Twitter’s Guy Schueller shares advice for auto marketers as EVs gain momentum and chip shortages linger

Trends come and trends go, so what should your team be focused on for continued success in this new year? On today’s edition of Inside Automotive, we’re pleased to welcome back Guy Schueller, Industry Director of Automotive for Twitter, to lend us his insight into what car dealers should concentrate on today.

After many debuts and reveals at CES 2021, there seems to be a special momentum for EVs right now. In fact, Schueller says the conversation on Twitter about EVs is huge. Obviously, Tesla has a major presence on the Twitter platform, but in the last few years, Schueller says other OEMs like Ford and GM have been jumping into the conversation.

“The cool thing about Twitter, with EVs specifically, is that our audience, the consumers on our platform, want EVs”, says Schueller. “75% of them said they would buy an EV as their next purchase.”

Schueller believes the auto industry is at a tipping point. Reason one is the investment at the OEM level to actually produce EVs and push them out to the marketplace. The other critical piece to the puzzle is education. Car dealers and auto marketers have to convince consumers that EVs are interesting. Twitter is a great platform for this.

Another interesting dialogue happening on Twitter is about the ongoing chip shortage. The impacts from the shortage are being felt by consumers. Twitter recently conducted a survey to see how this shortage is impacting the buying process. 92% of consumers surveyed were still able to find the car they wanted. This means that consumers are still willing to pay a bit more and search for the right car. Car dealers that play the long game will win. There is a short-term opportunity right now for profitability, but there is also a change on the horizon. Don’t lose sight of the lifetime value of a customer.

Forward-thinking car dealers focus on building trust and transparency for every part of the car buying process. When a consumer trusts that the car dealer will give them a fair price and help them service that product over time, that is consumer lifetime value for the automotive industry. Consumers are more interested in ordering a product than they ever have been before. That is a positive thing for the auto industry, according to Schueller.

“Let’s not make it into a negative by clouding the existing purchase process right now,” says Schuller, “Because that it will have long term impact on the dealers especially, and, and they need to build the trust and their value prop.”

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