Charity Dunning
Is your fixed operations department providing a streamlined mobile experience to customers in 2021? Improve customers' mobile experience in 2021.
Customers Expect A Streamlined Mobile Experience in 2021
Mobile users amount to over 80% of the U.S. population and the average user spends 3-5 hours a day on their phone, accounting for over 70% of web traffic. Those users are checking their devices an average of 150 times a day, using it as their primary shopping tool, and 88% more each year are consuming video through their smartphones.
Sure, you’ve heard some of those numbers before, but have you really thought about what those numbers could mean for your business, and ultimately, for your customer journey?
Take the Mobile Journey
At 80%, the likelihood of a customer finding your dealership or service center online rather than strolling by is at an all-time high. And those numbers rise significantly if you’re in a major metro area. 69% of online shoppers will make a purchasing decision based on the functionality of your website, along with the ability to get quick and easy answers to their questions. For example, if they don’t understand why a recommended service is needed, off they’ll go to a competitor’s location where services are explained and customers are educated.
When was the last time you took a look at your customers’ online journey? Let’s suppose you’re a service customer needing an oil change. From doing a local search on oil change prices nearby to scheduling online, how seamless is the process for your customers? How about finding the information they need on your service website, scheduling service appointments, or finding the answers to commonly-asked questions? How easy or difficult is online journey? If potential customers cannot find the information they are looking for within three clicks or less, their frustration will grow and they’ll leave your dealership website to one that is providing the information they need. Check out the Interactive Handbook here on how to better optimize your service website with Google My Business.
Mobile Functionality
How do your online fixed ops service customers convert? Do you give them the option to text, email, and fill out an online form? Or, to watch a video that promotes and educates your customers on services provided? Most service websites have the ability to print and call, which is fine, but greatly excludes the vast majority of customers who are using modern mobile technology to make purchasing decisions.
Consider the statistic above where 80% of users are on mobile. How does your service website function on mobile devices? If users can easily find what they’re searching for and schedule an appointment via their iPhone and android device, then you’re on your way to easing your customer’s mobile journey. If you offer only the conversion option to print, or only the conversion option to email, you are waving goodbye to an entire demographic of customers before they’ve even made a purchasing decision. How many cell phones have the ability to print? How many people are willing to hand over their email address before they’ve found what they are looking for?
If your potential customers are leaving your service website before they even know what great services you offer, then you’re losing out on customer loyalty and long-term business.
Organic Search
How do customers search for your dealership service department? Common search phrases include service type or service price and vehicle make/model. Have you searched for your dealership’s service center to find out what results you get? Are you the first in organic search results? FixedOPS Marketing can get you in top results organically without pricey investment in paid advertising.
Educate the Customer with Video Marketing
If a customer comes to your service website wondering about the difference between conventional and synthetic oil changes or what is included in a maintenance service, how are you educating your customers on your services? Rarely is video marketing used in fixed operations, and those who’ve recently caught on are far behind. FixedOPS Marketing, however, has been specializing in service videos since its inception and now offers over 150 service videos.
Over 50% of all videos are consumed on mobile devices. Fixed operations has vastly lagged behind on the trends of video mobile marketing for customers. Video marketing not only increases your online traffic but also helps to educate the customer long before they enter the store, as well as help Service Advisors educate the customer on declined services right there in the waiting room.
Video marketing can be a hassle for many dealerships, with management’s time and resources already at a limit. Not to mention, video planning, production, editing, and publishing can be hefty work for a staff that’s already busy. And video production costs can reach into the hundreds per hour. With this in mind, FixedOPS Marketing launched in 2019 with the mission to produce affordable video content that’s accessible to all of our customers. With over 150 videos‒created and copyrighted by us‒we offer our clients full access to this content at one flat monthly price. FixedOPS Marketing clients are encouraged to use these educational videos in their social media marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, and other digital marketing content, and we make it easy to do so. Video marketing alone has promised average monthly conversion rates of at least 20%, with many clients seeing much higher numbers.
Is the Mobile Journey Broken?
Are you aware of where you are losing your customers? Your numbers on traffic during your customer’s online journey may be very high, but do they compare with the actual traffic coming into your service center or show as increased lines per RO? Taking a close look at your data, and you may notice what a lot of dealers notice—that your service website is scaring your potential customers away long before you even see or speak to them!
If you track your data properly you’ll be able to see the frustration points in your service website. Are they trying to access more information, then fail to find it and therefore leave? Do they attempt to schedule service but only get an option to print, rather than schedule online or send a text message? If so, then you know that you are not offering the conversion tools that your customers want.
Understanding what pages are responsible for high dropoff numbers in customers is essential in understanding how your customers are experiencing your service website. Remember, customers form an opinion on your service department long before they ever enter it. Just because you don’t hear negative feedback from them, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Customers vote with their feet when they walk into a competitor’s service department.
If you don’t have analytics set up, or the time to set it up properly, services such as FixedOPS Marketing will provide you with the necessary data, as little or as much as you’d like, as often or infrequently as you’d like, directly to your inbox.
SEO and Google My Business also play a major role in helping customers find your service website. However, this can be a topic all on its own. It’s another service marketing option that FixedOPS Marketing offers and fully manages, so you don’t have to.
More and More Tools
The last thing you want in your service department is another tool that needs to be installed and staff-trained in the hopes that it integrates with your existing systems. It is possible to implement automation, mobile marketing, video marketing, and fixed ops marketing into your current system without having to spend time managing the software, overcoming large learning curves, or dealing with frustrating integration issues.
Any fixed ops marketing company should understand these concerns and be ready to put them at ease. Tools like FixedOPS Marketing integrate with your existing systems and if you’re unhappy, for whatever reason, we make it risk-free. We offer a ‘cancel anytime’ policy, with no fees or hidden charges.
Want more service marketing tips?
Contact us at marketing@fixedopsmarketing.com and we’ll help you with any questions that you may have with your service marketing needs and concerns.
About FixedOPS Marketing
To change an industry, you need BIG IDEAS. Our ideas are HUGE, and our goal is nothing less than completely shattering people’s ideas of what is possible with Service Marketing, and showing them products and solutions that will exceed all expectations while driving your revenue and profit through the roof. Come take a ride with us – this is going to be a fun journey!
January 31, 2024
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