Download how digital marketers and salespeople can collaborate

JordanBentley
marketing solution
HOW DIGITAL MARKETERS AND
SALESPEOPLE CAN COLLABORATE
TO CREATE MORE VEHICLE BUYERS
By the end of the year, eMarketer predicts that
the auto industry will have spent $6.56 billion
on digital advertising — an increase from
$5.85 billion in 2014. Sure, traditional
advertising methods such as newspaper ads,
direct mail and billboards have their role in
a dealership’s overall marketing strategy, but
digital marketing is now in the driver’s seat.
It’s changed the way dealerships reach buyers,
because buyers aren’t just looking for a vehicle
anymore. Today, consumers are looking for
an experience that’s cohesive across multiple
touchpoints — social media, pay-per-click
(PPC), video advertising, the test drive, etc.
To give your customers what they’re looking
for, the sales and digital marketing teams need
to collaborate. In a study by CSO Insights
and Velocify, 89 percent of companies that
aligned their sales and marketing efforts saw
measureable increases in conversion rates.
The Roles of Digital Marketers
and Salespeople
The need to create an integrated car-buying
experience is blurring the lines of digital
marketers’ and salespeople’s roles. But before
talking about how these teams can work
together, let’s consider the unique skills and
responsibilities each group brings to the table.
With digital marketing opening the floodgates
to big data, marketers can know what types
of vehicles consumers are searching for and
discern prospects’ preferred communication
methods and devices. And, in exchange for
this value-added content, digital marketers can
gather information such as an email address,
name, address and phone number.
Digital marketers are skilled at taking full
advantage of all the information sources
available to them and creating actionable
strategies and targeted messaging based
on what the data shows. By knowing their
audience, marketers can communicate in a
voice consistent with the brand while providing
customers with the experience they desire.
By the time a salesperson interacts with a
prospect, a marketer will have already laid the
groundwork for the customer experience. It’s the
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salesperson’s job to perpetuate that experience
all the way through to — and after — the sale.
Ways Marketers and Salespeople
Can Collaborate
By maximizing digital marketers’ and
salespeople’s unique skills, your dealership
can blow your customers away with a highly
personalized and relevant digital marketing
strategy. Below are three examples of ways
marketers and salespeople can collaborate.
Monitor Social Media and Review Sites
Chances are, your dealership is already on
social media, but just being there isn’t enough.
You have to post interesting, relevant content to
keep prospects and customers following you.
Social media isn’t just about being heard,
however. It’s a conversation. Marketers can
find out what customers want by searching
for posts about your dealership specifically or
about the type of vehicles you sell. Marketers
should know what people are saying about
you on review sites, as well. By responding to
each and every post involving your dealership,
positive or negative, you’ll be able to foster
relationships, maintain customer loyalty and
maybe fix a few problems.
If your marketing team sees an opportunity
for a salesperson to respond to a prospect
or customer personally, they should get the
salesperson involved. For example, if Bob tweets
about how Tim helped him find the perfect car
for his needs, have Tim respond personally.
Make It Easy for Smartphone Users to
Communicate With Your Dealership
Thanks to smartphones, phone leads are
shaking up marketing. Now, most marketers
(66 percent, according to BIA/Kelsey) consider
phone leads their highest-quality lead source.
When smartphone users hit the search engines
looking for information about their next
vehicle and come across your dealership —
thanks to your search engine optimization
strategy, well-placed PPC ads and heavy social
media presence — a good strategy is to place
clickable numbers in your PPC ads and on your
Website. Mobile users love having the option to
place a call at the click of a button rather than
having to manually dial a number or complete
a form on their phones.
If they do prefer to submit a Web form, your
salespeople need to be ready to respond
within five minutes. You can work toward this
target by designating a specific employee or
team of people to monitor and respond to
Web submissions. If that’s not feasible, some
call tracking and measurement providers
offer technology that sends notifications to a
salesperson’s cell phone when a new Web form
has been submitted. This gives them the option
to call the prospect back.
Use Your CRM to Track
the Purchase Journey
To get the complete picture of a caller’s
purchase journey, you need to minimize
discrepancies in your CRM. With an up-todate CRM, marketers can do their jobs better,
which helps salespeople get more leads. The
problem is that the burden of CRM updates
typically falls on salespeople, who don’t want
to deal with data entry when they have sales to
focus on. The key is to automate data syncing
between your CRM and other dealership
systems when possible.
When integrating your CRM with a thirdparty platform, just remember to make sure
data imports are happening when they should
and that all data is being properly imported.
Otherwise, data discrepancies could affect a
marketer’s ability to attribute leads to the correct
source, track customer interactions and create
relevant digital marketing campaigns.
In the future, digital marketing will continue to
change the way marketers market, salespeople
sell and customers buy. By having marketing
and salespeople join forces, your dealership
can create a consumer experience that turns
prospects into customers.
Jordan Bentley is the national sales manager for Callbright. He can be
reached at 866.865.3175 or [email protected].