows companies that excel at Lead Nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost². Plus, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads³. This strategy can earn more high-priced sales for your dealership at a lower cost for you. With results like these, why wait to put a Lead Nurturing system in place?
¹Marketo Research
²Marketo Research
³The Annuitas Group