The Importance of Data-Driven Marketing for Automotive Dealers

In a previous blog, we’ve examined the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing for dealerships. But it’s time to look at data-driven AI marketing and what makes it so essential to the success of a modern dealership.  

Today's consumers are inundated with advertising. Corporations, companies, and brands are constantly aiming to get their messages in front of consumers. This overload of online advertising has made consumers careful about which ads or messaging they interact with. 

Data-driven marketing means using data to improve a company's marketing communications. Data provides insights into customer preferences and trends. Data gathering, through means like customer interaction and third parties, allows a marketing team to build a targeted marketing strategy. The team analyzes the data to gather insights into customer preferences and broader trends that impact a marketing campaign's success. 

 A data-driven marketing strategy can increase the chance that the dealership's target audience will choose to click on their ad.

Gathering Data 

There are several ways dealers can collect data in order to better market to customers. 

One is a more traditional way, through what is called direct connection or first-party data. This is collecting and maintaining the information collected from a customer when they’ve purchased a vehicle or visited for maintenance. Another way is a customer’s interactions on social media, websites, and the like. This is second-party data, and is still relatively new when compared to traditional ways of collecting information.  

Third-party data gives a much wider audience scope due to being collected from a variety of sources. This method of collection allows a dealership to find trends and patterns in buyer behavior that the other forms of data gathering may have missed.   

 Organizing and Using the Data Collected 

After the data has been collected, a dealer needs to find a way to organize and turn it into information that can be used in marketing. The first step is understanding what data a dealer would need for the goal of the marketing campaign. Is the dealership about to embark on a short-term marketing campaign or is it more long-term? Is there a rebrand involved? The dealer should determine a goal with the marketing team and take the time to clearly define the parameters of success in the chosen campaign. 

The amount of data a dealership can expect to collect wouldn’t be feasible for a human to analyze or organize in a timely manner. But platforms like MarketAI can use automation combined with machine learning to interpret this data and turn it into actionable insights and make information readily accessible to tailor marketing campaigns.  

This collected and organized data can then help a dealer understand how a potential customer is interacting with their ads and responding to an overall marketing campaign. Data analyzation can determine the effectiveness of the marketing message reaching the intended audience and if the messaging is having the desired response from customers.  

Benefits Of a Data-Driven Marketing Campaign for Dealers 

How does a dealer benefit from all this data collection and creating a data-driven marketing strategy? 

 By combining first, second, and third-party data, a dealer can significantly expand their audience and increase the precision of the targeted campaign. Compared to traditional marketing strategies, a data-driven marketing plan is less expensive, gives dealers a better chance of targeting the intended audience, and gives dealers more opportunities to strengthen customer connections by giving them a personalized experience. Using a data-driven marketing approach, dealers can follow their customers or potential customers along their buyer’s journey. This can have dealers gain a better understanding of who their customers are, what they are purchasing or considering purchasing, and all the steps in-between and up to the final purchase. 

ZeroSum’s SaaS platform, MarketAI, simplifies and modernizes automotive marketing by leveraging artificial intelligence, data, and scaling ability to acquire new customers. A majority of demand is online-driven, and traditional marketing is not going to cut it for modern dealers.  

MarketAI is the automotive industry’s first AI-driven platform that uses data and cutting-edge technology to optimize dealers’ marketing execution. With MarketAI, dealerships can access everything they would need to advertise to the consumers, down to the VIN-level. MarketAI incorporates live inventory integration with ads that are constantly updating. By taking vehicle details from VDPs and pairing them with channel-specific in-market shoppers, MarketAI creates easy, comprehensive advertising solutions and provides actionable, attributable insights so dealers can see exactly how effective the marketing strategy is.  

Modern dealerships need data-driven marketing solutions to stay competitive in the market. ZeroSum’s MarketAI is the foremost data-driven and all-in-one advertising platform for dealers.