Analytics and big data are frequently used terms in the automotive world these days—and many dealers are ready to take the next step in mining their data to help boost sales. One emerging trend in this area is called buyer detection, which has been proven to help dealers significantly improve sales close rates.

What Is It?

Buyer detection is about making big data actionable. By collecting and analyzing online automotive shopping activity, email engagement, website activity, and the dealer’s offline sales and service data, then using that data to identify in-market buyers, dealers can arm their sales team with the information it needs to focus its sales efforts and close more deals.

Buyer Detection Benefits

Buyer detection gives dealers the ability to track individual customer activities across much of the automotive web, scores their likelihood to be in-market for a vehicle, and empowers them to intelligently engage those buyers at the right time.

The three main issues addressed via buyer detection techniques are:

• Which customers are actually ready to buy? This allows dealers to focus on customers who are most likely to buy in the short term.
• What are your customers shopping for online? Outsell has found that 24% of people researching vehicles on a dealership website are shopping specific vehicle inventory—if not a certain model, then certainly a style such as sedan or SUV. This data is extremely valuable to a dealer.
• Which customers are considering defecting from your brand for their next vehicle? Of that 24% with a specific type of vehicle in mind, 40% of them are shopping multiple brands, and one in five are primarily interested in a brand other than yours. However, more than 99% of the original 24% have purchased a car from you before. Knowing about these in-market customers can give your sales team the edge it needs to bring them back into the fold.

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