Automotive Trends of 2024: Stay Ahead of the Competition with Data

Steering into the future, the automotive industry in 2024 is not just about horsepower and sleek designs; it's a data-driven revolution that paves the way for top consumer and marketing automotive trends. These trends redefine how we drive, connect, and experience the road ahead.  

The highly competitive automotive industry is no longer siloed at brick-and-mortar dealerships —instead, it’s completely entrenched in the e-commerce and digital marketing world. It’s clear that a successful path ahead for automotive companies is to lean into the automotive trends of 2024 that will bring the best ROI — and that’s by focusing on the customer through data-driven strategies.  

Let’s dive into three ways automotive businesses can stay ahead of the competition by understanding and targeting their customers using modern data strategies.  

Future-Proof Your Dealership’s Website with First Party Data

Brick-and-mortar car dealerships understand that it’s important to embrace the power of digital marketing in 2024 and beyond. However, the biggest online automotive trend in 2024 goes beyond the basics of having a digital marketing expert on your team, setting aside a budget for digital marketing, and understanding the return on investment of digital advertising... this is where first party data strategy comes in.  

Car dealerships of all shapes and sizes will benefit from embracing first party data solutions into their business in 2024. From large dealerships to smaller, family-owned dealerships, first party data is the future of getting and targeting customers online. First party data solutions allow dealerships of all sizes to better understand their customers, allowing them to deliver the best customer experience.  

What is first party data?

A business or organization collects first party data directly from its customers and website visitors. This type of data is gathered directly from individuals and customers, making it reliable and valuable. This information can be gathered through various customer touchpoints and interactions, such as website visits, feedback forms, email subscriptions, and customer registrations.  

For those in the automotive industry, there are some important questions you should ask yourself. What types of data is your dealership sitting on? CRM? DMS? Email newsletter subscribers? Website visitors? All of this is considered first party data, and with the right technology in place, dealers will be able to act more quickly on vehicle inquiries and customer requests. It will also allow dealers to understand the customer's journey to make more efficient marketing and advertising decisions.  

First Party Data as an Automotive Trend

In 2023, many car dealerships already know the importance of online car purchases and how that relates to SEO. For dealers who have invested in an SEO strategy recently, it is critical to take steps to harness the data hitting your website, particularly for those sites with higher organic traffic levels that can't be tracked in many cases for attribution.

First party data solutions are an immediate solution that car dealerships can use to avoid the disruption that is coming to the online marketing community through the deprecation of third party cookies. The time to act is now.

How Kia is Using First Party Data

There was a recent case study published on Think with Google about how Kia used first party data to boost its business. In the study, Kia saw incredible results utilizing first party data solutions including customer matching based on the insights gathered. These results included quadrupling Kia’s conversion rate, as well as increasing its click-through rate by 268%. Kia also reported a new-user engagement rate of 55%.  

“The agency team helped us deploy Google Analytics for one of our regional subsidiaries, which helped us bring dealer CRM data together with our Kia app and website data,” Artur Martins, SVP global chief brand officer and chief experience officer at Kia, shared in the study. “This data hadn’t been previously used for marketing purposes due to data silos with dealers. But once we connected our first-party data, we were able to use Customer Match to reach people who engaged with us on our Carnival website, along with others like them.”

With first party data insights, gone are the days of one-size-fits-all approaches to marketing. Instead, dealerships are ushering in a new era of efficiency with first party data, audience-based strategies, and data-driven customer segmentation to drive personalization like never before in 2024.

Stay Ahead of Automotive Trends: Customer Reviews and Customer Experience

According to the annual report from Reputation, customer reviews and customer experience reigned supreme when it came to customer buying power in 2023. We predict this trend will continue into 2024 and beyond.  

It was reported that 74% of customers required a dealership to have a four-star rating or higher when considering them to make a purchase. It was also reported that 84% of customers took dealership evaluations into consideration during the purchase period. With ratings and reviews being so important in the vehicle buying process, it’s interesting to note that the number of reviews increased by 11% each year, with 2023 being the year with the highest number of newest reviews.

The number of customers in Generation Z who look at reviews is astronomical in comparison to the overall number of customers. It was reported that 93% of Gen Zers look to reviews to help them in their purchase decision-making process. They are also two times more likely than other generations to allow social media to play a factor in their choice of a dealership.  

Additionally, this study data showed that a brand’s Reputation Score was directly correlated to a dealership’s sales. For instance, between the years 2022 and 2023, car dealerships that had an increase of 150 in their Reputation Score saw their sales grow by 10%. This proves how imperative a dealership’s optics on the web are when it comes to affecting the trust of potential customers. In 2024, car dealerships must focus on managing their customer feedback and online reviews to set themselves up for unbounded success.

Meet Us at NADA

In conclusion, the automotive world is constantly evolving along with the times. Don’t get left behind when it comes to future-proofing your business.  

You can learn more about this and more coming up this week at NADA 2024. The stage opens with a couple of powerful speakers who likely could touch on this topic. Want to learn more? Meet us at NADA or click here to book a demo.