At Urban Science, in addition to monitoring industry-wide daily vehicle sales, we track an impressive amount of behavioral data. We keep a constant pulse of what consumers are doing online and there’s one thing we know for sure. Online impression volume is at a historic high. With so many people stuck at home or unfortunately out of work due to COVID-19, there have never been more eyeballs on the internet. So, what does this mean for dealers?
Throughout this series, we’ll discuss several things dealers should be doing now to sustain their business. But first, we’d like to focus on the one thing you should NOT be doing based on the evidence we’ve seen. We’re seeing many dealerships starting to cancel their digital advertising spend - including search, display, and retargeting and even canceling their traditional cable buys. Full disclaimer, we do not sell any of these services at AutoHook or Urban Science. But our advice to dealers is that canceling your digital advertising right now would NOT be a smart move, and here’s why:
The impressions and consumer engagement you cancel today will lead to no conversion tomorrow, meaning less showroom traffic weeks from now, and ultimately fewer purchases for you, which will translate to diminished market share – left up for grabs. Your focus should be on capturing your impression share and engaging consumers where they are, and right now, they’re online.
Over the last four decades, Jim Anderson, the president and founder of Urban Science has led the company through a number of challenging times and recessions. One of his famous mantras he often shares with us is to “Focus on the intersection of what matters and what you can control.” Right now, what you can control is your ability to engage consumers where they are.
In part 3 of On the Dealer Front Lines, we’ll talk about the latest OEM efforts around incentives and what you should do as dealers to align and capture that traffic. Stay tuned!
