IN THIS fifth edition of Dealer Talks, the podcast series brought to you by Gumtree Cars, in partnership with GoAutoMedia, we explored the importance of dealers building virtual relationships with prospective car buyers on the Road to Recovery.

The pandemic has seen a reduction in walk-in customers for car dealers and this means that dealers are increasingly needing to interact with customers over the phone, virtually through online stock listings or by sending ‘video inspections’ of cars to customers’ phones or emails.

We talked to James Boysons, brand strategist at YouTube and to James O’Neill, the CEO of WildJar, a phone management and monitoring company

James Boysons

James Boysons, shared insights that during the pandemic YouTube, already Australia’s most popular video platform, had seen further increases in watch time.  

He explained how YouTube can become a virtual salesperson in a virtual showroom to deliver tailored video messages to intending car buyers.YouTube can measure if a customer watched a dealer’s ad, visited the dealer’s website or walked into the dealership.

James O’Neill talked about recent record call volumes to dealers as well as a subsequent increase in missed calls due to reduced staffing levels.

James O’Neill

We heard that most calls to dealers come from their Google My Business listing and call tracking has revealed that 98 percent of buyers call a local dealership because that is where they want to go. The data confirms that only 2 percent of car buyers will ring the competing dealership up the road.

We learned that in a COVID world, dealers need to work harder with their video leads and phone calls to enable more sales both online and over the phone by delivering value up front rather than holding out for the buyer to walk-in.

By John Mellor