Conquest Marketing in Automotive

Everyone in the automotive industry understands that customers have many options when purchasing a new vehicle or getting one serviced. Standing out among the competition while developing brand loyalty is fundamental to running a successful dealership. Conquest marketing is a great tool to raise awareness of your brand and increase the size of your customer base.

What Is Conquest Marketing?

Conquest marketing is about finding new local customers who don’t own a vehicle from your dealership or visit for service. It is often used to gain customers by incentivizing them to visit your store, rather than a competitor. A conquest marketing plan succeeds or fails on the data and marketing used in a campaign.

Leverage Data to Identify High-Value Targets

conquest marketing

Information sources such as consumer databases and vehicle registration lists are valuable resources when putting together a conquest marketing campaign. Using these sources paired with data propensity modeling provides insights into what prospective buyers want. It can also provide predictions on what may influence where they make their next purchase.

Marketers can then categorize their audience based on certain variables like their favorite brands, lease expiration dates, and geographic proximity to your dealership. This provides a useful focus to your marketing, rather than spending time and money on a disorganized campaign.

Personalize Messaging for Maximum Impact

Most customers are savvy enough to know when they’re getting the same advertising spiel that everyone else gets. To change consumer behavior, you must give people a good reason to do so. Personalized messages that explain why your dealership delivers more tangible benefits to the customer than they’ll get with their current favorite. Dynamic software solutions and CRM integrations streamline the process of tailoring message for customer type, highlighting the advantages of your offerings over your competitors with relevant talking points.

Emphasize Your Unique Value Proposition

Most dealerships have a similar lineup of cars to sell in their lots. So, what makes your dealership more attractive than others? The answer to that question is one of the keys to conquest marketing. It’s important to clearly communicate what is special about your establishment, be it the quality of your customer service, F&I products, or other benefits.

Retarget and Nurture Leads

Even the most compelling conquest marketing campaigns are not likely to be an overnight success. There’s no need to be discouraged if customers don’t quickly change their minds. A little persistence goes a long way. Follow-up emails and personalized deals keep your dealership front of mind so that when customers are ready to make a switch, they will remember your dealership more than others.

Common Pitfalls in Conquest Marketing

Simplifying The Audience
Cars come in many different shapes and sizes. Each brand and type of vehicle will appeal to different people depending on their lifestyle, interests, and budget. Treating a general audience without any nuance will only result in mediocre returns.
Taking Existing Customers For Granted
Any attempts to expand your customer base should not come at the expense of your current set of customers. Conquest marketing is an empty exercise without strong retention rates. Extensive loyalty programs and trade-in services make it more likely that people will return to your dealership for business.
Leaning Too Hard on Discounts
Severe discounts can help bring in new customers on a short-term basis, but the long-term ramifications can be precarious. It can teach shoppers to treat your brand as r cheap fallback option they can use if their preferred choice is out of their price range. It’s better for your future to emphasize the value of your offerings and the overall experience associated with your brand.
Failing to Measure Results
Clarity on the effectiveness of your conquest marketing strategy is impossible without measuring ROI data. Tracking engagement and conversions can show you which parts of your campaign are working and what elements need to be improved.

The Bottom Line

In a market as crowded as the automotive industry, conquest marketing can be the solution that delivers the desired market share. But this can only occur with the right combination of data usage and an understanding of what motivates customers to make certain choices.

Despite the provocative name, conquest marketing isn’t about pillaging customers from your challengers. It’s about building new relationships with them from scratch and cultivating that bond until you represent the number one choice in each customer’s mind. When done correctly, conquest marketing doesn’t get you one sale; it brings in business for years to come.

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