Buzzwords don’t sell cars. Marketing leaders, don’t let yourself get caught up in the latest targeting catchphrase to make a campaign solution sound better. The online marketing community is filled with fancy 1st party terms like predictive audiences and cookie-free.
Common Sense
You’re trying to sell cars, maybe a specific model, or a specific segment class. Buzzwords don’t sell cars. At BLVD, we work on behalf of many automotive brands that want to sell a particular vehicle in a typical two month campaign period. Basics: the type of vehicle in your garage today is the greatest indicator of what you are likely to buy next. Also, every OEM has a tremendous amount of data on vehicle purchase patterns. They know what their audience is ‘moving to’ and ‘coming from’. Use this data… we do. So now BLVD taps our proprietary vehicle ownership data to select specific owners of competitive brands and segments that have the best likelihood to convert to our client’s brand – based on what they own now, but also their income, family size, and more. We select names and addresses… even though we rarely mail anything.
Don’t Stop There
In the luxury segment, leasing is prominent, so BLVD considers how long these owners have had their vehicle and factors this into our data selection strategy.
Not Done Yet
BLVD also applies selection logic based on the distance to the nearest target brand retail outlet. We want it to be easy to get your product, and we have historical performance data that tells us how far is too far.
Weeding
BLVD finds conquests purchases, not returning owners. So a defined level of current owners for the brand is taken out of our target audience selection. Other strategic household demographics weed out additional undesirable audiences. BLVD knows that the higher the household income, the higher the frequency of new vehicle purchase or lease. Depending on the situation, other demographics come into play as well. BLVD considers life events as well. Think about your own history, when you got your license, graduated high school or college, and got your first job. Think about when you got married, purchased a house or moved, had your first or second child, and even retired. Did your vehicle needs/desires change in a relatively short period around these events?
Channels
BLVD starts with a name and address and connects it to email and other online channels so that we can reach the target audience wherever they may be, whenever they are identified in the channel. The traditional purchase funnel is no longer a steady flow from top to bottom. There is no steady flow from broad to refined, consideration to purchase. Consumers bounce all over in no specific pattern in a hyper-connected world of information. So the notion of using “Big Data” in a “programmatic” strategy sounds efficient. However, it is not worth the cost and effort. BLVD reaches the target audience whenever we identify them, on whatever channel they are on, every time we possibly can during a campaign.
The is no right time or a right channel. Your target audience is always going to be preoccupied with doing something else. There is no good time to interrupt a consumer with your ad, but if it catches their attention, and they are at a stage of ownership where they have the potential to make a purchase, BLVD puts your offer in front of them.
Control and Measure
Buzzwords don’t sell cars. BLVD starts with a name and address. This gives us the ability to match sales to our target campaign audience. It allows us to prove our sales results. We also compare the target audience to a control audience, so we measure the effectiveness of who is marketed to vs. who is not for a specific campaign.
Results
BLVD deployed this scenario and these strategies for a luxury brand and has consistently achieved thousands, yes thousands of unit sales in select markets during a two month period. The ROI is so good that client’s typically come back for more. We are really one and done.