Sales funnel strategies for today’s auto buyer

Funnel strategies have drastically changed over the last decade. Gone are the days when they were based on the demographics of an individual or group of buyers. You would buy a particular age and gender group and spend your marketing energies and money to get them to move down the funnel.

And previous funnel terms are beginning to give way to micro-moments. Instead of words like newly interested and high-intent, today, we consider terms that work with transactional intent, regardless of the demographic.

• Is it Right For Me?
• Can I Afford It?
• Where Should I Buy It?
• Am I Getting A Good Deal?

If we rely only on demographics to reach consumers in those moments, we risk missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers. Demographics never tell the complete story.

It’s really about intent and how that can affect your strategy. Let’s look at a few strategies that could help increase your sales while people search in the micro-moments of today’s funnel.

Strategy 1: Who Are You Reaching?

As you know, it’s always good to get in touch with the people who influence the potential car purchase. A recent article from Forbes stated, “women buy 62% of all new cars sold in the U.S. and influence more than 85 percent of all car purchases.”

If you were attempting to reach men of a certain age, you would lose a potential 67% of your sales, or you wouldn’t be reaching the chief influencer. In recent research, Google has shown that:

• 56% of sporting goods searchers on mobile are female
• 45% of home improvement searchers on mobile are female
• 68% of skin and body care influencers in the past six months were male

Grasping this the importance of knowing your buyer has implications for targeting Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, including other heavily trafficked sites. But there are also more people to target than you may realize.

Strategy 2: Who Are Your Intender’s Friends?

Women will seek recommendations from friends and family. You’ll begin to see their questions show up on social media when looking for a vehicle. By exclusively targeting the buyer/intender, you’re missing out on their friends and their influence on the buyer.

Strategy 3: What is The Intenders ‘Why’?

Why are they even wanting to buy a car? In a recent book, Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller suggests that companies should understand that the customer is a living, breathing hero, and providers should tap into their story by:

• Identify What the Customers Want. It may be hard to believe, but they don’t want the product. They want to be seen and heard. They want the experience that comes from the product.
• Define the Customer’s Challenges. They struggle with people not recognizing their hidden genius.
• Offer Them a Tool They Can Use to Express Themselves. That would be your vehicle. And yes, it’s just a tool.

The buyer is a hero because they will buy a tool to safely haul their dogs or pick up the lumber to build their fence that provides a safe place for their kids to play in. Or they’re a hero because they gather up their friend’s children in a carpool to make the parents’ lives less stressful. Know their why.

Strategy 4: Where Are They?

Of course, Google has an opinion on this. The average timeline for a vehicle purchase can stretch over months. Google says, “within that time, countless intent-driven micro-moments occur when consumers turn to their devices to answer a question or to address a need.

Whether it’s a question about which car is the safest, which will fit a family of five with all their gear, or what the lowest monthly payment can be, these intent-driven moments are often Google Searches. And how auto brands respond in these micro-moments shape car buyers’ decisions.”

The Funnel’s Success Depends on the Data

If you have garbage coming into a funnel, you’ll get garbage as an output. Regardless of where you may think your customer is in the purchase funnel, if you don’t know who they are, who they associate with, what their why is, and where they are online, you’ll be spending money on a funnel that leads to a dead end.

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