Digital Dealer - July 2018 - 44

M A R K E T ING & ADVERT ISING: Dig ita l R et ai l

By Devorah Wolf
Content Marketing Manager,
AutoLeadStar

Why Digital
Retail Is
Great News for
Automotive
It's pretty much impossible these days to talk
about automotive without
talking about digital retail
solutions. That's not
surprising, now that 80% of
car shopping touchpoints
have moved online (https://
oppmax.com/blog/digital-marketing-stats-everyauto-dealer-know/). But it
can be hard to pin down
what digital retail actually
means for automotive.
Some define it as actually
buying a car online, urging
dealerships to prepare for a
massive shift. Others, noting
that 70% of car shoppers
(http://www.autonews.com/

44

J U LY 2 0 1 8

section/form06) would never
buy before seeing the car in
person, define digital retail
as digitizing as much of the
car shopper's pre-sale
journey as possible. Others
are still wary of overly
digitizing, using the person-

alization lessons of digital to
create a better in-person
customer experience
without relying too much on
technology.
Each of these definitions
contains a kernel of truth:
personalizing, digitizing, and

THEY CAN SHOP FROM
THEIR PHONES WHENEVER
THEY WANT, THEY CAN
ACCESS A WORLD OF
INFORMATION, THEY CAN
SEND QUESTIONS TO
FACEBOOK CHAT WITH
INSTANT ANSWERS."

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

looking to future trends are
all important goals. At the
same time, each of them
misses the fundamental
change that the digital
transformation has brought
to retail. It's not about the
exact amount of technology your dealership uses,
or the exact percentage
of the process that moves
online. Instead, we need to
understand what has really
changed in the move to a
digital shopping experience.
HOW HAS DIGITAL
RETAIL CHANGED
SHOPPING?

Let's look at two perspectives: the shopper's, and
the retailer's. For shoppers
across industries, digital
has brought unprecedented
convenience and personalization. They can shop
from their phones whenever
they want, they can access
a world of information, they
can send questions to Facebook chat with instant answers. They also can expect
product suggestions, ads,
and dynamic websites that
respond to their interests.
Shopping, especially online
shopping, has become a
much better experience.
On the business end,
providing for all these
new customer needs is a
challenge, and can feel like
a race to meet the latest
demand. But the digital
transformation offers a significant benefit for retailers
as well: they now have
more insight than ever into
what customers want. They
can track behavior online.
They can see impressions,
clicks, and conversions from
website campaigns. They

http://www.autonews.com/section/form06 http://www.oppmax.com/blog/digital-marketing-stats-every-auto-dealer-know http://www.oppmax.com/blog/digital-marketing-stats-every-auto-dealer-know http://www.oppmax.com/blog/digital-marketing-stats-every-auto-dealer-know http://www.autonews.com/section/form06 http://www.DIGITALDEALER.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - July 2018