Data mining essential for stock turn and profit boosts

Dealers could see significant stock turn reductions and profit increases by revising their on-line vehicle marketing and data mining policies, according to Cambria Automobiles’ marketing and innovation head Ian Godbold.

He was speaking during the Motor Trader Summit in Edgbaston.

“Focus on making your business simpler, leaner and more data-oriented,” said Godbold. “There are three key inefficiencies worldwide: Stocking, optimising and pricing.”

He said dealers needed to continuously drill down into the data on who was visiting their sites and how they were being used, so that web pages with zero engagement could be removed, bot-generated traffic weeded out and form conversion rates identified, along with cost per engagement and conversion figures. Dealers should also review KPIs and make use of wider information streams available to them, and link these together.

Godbold said that understanding effective on-line vehicle marketing was the key to speeding up stock turn and maximising profit. He said refined processes that led to ‘marginal gains’ across dealerships were significant profit boosters.

According to Godbold there was grater profit potential from selling two cars in 15 days that earned £1,500 each, and could be upsold with service plans that one with a £2,000 profit that took 30 days to sell.

He said dealers needed daily web reports to flag up any vehicles that were not put online when taken into stock, 20 images per vehicle, walk round video and ‘humanising’ descriptions was essential.

The Motor Trader Summit was themed around Profitable Digital Marketing in 2019 with sessions covering how dealers can optimise their digital spend, the effective use of CRM data, customer engagement and digital retailing and profitability.

The IMI accredited event included two keynote speaker sessions with Martin Sewell of the digital Rockar business and Ian Godbold of Cambria Automobiles giving presentations on key issues impacting dealers.

The event, attracting an audience of 150 included Q&A session offering delegates the chance to put their questions to the speaker line-up.