Case Study: The Top 3 Ways to Ethically Target Foot Traffic that Enter a Competitor’s Dealership Yard/Lot

Let’s talk about the ethical way you can hyper-target onto your competitor’s foot traffic for literal cents on the dollar

Once a year, all of you do it.

You spend 10,000’s of dollars setting up your temporary fencing, getting signage printed to wrap the entire perimeter of your yard/lot and then the blow the equivalent of a small countries GDP on advertising your ‘Mega Sale’ across all of mass media in your DPA.

What if there was a better way though, to find new customers, reduce the need to discount your stock and also take a large untapped portion of your competitors market share, while they foot the bill to bring in the prospects.

What we are about to delve into is 100% ethical to do, easy to replicate time and time again and it’s not restricted to location, make, model or sales discounting.

There is a way to harness every single one of your competitor’s ‘mega sale’ expenses while targeting their prospects for literally as little as $0.002 per person!!

Using the power of Facebook’s 273,000 demographic touch points, as well as some crafty geo-locating advertising, you can tap into the foot traffic of every competitor’s dealership in and out of your DPA.

Read on below of the top 3 ways to ethically target foot traffic that enter a competitor’s dealership yard/lot and how BidPixel has rolled out this strategy to dealerships time and time again.

Number 1 – Geo-target their lot/yard during a ‘mega sale’

Mega sales are expensive and dealerships use them to not only liquidate vehicles but also to rapidly fill the top of their sales funnels with new prospects.

The problem is though, these prospects are drawn in by a bargain and to liquidate your sale setup costs let alone the reduced vehicle margins is a hard slog.

Therefore, why not capitalise in your competitor’s sales, and use their advertising expenses to grow your own cheap top of funnel prospect list?

Facebook’s (and Instagram’s) advertising platform affords you the ability to narrow down the geography of your ads to a 1 mile (or 1 kilometre for us Aussies ??) radius. While this is not tight enough for targeting a competitors yard, you can then go on to exclude the outlying areas around the dealership to pinpoint their exact yard and anyone walking around within in it.

Sounds great yeah?

It doesn’t stop there though. It’s one thing to be able to target the prospects flooding to your competitor’s ‘mega sale’, it’s another thing to then capture their attention and get them interested in your vehicles as well.

Number 2 – Educate and Motive these prospects

This is where you become different to every other dealership in your approach. Everyone else is out there screaming “buy my cars”, “Sale, Sale, Sale” etc. They are racing to the bottom and the prospects are only motivated by price.

Our research shows however, that a prospect is 10 times more likely to buy off a brand that takes the time to educate them first.

So how do you educate these prospects? The very same people that literally just walked onto the lot of your competitor?

You produce quality video content that educates the prospect on how to purchase a new car. It might be tips on how to spot a lemon, details on ANCAP ratings, or even tricks to negotiate on price.

Whatever it is, don’t sell…It is likely that your potential buyers will always be stepping into your competitor’s yard as part of their consideration process, but this strategy is based on the fact that the consideration process doesn’t stop when they leave the dealership.

Number 3 – Retarget them with some irresistible motivation once they head home to think about their upcoming purchase.

Here’s the real leverage that your competitors DON’T do. The beauty of targeting them initially is that you can now retarget them, when they are ready and while they are online.

Bonus – This strategy doesn’t just work when your competitors are having a sale

This isn’t a time-based strategy that we discussed above. This is a very tangible strategy that BidPixel implements daily for dealerships on our exclusive packages.

If you work with us to harness your digital marketing prospecting, and you are part of our exclusive list (those dealers that lock their competitors out of ever using us), we offer this as an ongoing strategy, geo-targeting as many competitors lots in your DPA 24 hours a day.

It’s this level of intent based targeting that allows you to have your finger on the pulse and allows you to unlock potential sales as they peruse their options.

It is likely that your potential buyers will always be stepping into your competitor’s yard as part of their consideration process, but this strategy is based on the fact that the consideration process doesn’t stop when they leave the dealership.

Getting your dealership ads in front of potential buyers after they have left your competitors yard makes sure that your dealership is at the forefront of your local potential buyers’ mind when their purchase intent is at its highest.