As the automotive landscape continues to shift, purchase intent data has become the new mountain to climb. These next-level behavioral analytics represent a real turning point on the road to digital marketing success by delivering on the promise to provide visibility into untapped customer demand and drive higher volumes of qualified opportunities through your dealership’s marketing funnel. 

What Is Intent Data?

Simply put, intent data provides insight into a consumer’s specific purchase intentions; allowing you to identify if, what and when a person is actively considering buying, selling, trading or servicing a vehicle. Pulling from multiple digital sources, intent data can pinpoint where a prospect is in buying journey and enable informed, timely campaign responses.

How Is Intent Data Different?

To truly understand the insights provided by any source, it’s important to understand the context and from which specific activities the data comes. The most actionable intent data delivers real people engaging with your marketing and analyzes exactly what those interactions have been. Many sources provide only hints of behavior at a general contact and predictive level; however, technology is currently available that adds a layer of timing, relevance and circumstances within campaigns to provide a more comprehensive view than traditional profiling. 

Reimagine the Revenue Chain

Consumer data and experience technology identifies user intent by directly activating data and capturing shopping behavior. Because these nuanced activities occur within the dealership’s own digital ecosystem, the context is completely visible and actionable. Dealers not only gain intent data, but they are also able to follow the specific interactions in real-time with quality, personalized and dynamic messaging that automatically delivers the information the consumer needs to make a sales or service decision faster. Utilizing a platform scaled toward a consumer data experience drives an “always-on” environment of insight into your audience no matter what type of digital campaign you deploy.

Use Case Example

Is it fair to say that the consumer journey can change from wanting a new car to preferring a certified pre-owned vehicle before deciding to hold out a little longer on a purchase or trade and needing full-service maintenance instead? Absolutely. There are a dozen more scenarios similar to that one and your marketing efforts should pivot to each; to zig and zag as many times as the human brain changes its mind. Delivering critical content the customer demands at just the right time ensures your dealership always gets their business.

Is Intent Data Hard to Get and Use?

Intent data is still a new concept to many in automotive and so likewise, many fall short in leveraging it completely to benefit all of the profit centers in a dealership. Doing so can mean the difference between gaining the competitive advantage and creating positive momentum for both marketing and sales departments sooner rather than later.

If the concept is new to your dealership, it might be tempting to “wait and see” or “test the waters.” That can mean uploading a group of unengaged contacts for conquest or even taking it one step farther to begin a drip campaign. These strategies are great starts. And moving consumers down a qualification sales funnel will certainly yield some early wins. 

Taking it a step farther, developing multiple streams of messaging based on intent data and behavioral analytics not only provides deeper insights and immediate access to well-qualified engagers in real-time, but also serves up a constant flow of leads to sales, service and other departments supported by context so that they can close more appointments and more deals with their lips already loaded. Intent data is most valuable because you become much smarter about who’s in-market and what they care about. Sales can take the handoff much more quickly with a proactive and informed approach.

Activate Purchase Intent Data

True business intelligence lets buyers’ interactions be the guiding force that allows your dealership to break free of the restrictive persona models and limiting time- and demographic-based filtering. Elevating behavior marketing and intent data is crucial as consumers demand more than what historic data alone can show. 

The bonus? Valuable engaged opportunities crop up in data you might otherwise have abandoned or lost. Now, you can recapture and convert them before another dealership beats you to the punch. And now, you can reach new heights with a complete consumer journey and vehicle lifecycle business intelligence strategy.