Knowing where a consumer is in the vehicle purchase process is critical when it comes to advertising strategies. Let’s face it — a much different approach is required for effectively communicating and engaging with consumers who are in the market to buy a car in the next five years versus those who are ready to buy within the next five weeks.
Video has always offered automotive advertisers huge opportunities when developing their advertising strategies to engage consumers and ultimately drive business. Today’s marketers have gotten even more sophisticated as viewing has shifted across screens by extending the power of video to various devices — from mobile to laptops and tablets.
And once again, marketers are raising the bar by using video backed by data from high-quality consumer sources to improve their overall marketing efforts and drive more car sales.
Following are outlines of five emerging trends when it comes to data-driven video, and how these trends are shaping today’s automotive marketing landscape.
Better Targeting, Better Results — Auto marketers can now extend targeting beyond age and demographic information to a wide range of attributes and behaviors. For example, they can now target those consumers who are actively in the market for a car, ones who own a competitive brand or people who have browsed specific models online. And marketers can also leverage first-party data to reach current owners based on past behaviors or purchase trends. They can also target consumers online based on TV viewing, such as those who have seen a competitor’s ad.
Broad Reaching Benefits for All Advertisers — Data-driven video offers decisive yet broad-reaching measurement, which gives marketers a powerful reach for desired audiences using sight, sound and motion to deliver a brand message. It also allows regional advertisers to easily customize campaigns such as sales events or promotions for certain groups of consumers or at certain times of the year while providing precise targeting and creative flexibility to customize messages at the local dealer level.
Improved Cross-Screen Strategies — The manner in which car buyers consume media has shifted over the last decade, particularly when it comes to cross-screen consumption. As such, marketers who employ cross-screen TV and video strategies often find themselves driving ROI far above what they could with a siloed approach. Today’s tools and best practices allow auto marketers to thrive in this new and converging world of screens in order to reach an adequate number of the right consumers at the right cadence, to drive action — up to and including conversions.
TV Buys Get Boost with Digital Data — Highly accurate auto data sources, traditionally only available in digital, can now be tied to television viewing which helps inform TV buys to enhance targeting. For instance, a marketer could determine the best programs, networks or dayparts to target frequent visitors to their site or a competitor’s site. The cost to reach a strategic target on TV can be greatly reduced, and efficacy improved.
Data Drives Results — In the end, all that really matters is driving sales. But in the journey to move cars off the lot, marketers have many different goals. Maybe they’re looking to measure brand engagement. In this case, a brand impact study like Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings may be used. Another marketer might be trying to measure online searches of their vehicle, or visits to their Website, or how online video campaigns work in tandem with a TV ad campaign. These metrics, along with hard sales metrics — both online and offline — help tell the most complete story throughout the marketing funnel.
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