So now I’ve acclimatised, having spent a long weekend in Las Vegas for this year’s NADA (National Automobile Dealers Association) Convention and Expo, I have just finished briefing the team back at The Auto Network on the latest trends, insight and learnings.
The annual NADA convention is the largest car dealer show in the world – on the same scale as The Motor Show. This year the event attracted over 24,000 visitors with one of the biggest overseas delegations coming from the UK.
I travelled to NADA as part of a group of highly influential dealers and suppliers with ASE, the dealer profitability specialist, and have worked in the industry for quite a number of years.
One thing that was apparent even before the flight touched down in the city of light was that change was in the air for this year’s conference and there was a real buzz around digital marketing – mobile in particular.
With my love of marketing and using data to find new ways to connect and engage with consumers, having studied the conference programme I was spoilt for choice with strong themes of technology, innovation, digital and data-mining running through most of the slots, which included speakers from brands like Google, Facebook and Snapchat.
Doug Keim, VP at Autotrader US, was one of the first speakers, echoing that change is very much happening and bringing the reality home to us all with the key stat that, while back in 1980 when buying a new car consumers would visit 10 dealerships on average, yet in 2015 that same figure had reduced to only 1.2 dealership visits.
The message struck loud and clear that the opportunity for face to face interaction with consumers is very limited now, with customers doing the majority of research online before they make the trip to the forecourt and expect to close a deal there and then.
The priority therefore is to use the tools and technology available to dealers now to engage with customers in the right place, at the right time and through their preferred channels.
In helping with such challenges that dealers are now facing, I met a number of very interesting and clever automotive tech brands that have launched in the US, and are now making their way over to the UK and Europe.
CarGurus, positioning themselves as the Trip Advisor of the automotive world (and actually founded by Trip Advisor co-founder) and AutoAlert, DMS for the automotive world are definitely ones to watch.
One of my biggest observations from the show and learnings that I will definitely be building into our model are in comparing the US and UK automotive market.
I’m sure many of us have visited the US on holiday and been overwhelmed by the focus on customer service – this is something that is echoed in the auto market.
The US market is just more sophisticated when it comes to after sales, consumer lead handling, response times, pricing transparency, engaging with millenials (another key topic at NADA) – the list goes on.
However on the other hand less sophisticated when it comes to financial regulation and online finance tools.
The American dealer network is more open to embracing technology as a way to engage with existing and future customers and we saw huge buy-in in this area at NADA with a number of workshops on mobile marketing strategy and how to connect with car buyers via mobile.
We saw first-hand that many US dealers are already fully engaged with strategies across Facebook, Whatsapp and other mobile channels.
Exciting times and I for one feel very enthusiastic about the direction we are heading as an industry. We seem to be getting a handle on digital disruption as part of the transformational journey we have seen other industry sectors face.
There is a lot that we can learn from our US counterparts. For once, what goes on in Vegas will certainly not be staying in Vegas and this can only be a good thing for the UK automotive industry.
By Anton Hanley, CEO, The Auto Network