Why Should I Use Marketing Automation?

Last week we covered what Marketing Automation is. This week we’ll talk about why your dealership should be using it to convert more leads to sales.

It is rare that a customer would simply visit your website, find a unit they liked, submit a lead, and then walk into your store to purchase that unit. There are many actions that take place between those steps, but how do you know what those actions are and what order they occur in to lead to a sale?

The vast majority of your website visitors are unidentified – making it very challenging to track visitor behavior and determine why a lead did or did not convert. With visitor identification as a main characteristic of Marketing Automation software, you can access the complete history of leads, tracking every movement before and after filling out a lead form on your site. Beyond basic information like name, email, phone number, and social media profiles, there are also metrics available such as website pages visited, forms filled out, and email and social interactions. This information gives you the full picture of who the lead is, what their buying behavior looks like throughout their customer journey, and what factors contribute to the final action they take.

As discussed last week, your dealership can assign scores to each lead based on the unique goals of your business. With those scores in place, you can then shape your sales pitch around that lead’s specific needs, giving your dealership the best chance of closing the deal. Without Marketing Automation, it is difficult to determine the worth of any given lead. Your sales team may waste valuable time pursuing and following up on leads that are not likely to convert. Meanwhile, other more promising leads could fall by the wayside– Marketing Automation software may show you that they visited the unit page multiple times or posted a link to the unit on Facebook – but due to a lack of proper follow-up they don’t follow through with the purchase.

Using Marketing Automation helps your dealership team be sure that you’ve covered all your bases. If there is a hot lead, it helps to ensure that the best possible follow-up takes place, including sending the right messages at the right time through email marketing - creating the ideal environment for a purchase to be made. Prioritizing the hottest leads and nurturing those leads is the key function of Marketing Automation software, and the result is more sales conversions – a win-win for both satisfied customers and a successful dealership.