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Car Sales on Line - the phenomenon

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Those of you who know Ward Lovett Advertising and Pr will be aware one the company's specialisms is retail marketing and in particular for the automotive trade.

Historically the marketing spends in this sector has been as follows in order of spend:
Manufacturer Marketing: National TV and Press
Dealership Advertising: Regional Press, Local Press, Direct Mail, Radio, Local TV(RARE)

The spends by the dealerships tended to be in the classified sections in the local press and can hardly be described as cutting edge in media planning. I.E. if you owned a dealership in Manchester, you would be in the Manchester Evening News on motors night. 9 times out of ten across the country motors night is a Friday to drive weekend footfall and sales to the dealerships advertising. Rocket science it wasn't but for over 40 years it was the standard.

However in an incredibly short period The automotive sector has followed its other slightly uncool classified neighbour, the Recruitment sector, and shifted its focus on line.

It started with a web site promoting their stock with a series of pictures, then progressed to microsites which focus on immediate sector issues. Ukscrapscheme.co.uk is a prime example of this sort of activity. Using Google Pay Per Click this microsite was at the top of anything to so with the Government Scrappage scheme around the recent budget. Indeed they stole a march on the competition.

At recent Ford Dealer Marketing meeting, one of the leading used car sales managers announced he had pulled or traditional marketing in the belief that his award winning website, Auto trader on line listings and Google campaign would be more effective. The monthly results show he is correct.

Worrying times for Press and Radio and TV certainly but there is a real opportunity for online marketing in this sector. Auto Trader Digital claim a mighty 30% market share but there is room for more player in this market if they get a move on. One to watch is carsupermarketsearch.com which is one of the best I have seen.

I think the regional press and radio should unite and create a web portal to compete in this arena. It is a unique opportunity to create a true number one in the sector but to get the dealers on board it needs to be an automatic upload, for free initially for all dealers who advertise in a given paper on a commercial radio station. Crtical mass of vehicles is key to popularity.

The media can push the site through their titles and stations and once the tipping point is achieved it would be viable to implement a pay per click model to the dealers.

I would like to see the NPA, NS and RAB try to take a longer term view and create portals such as this for sectors rather than the go it alone approach which I believe simply will not work. Some of the individual newspaper sites are appalling and in reality the web has moved on beyond the comprehension of these traditional media owners.

On a final note I believe Car Advertising is now officially cool - now that is something I never thought would happen..

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