Beacons are revolutionizing the way customers buy cars and engage with salespersons at dealerships. Let’s explore some of the ways beacons have broken the norm.
Why should car dealerships implement beacons?
Self-Guided Experience: Beacons allow potential buyers to have a personalized experience. A beacon placed outside can push information about the dealership establishing total transparency and pique their interest. Other beacons placed near each car can delve deep into the features answering any general questions a buyer may have. This allows buyers to choose which car they want to know more about rather than having a salesperson suggest options.
Augmenting Salespersons: Beacons can be used as an information powerhouse and assist customers much like a salesperson would. Instead of having a salesperson hovering over a customer, beacons can supply all the relevant information needed. We’ve already touched on how beacons work on the periphery of the dealership. A similar experience can be replicated inside. As soon as a customer walks in, they can be greeted by a ‘Welcome’ message sent via a beacon. While inside, they can explore different cars, book a service or call for a salesperson for detailed insights. All of these tasks can be achieved through beacons.
24×7 Service 365 days a year: Imagine if your dealership could capture leads even when it is closed. Beacons make it a reality. A lot of potential customers may drop by when the dealership is closed. As soon as they come in the range of the beacon, information is pushed to their mobile device informing them about the dealership, and the kind of cars available. A dashboard as intuitive as Captive Audience Technologies can inform the dealership if someone expressed interest in a certain car while the dealership is closed. Using an interactive form, customers can leave their details and schedule an appointment for later. Dealerships can also measure foot traffic during their non-business hours and fine-tune their campaigns.
Push Progressive Web Apps: Progressive Web Apps(PWAs) are a culmination of websites and native mobile apps. A great way to engage customers and use beacon technology to its maximum potential is to push a PWA. There can be several different PWAs designed to service a customer’s specific need. Say, someone is looking for used cars. Once they enter the range of beacon in the used cars section, they can now start looking at all the used cars the dealership currently has. PWAs have an edge over native apps since they don’t require an app download. Also, unlike a beacon notification, PWA does not disappear once a customer is out of range. They are also able to send push notifications that lead to more customer loyalty and retention. This also saves dealerships a lot of time and effort that would have otherwise been spent answering the phone regarding queries that the PWA can now answer.
[Why PWAs are the future] Targeted advertising: The demographic that buys a Porsche is not the same as Volkswagen. So, one kind of advertising cannot satisfy all of them. But with beacons, one can create different campaigns that cater to different demographics. Fine-tuning the range of the beacon to lock down a specific broadcast area helps to display relevant notifications. So, someone who is looking to buy a Ferrari will not receive notifications about some other car.
Captive Audience Schedule Feature: Just as the same advertising cannot be used for different brands, one single and repetitive message cannot be relied on to improve ROI throughout the day. With Captive Audience’s Schedule feature, different messages can be scheduled for different times of the day. Messages can also be altered when the dealership is closed or during the holiday season. Retargeting on Facebook and Google: Captive Audience also enables auto dealerships to retarget customers on Facebook and Google. All a customer needs to do is express interest in a certain service or a car by clicking on the relevant notification through a beacon. The Google AdWords and Facebook Pixel integrated with the Captive Audience’s dashboard let car dealerships show relevant ads to interested customers. The usefulness of this feature is evidenced by this case study on Mazda. They used retargeting and the value of car sales through the retargeting funnel was 98% higher than the offline average.
Car Dealership Scenario
Michael, all enthusiastic to buy his first-ever luxury car, was standing in front of the Audi Q2 in a busy store. It was a busy day at the dealership and no salesperson was able to attend to Michael. But boom, Michael still received all the relevant specs and information about the car, on his phone. Thanks to technology, instead of being annoyed and leaving for another dealership, Michael was impressed with the dealer for delivering the right information at the right time!
Well, Michael is obviously a fictional character, but the scene I just narrated isn’t a fictional sci-fi movie – it’s all achievable with Beacons!
Challenges in modern car dealerships
For verticals like car dealerships, managing footfalls is not a mounting challenge. The bigger challenge though is customer loyalty and in-store experience for potential customers.
Every dealership has seen their share of super busy days and being there for every customer is next to impossible. In the narrative I described previously, in the absence of a beacon, there’s a huge chance that the potential customer is stuck waiting for a salesperson to answer questions or book a test drive. These missed opportunities and unimpressed customers can prove to be very expensive for your business – literally!
Why Beacons?
The modern customer is very different from their predecessors. It’s not surprising when they just whip out their mobile device to compare prices for a model. Customers today are busy looking for information, reviews, best deal and the most practical purchases, instead of waiting around to be wooed by a slick salesperson.
With these changing trends, beacons are undoubtedly the dealer’s best foot forward in extending a warm in-store experience to customers and converting them to buyers. Beacons are much more than just a fashionable add-on to your dealership. Considering the affordability of beacons, it’s the best way to reach out to all potential customers and give them what they need immediately.
A journey of a prospect in a beacon-enabled car dealership
What can you do with beacons in your car dealership?
1. Push notifications based on customer’s proximity
It’s the best way to make your customer feel welcome and attended. Just as they approach a car, the beacon attached to the car transmits a signal to their phone. What goes to the customer’s phone is totally your call. It could be any of these –
- Vital statistics related to the car
- Videos
- Best deals applicable
- Feature comparison with other models
This is especially helpful for high-end cars where videos, numbers and detailed images can bring about a huge difference in persuading a potential customer!
2. Booking a test drive
Queuing up to book a test drive can often be painful and frustrating for your customers, especially if the showroom is experiencing one of its busy days.
It’s so much easier to fill up the form and sign up for a test drive through mobile devices. When beacons are attached to cars, you can simply target the customer segment that has spent around 10 mins near a car, and then send a beacon notification to them with a link to book a spot for a test drive.
3. Personalized offers
Powerful data collection is every business owner’s (or marketer’s) dream. Once you know what your customers want, you can offer special deals via the app. Initially, you can just shoot notifications whenever a customer approaches a car. They will be automatically greeted with a limited time promotion. However, data can also be gathered to craft individual offers for later use.
4. Generate data for user analysis
Usually, while customers make their choices, you are busy noticing their choices and behaviour. But with growing number of footfalls in the showroom, that isn’t quite a feasible option. With beacons deployed across the showroom, you can collect and analyse-
- Customer movements across the showroom (heat map distribution of the showroom)
- The popularity of a car model
- Views of a model vs. sale of a model
- Time spent on a specific car model
This analytics will help you take a decision on the showroom design – which model is to be parked up front, which model takes the centre stage; resource management in the showroom and so much more…
5. Automatic social check-ins
Facebook check-ins are the new thing with most youngsters and one cannot deny the impact it has on your marketing. So why not make it quick and seamless for customers to check-in on Facebook, Foursquare, and other relevant social networks, when they walk into your dealership? Just as they enter, you could greet with a welcome message and a link to check-in on their favourite social media channel.
6. Make your dealership more accessible
However small the segment might be, but there’s always a customer segment around your dealership which is planning to buy cars in the near future. You never know if a limited period offer from your dealership could just trigger her to walk in and buy a car!
To stay ahead of the competition, you could always send few promotional messages to customers crossing your dealership. You have absolutely nothing to lose by doing that.
7. [Bonus] After work hours sales conversations
Car dealerships across the world are using beacons in unexpected ways to boost their sales numbers. I just came across an amazing one from RONNY KASABRI, Corp Auto Sales, West Milford, N.J.
In New Jersey, car dealerships are closed on Sunday. They needed a meaningful way to connect with car shoppers who visit dealerships on Sunday and after hours when there’s no one around to start the sales conversation. That’s when beacons are super helpful!
Wrapping up
Beacons in car dealerships have been catching up lately and it has tremendous potential to boost sales, enhance customer experience and track back-intelligence. This Bluetooth technology is all set to revolutionize the way customers interact with your dealership and how you leverage digital engagement for the physical world.
Lastly, at this moment I’d like to share a compelling data point with you. Approximately 50% of a dealership’s customers will change retailers when their guarantee expires. Surveys, however, suggest there may be a way to slow down that churn. Better customer contact and modernized communication could retain over 20% of those customers who chose to switch dealerships. Now it’s simple maths to understand the positive ROI of beacons!
Why get Captive Audience Technologies to your showrooms?
We believe that marketers should focus on what they are excellent at – executing targeted campaigns. That’s why we’ve created beacons that are ready to run campaigns out-of-the-box. No app or developer required – start rolling in less than 15 minutes!
If you are planning to try out beacons, take a look at Captive Audience, that includes everything you need to get started. Using Captive Audience you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!