Motor Trader The award-winning and longest running UK magazine for car retailing professionals. Your first stop for News, Jobs and Reports for the motor industry.
This year marks an important milestone for Auto Trader; on the 29th June we’ll be hosting our 10th annual Auto Trader Click Awards at Banking Hall, in the City of London. For a decade now we’ve been celebrating the very best in digital retail, rewarding those dealers that are pushing our industry forward.
The automotive retail sector is fast evolving, and over the last 10 years we’ve seen a huge amount of change, not least the growing influence of digital, which is now central to the car buying journey. That’s why today’s most successful dealers are those that are truly embracing digital, whether using data to effectively manage their stock management, creating engaging online forecourts that feature strong imagery and videos, or developing compelling multi-channel marketing campaigns.
This is reflected in the 2017 Awards. We’ll be presenting six categories designed to showcase those dealers of all sizes that are using digital to not only survive in this challenging market, but to thrive. This includes two brand new self-nomination categories open to independent, franchise and supermarkets:
The Best Transformation of the Year Award is for dealers that have made a single or companywide initiative, online or offline, which has helped their business meet the challenges of today’s fast evolving market, such as introducing a new company-wide culture or an engaging customer channel.
The Digital Innovator of the Year Award is just that; we’re looking for the individuals and teams that are true innovators and leading from the front. This category will reward those that saw a genuine business challenge or an objective within their organisation and answered it with a creative digital solution, such as a new marketing initiative, or the adoption of a data management solution.
As always, 2017 will feature categories that qualifying dealers will be automatically entered into: Best Digital Customer Experience, Digital Retailer of the Year, Data Driven Retailer of the Year and Best Performing Dealer on Auto Trader.
As well as a great networking event, the Awards ceremony will be an opportunity to hear fresh insight from Nick King, as well enjoy award-winning broadcaster, Steph McGovern, share her experiences as one of the BBC’s leading business and economic reporters. So what are you waiting for? Enter one of the self-nomination categories today by visiting www.autotraderclickawards.co.uk/, where you’ll have until 5th May 2017 to tell us what makes you a true digital innovator. Good luck!
Le Etta Pearce, is group sales director at Auto Trader