AutoLeadStar, a complete marketing automation platform designed for dealers, recently compared dealerships across the automotive landscape and found technology-driven marketing is outperforming manual marketing by up to 4.5x. They focused on dealers investing in technology versus traditional methods and found a large disparity between those dealerships  updating their paid ads and inventory specials manually versus using technology-enabled solutions. 

One dealership in the data pool went from 110 leads per month manually to over 400 leads with an automated solution, and were able to decrease their ad spend from over $11,000 to $8,000 within the month of September.

“It’s shocking how much money dealers are throwing away on extra fees or their own internal team using manual-based systems for determining ad spend,” said Ilana Shabtay, director of marketing for AutoLeadStar. “Dealers who are using AI-backed solutions to pivot quickly based on not only buyer demand, but inventory levels and the dynamic market, will be the true winners coming out of 2020.” 

Inventory shortages, an end to the buyer surge that we saw this summer and a general malaise over websites and offers as the holidays loom, mean dealerships need to be more savvy than ever before with their ad strategies and dollars. In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal article pointed to a comeback in the third quarter backed in part by new drivers buying their first vehicle after being concerned about public transportation. 

“We’re encouraging all of our dealer friends to explore technology-backed marketing solutions if they aren’t already engaging with them. We found one dealership had a 350% increase in leads during their first month using our tech-based solution and were able to decrease their spend by 163%,” said Shabtay.  

For additional information, visit www.autoleadstar.com.