For most dealerships nowadays, website strategy is a HUGE component of their overall business goals. Your website is now the ultimate vessel for capturing sales. 

While focusing on your website's lead capture efforts is certainly beneficial, the problem with this type of thinking (or mindset) is that you lock yourself onto one very specific goal: capture as many high-quality leads as possible. Again, this isn't a bad thing -- but is that your REAL ultimate goal? No! Your dealership's ultimate marketing goal is to get more consumers to visit your dealership in order to initiate a personal conversation(sell more vehicles).

Conversations are important because they allow both the dealer and the consumer to get to know one another. Both parties have information that they're looking for, as well as a goal that needs to be fulfilled. Consumers want to learn more about how to buy a car and dealerships want to know more about their consumers so that they see more auto sales in the future.

Starting that initial discussion can be challenging because different consumers will always be at different stages of the consumer journey. You don't want to come off as too strong, but you don't want to ignore them either. One way to alleviate this pain point is to focus more on the conversations consumers are having with your website VS just the number of leads you're capturing. Allow me to explain....

I've said it over and over again, and I don't think I can ever stress this enough -- consumers can and should have conversations with your website. Like Amazon and Google, it should be a 2-way participatory experience the whole way through.

You don't need to call, email or physically visit someone in order to initiate a discussion. It's all in the tools and resources. When a consumer is on your dealership's website, it's clear that they're on the hunt for something, have questions or need help thinking through their options.

One great way to initiate a conversation is to supply consumers with a guide to help with the options (but not too many, of course) and resources that allow consumers to make important buying decisions. Provide them the opportunity to see suggested inquiries or recommend the next best step suitable for them through an interactive assessment. As soon as they complete those interactions, you can have your website suggest additional actions that suit their individual needs.

This can be done through the use of Dynamic Pathing and Smart CTA's. Depending on the information collected, your dealers can then develop a more personalized "plan of attack" and continue the "discussion" on the phone or ideally, in person. Your follow-up efforts should really be transitioning an already existing conversation between your website and a customer, to a live person in the dealership. This drastically reduces the friction, hesitation and even fear consumers have when considering a live conversation with someone at the dealership. 

For example, if a leads consumer profile dictates their the type of shopping experience they want and all the immediate details of their situation, that's essentially giving the dealership everything that would normally be discussed in the first conversation with a prospect. Now your first live conversation with a lead is more meaningful and effective because you've already really started the conversation online with your website. No one likes having to repeat themselves over and over as you explain your whole situation to each new dealer you talk with. 

Capturing lots and lots of leads is always exciting. There's nothing cooler than seeing all those names and phone numbers popping up in your CRM. But let's be honest for a moment: how valuable are those leads if all you have is a name and their phone number? It isn't very valuable at all. Not until some type of a real conversation takes place.

The reason why interactive experiences are so important is because they allow consumers to ease themselves into the discussion. They're essentially giving you (the dealership) permission to reach out, and they're expecting you to know all about them. Consumers have become savvier over the years and they're fully aware of the capabilities of technology in regards to information collection.

Consumers know damn well that their contact and preference information is a gift to dealers, and they're expecting great service in return. There's no reason to disappoint them.