Take advantage of your data pool to stay ahead and make informed business decisions
In the coming year, dealer principals, general managers, and marketing managers are going to be hearing more and more about the need to use big data—the ability to leverage insights on huge amounts of information across a large period of time to make decisions—at their dealerships.
On one hand, this is quite exciting: The possibilities of big data are endless. For example, large retailers like Target can identify from a customer’s purchases that she is expecting a baby—often well before it is public information, so to speak. This allows these retailers to market appropriate products to their consumers.
On the other hand, big data presents enormous challenges relating to the overall process of acquiring and interpreting data to implement changes and decisions. This is true even though big data has been a part of the automotive industry for years.
For instance, OEMs have used big data to make decisions about their vehicle lineups. Also, more advanced dealer management systems (DMS) and OEM-level marketing operations often leverage big data tools to associate buying personas to different car models.
Nonetheless, when it comes to dealership marketing, the use of big data is still lagging behind other industry verticals like e-commerce and real estate. The challenge of big data for individual dealerships to overcome is accumulating enough data to run the sophisticated queries that Target or OEMs can easily implement.
That said, dealerships are not totally high and dry when it comes to big data. Here’s how your dealership can get around big data’s pain points to catch up with big retailers and OEMs.
By properly structuring and taking advantage of your dealership’s data, you can set it up to gain insight that will help you market more effectively—even if it’s not the level of data the OEMs have at their fingertips. Take advantage of the data pool you have access to, and you’ll be able to stay ahead and make informed business decisions.
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Dealer Marketing Magazine