One of the most basic tenets of marketing is that you have to know your audience—and you have to be able to tailor your message to address their particular pain points and consumer needs.

For used car dealerships, a big part of the buying audience is made up of women—and the dealerships who don’t market specifically to women are doing themselves a disservice.

That’s because, in most families, women drive the purchasing decisions. A recent Dealer Marketing article elaborates: “More and more studies show that the decision-maker is female. Women drive 70 percent to 80 percent of all consumer purchasing, whether through their direct buying habits, or perhaps more importantly, their influence over friends’ and family’s buying habits.”

Marketing to Women Requires a Multi-Faceted Approach

Women matter to auto dealerships not only because they are influential over family purchasing decisions—but also because they tend to play complex roles within that family. Indeed, women are often the ones most active in the day to day care of children, in considering the needs of the extended family, and in ensuring that major purchases—like a new car—are beneficial to the family as a whole.

What Dealerships Can Do

Given the important role that women play in informing used vehicle purchasing decisions, dealerships need to do everything in their power to make the buying journey more welcoming to the ladies—but how?

One important step is to put some women on the sales team. Dealer Marketing explains why: “Women feel more comfortable buying from women. If women make up more than 80 percent of influencers, it should be no secret that females need to be well-represented across your sales and management teams.”

Another important step that dealerships can take? Enhancing their customer service offerings.

“Women tend to have higher expectations when it comes to customer service, and several technologies are popping up in the automotive business to help with the instant response these buyers expect,” says Dealer Marketing.

These technologies include text-based appointment reminders, online scheduling for test drives, and more.

The Reward of Marketing to Women

It may take some work for dealerships to improve their outreach to women—but in the end, the reward can be quite significant. Women, after all, tend to be loyal customers—at least, to the businesses that strive to earn that loyalty.

“A Frost and Sullivan survey that used responses from 1,500 male and female vehicle owners in the U.S. revealed that women tend to be more loyal than their male counterparts to both dealers and independent aftermarket technician,” says Dealer Marketing.

How will your dealership strive to earn the loyalty of women? Get My Auto can certainly provide you with some marketing strategies to brand your dealership as service-centered and welcoming to all. To learn more, we encourage you to contact the Get My Autodealership marketing team today.