Before you consider inviting millennials over, make sure you’ve built a fast, transparent and next generation digital website.
Much ado is made about millennials —those born between the years 1980 and 2000 — and how their consumer patterns and expectations are different than any other generation.
Like every other generation, however, the secret for retail businesses, including automotive dealerships and automakers, is simply finding the right formula to reach this potential customer base, in a manner that ensures the best chance of success.
While previous generations may have visited a number of dealerships to research models and features as part of their car-buying experience, millennials are largely going about it differently.
It’s not uncommon that they will do research online and determine what they want to buy and where they want to buy it before engaging a dealership. As a result, when they walk into a dealership, they are very well armed with information about their vehicle of choice and the dealership itself.
The question is: where should your dealership focus its marketing and selling efforts to most effectively meet sales quotas and the needs of millennial customers? The answer is online — both literally and figuratively.
That’s hardly groundbreaking news, but it is important to know and understand the many facets of the online experience.
Published reports by AutoTrader and others, suggest that millennials spend more than 17-hours researching their vehicle before purchasing it and more than 70 per cent of those, want to be aware of all the possible vehicle options. What this demonstrates is that they are visiting many other sites than your dealership’s online site.
As a result, it’s up to you as a dealership to ensure your website and online presence stands out and that your focus is on the car selling process and car buying experience of your customers.
What does this mean in real terms?
At the very least, it means that an intuitive and fast website is critical and also needs to have tech-savvy smartphone capabilities such as text alerts, click-to-call, and app integrations.
Your website platform needs to allow you to collect data such as the number of consumers who are visiting your website and to what extent they are staying or leaving. Your website must be able to show off features your dealership has that make you the best, and put your vehicles’ special features in the forefront when listing cars.
Millennials need to view your dealership and sales staff as the authority on whatever product you are selling — and the only way to build this reputation is through perceived value.
To create value, create how-to lists, tips, vehicle walkarounds and other content to engage customers and bolster their knowledge. Use your social channels to regularly communicate with your audiences, especially if someone directly communicates with you via these platforms. This is vital when attracting millennial customers, who are more likely to read and write online Google and other reviews, as an example.
There are other important points to be made as it relates to millennials and the Internet era we all live in. People don’t have the attention span they once did, so respond quickly to online chats, tweets, or other online methods that you are interactive with consumers.
Don’t be afraid to send consumers away from your site for additional resources. More than any other generation, millennials will look at a host of options before making a final purchase decision anyways — so if you are building trust, they will return to your platform (and dealership!).
There’s no time like the present to enhance the online presence of your dealership and engage a large pool of potential customers. The millennials are out there — and perhaps just waiting for you.
