It’s a great day when you get a lot of new leads in your dealership’s CRM. Now it’s time to follow up and start the buying conversation– but not every shopper is in the same stage of the buying process. How to proceed?

We’ll start with overarching best practices for lead follow-up. Then we’ll dive into some more detailed nurture ideas, divided by lead type, so you can provide the most value, make the best use of your BDC and sales teams’ ever-limited time, and move the buying conversation forward.

Best Practices for Follow Up: All Types of Leads

1. Follow up immediately. Whether by phone, by text, or by email, follow up as soon as you can when a lead comes into your CRM. Let them know you value their business and are there to help.
2. Read the lead. Before you make that first phone call, read all the lead information in your CRM carefully. Make sure you know what they’ve been doing on your site, and note any specific questions or requests.
3. Don’t give up. If you don’t reach a lead the first time you reach out, try again. Leave voicemails, but don’t expect the lead to call you back– instead, try them again later. Persistence, within reason, shows the customer you are willing to do the work to earn their business.
4. Don’t automate first responses. Automated emails typically do not answer customers’ questions. Worse, they do not refer to the information the lead submitted, making them unhelpful for moving the buying process forward. It can be difficult to respond to all your leads, especially after business hours, but not automating will go a long way toward making a customer feel valued.
5. But automate your segmented campaigns. Despite the ineffectiveness of automated response emails, automation can be a great tool for lead nurture. Use your CRM data to segment your leads by interests and stage in the buying process. Then, set up automated campaigns with valuable information and resources to stay in touch and offer help to each one.
6. Offer value–different value–every time. Each time you reach out to a lead, in whatever format, offer them something new: a test drive, a special offer, the opportunity to start financing over the phone. Don’t be repetitive, but instead, anticipate what your customers might need at their stage of the buying process.

And to that end, here are some of the major lead types, how to spot them in your CRM, and what content you can offer to keep the conversation moving forward and provide continuous value:

Early Stage Leads

How to spot them:

• Converted on a gift incentive
• Viewed only one page on your website
• First-time visitor
• Spent very little time onsite before converting

Early stage leads are still doing research, and don’t often convert at all. If you find yourself lucky enough to hear from one, it’s a great opportunity to become a resource in their buying process. They are looking for a brand they can trust, and are likely still flexible about which car they will choose.

What to offer:

• Guides for choosing the right model for you
• Guides to trade-ins and financing
• Comparisons between popular models
• Holiday offers and storewide specials
• New technology to get excited about

Late Stage Leads

How to spot them:

• Converted on a specific model
• Spent extensive time on your site
• Viewed the same VDP numerous times
• Viewed similar VDPs repeatedly

These leads are closer to buying, so the goal is bring them into the dealership and simplify their buying process as much as possible.

What to offer:

• A test drive appointment
• Options for beginning the financing process online or over the phone
• More information about VDPs they’ve checked out
• Comparisons of models similar to the ones they’ve been looking at

Duplicate Leads

These leads have converted on your site more than once. They are ultra-qualified since they have shown repeated interest in your dealership.

What to offer:

• Immediate attention. This customer has converted twice, so make sure to reach out immediately.
• Specific information in response to the form they converted on. Pay extra attention to the second conversion, as it is likely what they are more interested in right now.

Lost Leads

These are all the leads that have been languishing in your CRM: for whatever reasons, they were never followed up with, or never successfully reached

What to offer:

Enter these leads into your early stage lead funnel. General information might do the trick in bringing these leads back

Previous Customers

These leads have already bought from you, or from a competitor.

What to offer:

• Service reminders and offers
• Maintenance tips
• Birthday cards
• Specials, after a few years

Use these tips to keep the relationship going with all your leads and customers. Wherever they are in the buying process, your dealership can offer them exactly what they need.

Ah, the elusive millennials. How to catch them, market to them, sell to them– that is everyone’s goal these days. And with reports on millennials eschewing car ownership for Ubers, rentals, and rideshare options, it seems that in the auto industry, they are hard to catch indeed.

But as it turns out, many millennials are buying cars, especially older millennials. The demographic is just beginning to flex its spending muscle as it grows up, earns more income, and starts families. Even if they don’t own cars now, 80% of millennials plan to within the next few years.

Nevertheless, millennials really do experience shopping, and specifically car shopping, differently from their parents. They have different priorities, goals, and expectations, and the smart dealership will address those.

What sets millennials apart? Much research, including reports by CDK and AutoTrader, leads to a number of conclusions:

• Reliance on technology. Millennials use their smartphones for everything, from photography to navigation to even– at times– verbal communication. So naturally, they do their consumer research on them, oftentimes while standing on your dealership floor. They also have laptops, desktops, and tablets and using all of them is second-nature.
• Massive amounts of research. Whether via smartphone, tablet, or laptop, millennials typically do about 17 hours of research before purchasing a new vehicle. This includes significant time reading online reviews, and getting recommendations from friends in person and on social media.
• Image and values. Far more than their parents, millennials value individual expression. They want to impress others with their taste and style– not only that, but they want the items and brands they choose to reflect their personal beliefs and value systems. They will often even choose items that are more expensive in order to reflect these values, even in the face of very real financial constraints.
• Personalization. Millennials want the car shopping process to be transparent, convenient, and personalized. They want information to be easily accessible, and they want to feel like their concerns are being addressed.

So what’s the best way for dealerships to break into the millennial market? A few concrete steps will go a long way:

1. Make sure your website is in top form. With the online research they do and ease they expect, millennials will not take you seriously if your website is lacking in any way. Keep your VDPs up to date and totally consistent with your in-store inventory. Use clean, visually appealing design. And make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for.
2. Provide content, not just offers. Offers on your website are so important, but remember that millennials want to connect to you and your brand while they’re doing research. Feature helpful content that makes the car buying process easier and more convenient, including explanations of key features, comparisons of different models, checklists for car shoppers, and information on loan approval. Make sure to include lots of photos, and don’t forget the videos.
3. Sophisticated, personalized targeted content and offers. Equip your website with AutoLeadStar’s technology to track, analyze, and predict website visitor behavior so you can offer them content they want to see, when they want to see it. Everyone wants to feel like the content they see speaks to them; millennials will feel alienated if it doesn’t. Using your website should feel as personalized as a conversation with a salesperson at your dealership.
4. Optimize everything for mobile. So many millennials use their phones that it is absolutely crucial that you run campaigns for mobile and keep track of your mobile analytics. Your content should look good on a small screen and your offers should be mobile-friendly.
5. Brand consistency. No matter where your content appears, whether on your site, in ads, on social media, or in marketing materials, your logo, colors, language, and messaging must be consistent. Millennials want understand your brand and values, and they expect to find them wherever you are.
6. Make your values clear. Speaking of brand and values, they need to be clear. What does your dealership stand for, aside from selling cars, of course? What sets you apart from your competitors? Millennials are looking for brands that speak to them. Make it clear what your dealership is about so like-minded consumers can connect with you.
7. Be accessible. In person, on the phone, on social media, be sure that someone reaching out to you can reach you. Keep your SEO strong so you’re easily searchable online. When you get a conversion, or a question on Facebook or Twitter, respond immediately. Millennials value relationships, so build them through multiple channels and make it easy to get answers.

If it seems like millennials are more work than your average customer, remember that it’s worth the effort. Because along with their rising purchasing power, millennials’ brand interest makes them loyal to companies they like, and extremely likely to recommend you to their friends if they have a positive experience. So invest in millennials. It will pay off for your dealership.

Duplicate leads: irritating productivity-killers, right? They clog up your CRM, they make your multiple lead-capture services seem redundant, they can lead to confusion about follow-up. It’s easy to understand why there are softwares specifically designed to prevent and remove duplicate leads.

But listen closely, friends: you really don’t want to do that.  

It’s true– when you get duplicate leads, you need a good system in place for marking them as duplicates, making sure all information is correctly merged, and clearly indicating what contact efforts were made. But please, please don’t get rid of your duplicates, or ignore them, or let them fall to the bottom of your to-do list. Why?

Because duplicates are not your worst leads. They’re your best leads!

Here’s what a bad lead looks like: someone who isn’t in market, or doesn’t have good enough credit to buy a car, or has already made a purchase from your competitor. It makes sense to avoid wasting resources on a lead that has so little chance of closing.

But a duplicate lead is none of these things. A duplicate is someone who has told you, twice, that they are interested in your dealership. Considering how hard it is to get anyone to convert at all, this is a huge success.

Here are some examples of high-quality duplicate leads:

• Sam was browsing your site a few months ago and converted on a general offer for deals on trucks, but really wasn’t ready to buy. Now, after doing more research, he comes back to your website, and converts on a car specific incentive for a model he knows he’s interested in.
• Janet saw a conversion form on your site offering a test drive and converted right away. Then, after browsing a bit more, she saw an offer for her dream car at a great price and converted again.
• Dave provided his contact information in a chat box on your site, and did the same on several of your competitors’ sites. Then he came back to your dealership website because it provides a superior website shopping experience. Now, he converts again on a lease offer, fully intending to lease at your dealership.

One thing these people have in common: they are all hot leads. And while it’s important to engage all types of leads, even the ones who aren’t ready to buy, these leads are ready to buy, or at least very close to ready.

Another thing they have in common: their second conversion is more valuable than their first– it comes when they are further down the buying funnel, more sure of what they want, more invested in your dealership.

That’s why it’s important to know that duplicate leads are, in fact, duplicates. When you see a lead come in that has previously converted on a different form, that lead is not redundant. It’s enriched with more information about the visitor and their car interests, and you can see that it is because the lead converted a second time. In fact, we like to call these second-round captures assists. They assist you in finding more value-driven ways to have a buying conversation and close a deal.

So instead of dismissing your duplicates, rejoice in them. And do the following:

1. Educate your staff on the importance of duplicate leads. Reframe the conversation so that these leads are considered ulta-qualified, hot leads.
2. Find out why this person is a duplicate. Have they been called? Have their interests changed? How can you help them in their car buying process? Which leads us to…
3. Pay close attention to the AutoLeadStar data in your CRM: what pages these leads looked at, which VDPs they viewed, what they’re interested in. Make sure to look at all the CRM notes about this lead. Then, contact them for valuable follow-up conversations that provide them with the information they really want so that they come into your dealership ready to buy.
4. Prioritize these leads. When someone converts for the second time, get them on the phone fast so you can bring them into your dealership. Capitalize on their obvious interest before they turn to your competitor. This lead will not be annoyed to hear from you– in fact, they will be annoyed if you don’t reach out immediately. They gave you their information twice. Don’t ignore them.

Whether they’ve been languishing in your CRM for months, days, or minutes, duplicate leads are banging down your door for attention. So give it to them. Show them that they were right to come back to your dealership.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a fancy term breaking into the digital automotive space right now.  While it may be new to the industry, it’s certainly not trivial. Many industries outside of automotive have been focused on conversion optimization for years; they even hire”conversion specialists” to solely focus on website optimization because they understand how important it is for digital success.

So what is conversion optimization? According to Tim Ash, CRO is the science of getting people to act or do something once they arrive on your site. Dealerships must get up to speed on this– there are great website providers in the industry and coupling that with a strong CRO strategy can bring your game up significantly.  With the amount of money dealerships are investing in their website, website maintenance, and traffic, failing to convert those hard-won website visitors is actually failing at the entire digital sales funnel.  CRO helps turn those marketing dollars into revenue by converting visitors into leads and sales right on the website.

It’s absolutely crucial for dealerships to understand the significance of this on their own websites. Not just because it completes the digital marketing strategy, but also because your website traffic is the most qualified source of leads for your dealership.

A website without CRO is kind of like a showroom without sales people. Imagine if you had a showroom with qualified ups, but no sales people to approach the leads with a smile on their face and a monthly quota to hit. I don’t think that would fly with your General Manager.  The same principle applies to your website- a website with qualified traffic needs engagement- needs direction and polite messaging to get the qualified traffic to convert into qualified leads for your sales team!

So how do you implement a conversion optimization strategy for your dealership website? The good news is, you usually don’t have to change your website provider or digital agency.  Most conversion optimization vendors work by adding a small piece of code to the existing website.

If you choose to work with a sophisticated vendor, the code snippet can do a lot- it can scan the traffic’s behavior and decide what offer or message to engage the visitor with artificial intelligence. Is the visitor a new visitor browsing slowly?  Or is the visitor a loyal visitor looking at a specific VDP?  Is the visitor interested in service?  Or is the visitor actually focused on leasing a vehicle?

Optimizing your website can turn these insights into action to get your visitors to do what you want them to do on the site.

Want your visitors to come in for a test drive?

Want your visitors to come in for a service visit?

Or maybe you want your visitors to like your page on Facebook?

Conversion optimization done right will add an engagement level to your website that can push your visitors to complete these conversion goals and increase your automotive lead capture significantly.

Everyone is in high-hype after Google released its new mobile rules. No, it does not mean that every mobile site with a pop up will be lower ranked.  No, it does not mean you shouldn’t still be focusing on optimizing your mobile site. It’s all going to be okay…

Google wants to penalize sites that have “take-over” pop ups– pop ups that fill the entire screen, block all content, or position themselves to look like the real webpage even though they are not.  On the flip side, Google will reward the high ranking mobile sites that abide by their standards.  They want mobile friendly popups and engagements that are easily dismissed and positioned. Google will also start marking websites as “mobile-friendly” right in their search pages.

Image from https://webmasters.googleblog.com/

As an automotive dealership, it’s important that you recognize what this means. Check your mobile engagements.  And if you rely on a vendor for this, confirm with them that your site is in good shape.  If your engagements don’t fit the qualifications, your automotive website can be getting to low ranks and the rampant mobile user will not find your dealership website.

Here’s a quick summary of our latest post in Dealer Magazine– the best practices for a mobile friendly pop up:

1. Fat-Finger Friendly: Make the fields big and easy to fill out.  Being fat-finger friendly is crucial when engaging mobile users. You should also limit your fields- the fewer the fields to fill out, the more likely you’ll get a visitor to convert into a lead. Just remember, don’t let the fields take over the entire page of content. Find the right medium.
2. Size does matter:  Create new creative with optimized dimensions and sizes for your mobile pop ups. Fitting the sizes to a mobile screen will affect the mobile browsing experience.  If your pop up or chat box isn’t optimized, Google will see this as a strike-out. A nice way to get around this would be to position your pop up as a banner on top or a slider in the corner.  The text size also matters in this case.  If you’re using a text size or font that you have to zoom in to read, Google will no longer consider you mobile friendly.
3. The infamous “x” button: Make your pop ups easy to exit.  If you don’t have a clear “x” or “no thanks” button, you’ll probably be marked as spam by Google.  Don’t lock the website visitors into a commitment to convert.  It wasn’t really going to help you, and now it certainly won’t.
4. Nix the add-ons: If you have applications like Flash on your mobile site, take them out! This is not compatible with the new standards and will highly affect the ratings. For the dealerships that are using “click-to-calls” and live chat boxes, make sure you don’t have to download anything funky to engage your mobile visitors.

No need to freak out- Google will not punish you for having pop ups on your site.  In fact, Google will probably reward you if you have a compliant mobile pop up- so keep up the good work! For Google’s official guidelines, click here.

Want to optimize your dealership’s mobile site within Google’s qualifications? Tweet at @autoleadstar

What happens when at least 70% of consumers are now turning to digital to get to know your dealership?  What happens when today’s consumers are making decisions about your dealership based on your website and not your showroom?

These trends are not trivial and your dealership is most likely being judged by its online presence.  Be proactive about this shift in the industry, as it will only help with sales.

Here are 5 things you can do digitally to gain trust and credibility on the web, and eventually get your dealership more online leads.

1. Intelligent Engagement: Try and mimic the showroom engagement as much as possible- your savvy salesmen are not approaching every visitor the same way, and neither should your website. Chat boxes may work on some shoppers, while coupon offers may speak to others.  There are tons of way to capture leads by engaging your website visitors personally and relevantly.  Trust me, the technology is out there.
2. Content: Keep an up-to-date blog.  Serious shoppers want to know what kind of dealership you are and what kinds of vehicles they are purchasing. Prove your authority and brand within the industry through an active blog.  Everyone is doing it nowadays.
3. CRM: Customer Relationship Management.  As I mentioned, the auto industry is a relationship-heavy industry.  This is where you can track and manage all relationships.  Don’t let that slide just because it’s not face-to-face.  Actively check and update your CRM– check response time on internet leads, tags, and sales pipelines.   Make sure you’re using your CRM to its fullest and that your sales people are pushing all deals forward and leads to sales.
4. SEO: Search Engine Optimization.  Investing in advertising so that people on the road will see your dealership’s name?  Do the same online. Optimizing your website through SEO will ensure that online shoppers will land on your website when looking up their next dream car.  Bring the qualified traffic to your site so you can engage them and turn them into awesome leads for your sales team.
5. Do what you say you’ll do: Offering coupons online?  Writing good content online?  Make sure that whatever you offer or whatever you present will actually happen– if you’re offering a discount, send the coupon directly after capturing lead information, follow up quickly, and make sure your content is accurate. Shoppers want to buy their cars from credible dealerships, so use the internet to prove yourself.  There are so many ways to do so online, so jump on the opportunity before your competitors take over the space.

Building credbility online is the only way to win the industry in the digital age. Be proactive, and you'll stay ahead.