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Few industries are subject to as much scrutiny and complexity as the automotive category. Not only is every automotive sale highly subject to the personal needs and preferences of each consumer (i.e., in terms of things like safety ratings, style, features, cost and available financing, and more), there’s a lot of unpredictability in the overall decision-making process.

Yet the one thing that most automotive consumers seem to have in common is their reliance on digital content in the purchase process. According to an Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book study 88% of prospective buyers use the internet for their research.

Automotive buyers rely heavily on digital content to make purchasing decision says
However, consumers’ increasing reliance on online-based auto information doesn’t always translate to marketing opportunities for car manufacturers. In fact, according to the Autotrader/KBB study, 78% of new- and used-car shoppers turn to third-party sites to get vehicle information, compared with 57% who visited a dealership and 36% who went directly to an OEM (original equipment manufacturer – e.g., Ford, Toyota) site.

Furthermore, while consumers increasingly take it upon themselves to become more informed about car buying, their research efforts aren’t necessarily making them more visible to dealerships, or even to sales reps hoping to influence their decisions when (or if) they eventually visit a dealership.

For example, a 2015 Autotrader Automotive Buyer Influence Study reveals that 75% of buyers end up purchasing the same make/model they had in mind when they first visited the dealership. In addition, according to Harvard Business Review, 75% of buyers had not contacted the dealership before visiting, and 25% left without talking to anyone.

And even when sales reps are able to connect with a viable lead, it’s still difficult to determine where the lead is in the funnel, let alone what content the potential buyer wants – or how the lead wants to receive it – at any particular micro-moment of interaction.

According to Brain + Trust Partners’ founding partner Christopher Barger, only about 18 to 20% of an automotive OEM’s audience is in the market to buy a new vehicle in any given 12 months. Such a long, unpredictable sales cycle makes it challenging for marketers to quantify the ROI of their content efforts, let alone accurately analyze any resulting insights to inform the direction of their future content programs and campaigns.

Fortunately, a key solution to many of these problems might just lie in the power of technology – specifically data mining and personalization. “The tools now exist to more deeply understand individual customers or drivers more thoroughly than ever,” Christopher says. “By mining social networks and integrating (the resulting information) with other available data sources, we can develop a more genuine understanding of our customers’ needs and wants, and develop far more specific, far more relevant content accordingly.”