Top 5 Creative Ways To Sell Cars To Tech-Savvy Buyers

Nowadays, everything is moving to the digital world. Most industries now feel compelled by the business necessity to move most, if not all, of their operations to the digital realm. Even car dealerships now have to deal with the challenge of selling cars with a generation that insists on doing most of their activities and tasks online. The good thing is auto dealerships now have the tools to sell to tech-savvy buyers.

Furthermore, there are new creative ways car dealerships like Walla Walla Toyota implement to give leads and prospective buyers a digital tour of their inventory and make the sales processes easier and automated. This way, they wouldn’t have to go to the car dealership’s store whenever they want to check out the latest cars being offered. Additionally, this would make the purchasing processes more efficient.

That said, here are some of the creative ways of selling cars to tech-savvy buyers that you might want to make use of in your car dealership:

  1. Redesign Your Website For Digital Selling

One of the first things you have to do if you want to implement creative ways to sell cars to techie buyers is to redesign your website and automate business processes. Your website design and functionalities must attune to online shopping and buying habits and behavior of today’s generation of car buyers.

If you don’t know it yet, you ought to realize that there is an emerging market of car buyers who purchase their cars online. Yes, that’s right—these aren’t car buyers who do preliminary research online about trendy cars and then go to the nearest dealer offering their car of choice. This is already an old model of online promotions for auto dealers. 

The old prevailing business model has been for car shoppers to shop online, set up an appointment for the test drive, then go to the dealer’s showroom to complete the paperwork for the sale and financing to pay for the car.  In recent years, however, there’s been an emerging new way of doing things in car dealerships.

Buyers now don’t have to go to the car dealer’s place anymore. Everything is now done in the digital realm. They browse your website to check out the latest models they want to buy. A test drive appointment is then set, and the model car is delivered to their residence or office. If they like what they drove and want to buy it, they can complete the process by signing the digital papers. They can even get auto financing online.

2. Use Videos To Bring Showroom To Buyers

The other challenge for digital car dealerships is how to bring the showroom to the buyers. Of course, the buyers can browse through your website to check out what you have to offer. But this would just be like browsing websites. Another creative way of selling cars to tech-savvy buyers would be to simulate, as much as possible, the experience of going to a car dealership and being shown around.

One of the best tools to use in doing this would be videos to enhance their online shopping experience. You can use videos to improve the way the cars and details about them are presented and explained to your would-be car buyers. Here are some of the other ways video content can give you an edge in selling to tech-savvy buyers:

  • Create video walkthroughs and tutorials. Instead of inviting the tech-savvy buyer to come in, recreate the entire walkthrough experience, but keep in mind that your tech-savvy buyers would still feel welcome should they opt to go to your car dealership instead.
  • Create videos and virtual presentations of your current inventory of model cars. Make sure that this record of videos and virtual presentations is always up-to-date and contains what you have in your dealership. You shouldn’t wait for someone to contact you before making videos about the cars you have. Instead, you should post these videos on your website as soon as you’ve done them.
  • One of the things lost in virtual selling is the warmth of human interaction. But you can still show this side of your business by uploading videos of how your sales and customer service staff dealt with previous buyers. You can pre-record these videos and upload them on your website.

Another great way to make the most of video content is by creating videos to simulate the test drive experience. You can create a team who will do this and get someone who can provide detailed and vivid descriptions of how it feels to drive around every car you sell.

3. Upload Test Drive Videos

Digital car dealers are becoming more creative. They’ve found a way of skipping the part wherein the buyer has to go to the car dealer’s showroom. They did this by delivering the test drive car to the prospective buyer’s home or office. But the more creative ones have found a way to skip even this part.

One of the solutions they’ve found to skip the test drive is to record videos of someone doing the test drive. They get someone to drive the model car and another person to record the experience. The designated driver starts the car and drives it around. 

The driver describes how it feels to drive the model car during the entire duration of the test drive.  It can be as detailed as saying how the accelerator feels when you floor it, how the brake feels when you step on it, and how the shift stick feels when you move from one gear to the next.  Apparently, several prospective buyers find these uploaded videos acceptable substitutes for the in-person, physical test drive. 

There might come a time when more creative digital car sellers will come up with even more advanced and imaginative ways. For one, they can design and develop test drive simulation videos using virtual reality (VR) and alternate reality (AR) devices. This might take a couple more years to develop, but the technology is already there.

4. Be Creative Yet Keep The Process Simple

Other aspects of the car buying experience have nothing to do with how powerful the engine is or how comfortable it is to ride the car. The entire process of buying a car itself impacts the customer’s buying experience. Keep in mind that most car buyers know and feel that they’re making a major purchase or buying decision.  

Tech-savvy buyers often turn away when they have to do so many cumbersome things involving paperwork. It’s not that they’re getting rid of paper transactions on purpose. The more likely reason is that they’re fully aware of what technology can accomplish. They know all paperwork and paper transactions can be converted into digital processes and digital outputs.

Tech-savvy buyers know that the entire paperwork process involved in buying cars can be done away with completely. Therefore, it is vital to automate your business processes. Car dealers who can sell cars to them without using a single sheet of paper are thus more appealing and attractive. Instead of sending them piles of sales and financing paperwork, digital car dealers show them pictures of all angles of the car, including detailed shots of the vital parts, features, and components. They also came up with videos that would show the car buyer everything they need to know about the car, its features, functionalities, and performance.

5. Power Your Tasks With Customer Relationship Management Software

From the point of the digital car dealer, another aspect of the car selling process is what goes on behind the website. Most tech-savvy car buyers just launch the website and start browsing the pictures of model cars. They scroll up and down descriptions and click pictures of what they like. Some of them might even venture to click the Live Chat message tab to speak with someone who can answer. 

What all prospective buyers don’t know, and may even be unaware of is everything that goes on behind the websites. People who’ve done a lot of marketing and sales campaigns know that behind every sale or conversion is a lengthy process of attracting leads, positioning the offer, scheduling the sales presentation, overcoming objections, and persuading the prospective buyer to write the check to close the sale.

One of the best and most effective ways to enhance the marketing and sales capabilities of digital car dealers is to adopt and implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solution platform. Here are some of the ways CRM can power your customer engagement capability:

  • CRM can provide your sales staff with a powerful hub and software tool for handling leads and prospects.
  • CRM enables your sales staff to make the most of your database on customer profiles and information. 
  • Sales and marketing staff can design and implement an email lead generation, presentation, and follow-through campaign based on what you have in your CRM database. 
  • CRM software will give your sales team the capability to reach out to leads, prospects, and customers in one integrated platform. They can receive and send replies to mobile phone text messages and chat messages through the CRM platform. This creates a seamless communication channel between your sales staff and your leads and prospective buyers.

Conclusion

Competition among auto dealers has always been challenging. Auto dealerships have been hard-pressed to look for viable solutions to increase sales. Since most buyers would prefer not to go to car dealerships, sales teams might as well find ways to bring the car dealership to these buyers. This article discussed some practical ways to engage this emerging generation of tech-savvy car buyers, most of whom prefer to do everything online.