Car Dealers can No Longer Afford to Market to their City

In the early days of targeting data and business intelligence, there wasn’t really that much information available. As strange as it may sound, it has been a practice for decades, but only in recent years has the data as well as the ability to parse and understand it properly been available to small businesses like car dealers.

Now that we have the data, it’s time to use it. The bad news is that the vast majority of dealers today are not taking advantage of the wealth of data available. The good news is the same as the bad news, only it’s great for those who are cutting edge and making it happen.

Companies like String Automotive do it for dealers. They pull information about buyers, their habits, and the trends surrounding their demographics and they turn it into actionable data that can drive dealers’ advertising direction. The old days of marketing to a city or an entire metro area are behind us. It’s not that you don’t want to market to everyone available, but thanks to the abundance of knowledge that is available, it’s very possible to target specific locations based upon their tendencies so that a more precise attack can be mounted on the market.

If city targeting is like a shotgun approach, then zip code marketing is the sniper rifle. There are different messages and different mediums that work in different zip codes within the same city. Knowing what people are buying in a zip code combined with their preferred method of media consumption can make for a powerful methodology for discerning how to spend the advertising budgets at the dealership.

String recently released an eBook on the topic. It specifically details how dealers can use data in order to move particular models. Between OEM pressure to sell one model or another and the need to continue turning inventory at a frantic pace, the need to hyper-target utilizing this type of data is crucial.

Different people in different places will be influenced to buy different vehicles through different mediums. To focus on a metro area is futile when compared to the wonders of hyper-targeting.