NOW OPEN: The Automotive App Store

The Open App Approach to Uniting an Industry

by David Metter

What makes the Apple brand indestructible? There are a million answers to this question, and all are valid. Is Apple’s technology more advanced than Google’s? Not necessarily. Are their smartphones more intelligent than all other smartphones? Probably not. But no one can dispute the fact that they are the simplest devices to navigate for the vast majority of the population. Apple products dominate the market because they’re easy to use, and they integrate flawlessly with one another through Apple’s iCloud.

When we take a step back from the entire culture Apple has created, and strip down every product they’ve reinvented, we start to see the roots of what made them so successful in the first place. We see The App Store, and through that we see unification. We see both integration and alliances. We see the reason people feel naked without their iPhones. The iPhone is so integral to its owner because it makes their lives easier and better. We feel helpless without them. The App Store puts the power in our hands to access tools that improve the way we function on a day-to-day basis. It puts the world at our fingertips, and so many of the best apps out there are free.

Take Waze for example. It is the largest community-based, interactive traffic and navigation app in existence. Its value comes entirely from its users and the information these users provide in real-time. The technology then works by aggregating and building upon its user data to calculate the most efficient route from point A to point B, saving drivers both time and money (again, in real-time). In so many ways (no pun intended), Waze created a more efficient rail system of data that benefits everyone on the road.

What if the automotive industry could create this same type of unified data railroad? What if we knocked down our walls and opened up our own Automotive App Store… free of charge? What if every vendor, dealer, and OEM had faster, more accurate data? What could we accomplish as a community rather than as competitors? CDK Global has already adopted this open app approach when they announced their new Partner Program in September, in efforts to create an ecosystem of approved vendors and applications that can be flawlessly integrated into a CDK dealer website. Could it be? Vendors actually working together to reap the benefits of the bigger picture?

I’ve been fortunate enough to be on both sites of the battle. During my time as CMO at MileOne Automotive, one of our biggest struggles was getting vendors to integrate and work properly together. However, our biggest strength was having the insight to see the unique benefits of two different companies and the means to bring them together in a way that benefitted us and helped us sell more cars. Now that I’m on the vendor side, I’ve seen a need for these types of partnerships to happen now more than ever.

In the short time AutoHook has been in business, we have solidified more partnerships and relationships than anyone else in the space. So, we’re putting our money where our mouth is for the benefit of the entire automotive industry. We know dealers suffer when vendors don’t work together. When dealers and OEMs suffer, vendors also suffer. So let’s change that, shall we?

AutoHook is doing our part to build one, solidified automotive railroad system by opening our API, and the sales validation data that comes with it, to all vendors – free of charge. In an industry where everyone charges to be connected, we want to be the player not to charge so that we can make stronger connections.

By adopting Apple’s open app approach, we can then simplify and unravel a very complicated subject. A subject that is perhaps the one absolute in an industry inundated with ambiguous topics like “big data” and “attribution.” Backed by near-real-time sales data from Urban Science, AutoHook has actually built an attribution engine that validates without a doubt that our solutions led directly to a sale. Sharing this type of knowledge is the one thing that could change this industry for the better. Having access to both accurate and up-to-date sales attribution data will make every decision this industry makes smarter, every solution more efficient, and every dollar we spend go further. Now THAT is something to get excited about.

*As featured in AutoSuccess Magazine | October 2016 edition. 

Cracking the Conversion Code

By David Metter

Behind every screen, device, or smartphone in today’s consumer economy resides something that has perhaps gotten lost in the unstoppable avalanche of digital noise. Are we as an industry starting to focus too much on the device, and not enough on the person behind it? All we hear today is ways we can target better on mobile and that we need to use the latest in mobile tracking and mobile marketing technologies. When it comes to selling cars, or converting leads into buyers, let’s begin the New Year with an emphasis on the customer behind the device in order to connect with them better and resonate with them in a more positive way. This is the first step towards improving conversion for your dealership.

The second step is understanding the digital roadmap, or digital learning path that leads to a buying decision. If you want to increase your overall conversion rates, start by only spending money on the consumers that are ready to make a purchase and identify those in-market customers using proper attribution methods. Spend your precious ad dollars on the people that have demonstrated ready-to-buy behavior.

Buying a car is a huge decision for the average consumer – the second largest purchase of their life after buying a home. It’s a really big deal. In 2016, it is imperative that we remember there is a human being on the other side of that screen – complete with thoughts, skepticism, and emotions that come to define their shopping experience, and more importantly, their probability of converting.

So how can we increase conversion and increase the number of buyers we send into our showroom? First, let’s define what conversion means to the average dealership. Then let’s set the bar higher. Conversion is simply the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, whether that’s filling out a lead or incentive form on your site, or their final signature on a new lease. Techopedia defines conversion rate as, “An equation that online advertisers and marketers use to compare the total number of visitors to a website to the number that become paying customers, subscribers or users.”

According to a November, 2015 Dataium study, the average dealer website gets roughly 6,109 unique monthly visitors. Of those 6,109 people, only 1.5% completed a lead form, or in other words, only 1.5% converted. This is our industry’s standard, and we can absolutely do better.

Average should not be an acceptable word in your vocabulary when it comes to your conversion rate. Make it a goal, or a new year’s resolution to demolish “average” and demand to rise above. Write down your goal, and then commit to knocking it out of the park!

So what should your conversion goal be? Many dealers make the mistake of leaving their conversion rates up to their web provider, or placing blame on their website platform for lower than desired conversions. Progressive dealerships see a conversion rate of 6% or more compared to the average dealer’s 1-4%. The truth however, is that dealers themselves hold much more power than they think they do. Do you want to be average or do you want to have upwards of a 6% website conversion rate?

The power dealers have when they’re face-to-face with a customer is vastly underrated. Thus, using incentives to get customers in the showroom may be the most obvious solution to increasing your conversion ratio. If your objection is, “The customer is going to probably come in anyways so why should I spend money to incentive them?” then you should probably stop advertising all-together...which would be a bad move.  Hopefully, you get my point.  If not, stop reading now. 

Sometimes we have to change the way we sell in order to sell better. In the year ahead, our processes should involve taking a step back from “targeting” consumers on their devices, and really focus in on how to connect with low-funnel buyers through the benefits that accompany being a knowledgeable sales person and providing a superior in-showroom experience. Keep in mind that conversion happens at a much higher rate when a customer is physically in front of you than it does online with the standard lead form so be different than your competition.

Behind the screens we hide behind that track our every move, search and click lies a conversion opportunity that can be better accomplished when you focus more on consumers themselves and how they behave while researching their next vehicle. To be clear, I don’t want to downplay the importance of mobile. You have to be where your customers are and they are most certainly on mobile – however if you’re going to ask them for their information you better be positive their experience filling out their information on their mobile device is seamless.

Think about the design of your mobile site and ask yourself, is it optimized for conversion? This means you have to consider things like your call-to-action button and its placement, or if it’s consistent with the average person’s thumb size. According to Apple, “The human fingertip is around 46 pixels squared, so size your buttons accordingly.”

If you’re making digital advertising decisions and you’re not seeing the connectivity into the showroom, and more importantly, sales, you may be either spending your money unwisely, or you have a breakdown in your data that doesn’t allow you to connect these things. When you have great data you can tell a great story. It’s also not just about big data, it’s about good data. Leveraging third-party data partners like IHS Polk we can build a much stronger attribution model and thus determine what exactly led to the conversion of a lead.

Knowledge is power. Knowing which actions along the road to a purchase led to that sale vastly increases your probability of conversion, and more importantly, makes the most out of your ad budget.