SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – OCTOBER 20, 2020
It’s no surprise that consumers turn to digital—especially mobile—as they shop for a car. But thanks to new data from Luth Research, we can see exactly how (and how much) digital shapes the auto customer journey. Check out the 900-plus digital interactions one consumer had leading up to her lease.
Auto marketers know that the average research timeline for a new car purchase can span months. Within that time, countless intent-driven micro-moments occur when consumers turn to their devices to answer a question or to address a need. Whether it’s a question about which car is the safest, which will fit a family of five with all their gear, or what the lowest monthly payment can be, these intent-driven moments are often Google Searches; and how auto brands respond in these micro-moments shape car buyers’ decisions.
But what exactly happens during those months of research? What types of exploration do consumers conduct? What do actual micro-moments look like?
Through new clickstream data provided by Luth Research’s opt-in panel (illustrating the order and pages a user visited), we are now able to answer those questions by analyzing the searches, clicks, website visits, and video views that makeup one individual’s path to purchase.1 The result is a granular view of how the key auto shopping moments play out in one consumer’s car-buying process.
The Implications for Auto Marketing
Ultimately Stacy leased an SUV that met the criteria she was searching for in her micro-moments. In her own words: “My most important criteria were a number of seats and cargo space to fit my whole family and all our gear.”
While Stacy is just one person, she is one of many auto shoppers looking to find the answers to their questions in micro-moments. Each of her 139 Google Searches, and the hundreds of interactions that followed, represent a series of opportunities for auto marketers to be there and to be useful. As a starting point for your brand, think about how you’re meeting potential car buyers like Stacy across the key auto shopping moments.
Is your brand there? With the majority of the car-shopping process moving online, and increasingly on mobile, it’s crucial that you be there when and where people are looking. Does your media plan make it easy for someone like Stacy to find answers, especially in search?
Is your brand useful? Beyond just being there, consider how useful your brand is. Does your brand answer the questions Stacy had about safety, seating capacity, and price? Do you make it easy to compare across models and competitor brands? And most importantly, since the majority of Stacy’s research happened on mobile, are those answers optimized for a mobile experience?
Are you holding your brand accountable for connecting in these moments? Make sure you’re measuring your brand’s share of these key moments. Are you incorporating all of the potential outcomes from mobile research—online and offline—into your attribution model? Are you accounting for the impact that mobile has on sales? Have you tested the impact of increasing mobile budgets in order to quantify the lift in sales?
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