Differentiating your dealership to create loyal customers

An interactive touchscreen kiosk can make a great business case for your dealership, one that will attract independent buyers who want to direct their own searches.

Gaining customers for your car dealership is different from attracting consumers to a more general type of retail store, due to the significant nature of leasing or buying a vehicle. Shoppers want to perform ample research to ensure they trust both you and the car or truck they are about to drive home. This means you need to promote both your dealership brand and the features of your vehicle lineup in every way possible. Digital kiosks have become an important part of the car buying experience because they provide information in a highly accessible format.

Brand reinforcement
You undoubtedly have several factors that set you apart from the other dealerships in your area, whether it's your connection with the community, the way your staff members treat customers or the savings you can offer buyers. It can be hard to get these specific messages across in an era when consumers like to do everything themselves. This is where the opportunity for digital kiosks with touchscreen technology comes in.

When a potential customer arrives at your dealership, they often have a lot of research in hand. Your custom kiosk can provide more clarity, credibility and brand consistency with information that is unique to your dealership, helping to inform a purchase decision. With a kiosk, the customer is in control on a touchscreen, which is a natural extension of the independent buyer process and can help create a positive customer experience.

It can be hard to express branded messages in an era when consumers like to do everything themselves.

With a kiosk, interactive menu choices can be devoted to the many elements of your brand. Physical features of the dealership can be promoted on these screens, as can the special services you offer. If you pride yourself on service capabilities or can give buyers perks such as free car washes, there is room to highlight these benefits. You also have space for testimonials from happy customers to let incoming shoppers know what to expect.

Digital content can be repurposed from your existing marketing assets. If you already have a good Web presence with video, that data can provide the skeleton of the content for the showroom kiosk and improve the mileage you get on that investment in visual materials.

Selling the options
In addition to promoting the benefits of your brand, a good interactive kiosk can also sell particular vehicles and accessories, displaying the varied selections on the screen and providing information and costs in a format that buyers, especially digital-native younger shoppers, enjoy. These custom selections may act as an upsell before staff members even speak directly to those customers. The buyers themselves can drive the journey to more optional features if you give them a clear path.

Future contact
What if a shopper is just browsing in your showroom, not ready to make a purchase? Well, a kiosk may give you the best chance to reach out to that individual with additional options. He or she can sign up for email notifications from your dealership if the options on the display seem interesting. Then, you can send promotions to expand the message that buying from you is the right move. If you ask for and receive a mailing list signup, a consumer walking out the door isn't a big problem - you now have a way to continue the marketing conversation.

Differentiating your dealership by catering to modern customers' shopping preferences can truly set you apart from competitors that stick with old-fashioned sales floor models. Good experiences with technology at a dealership can inspire both individual loyalty and positive reviews that draw in new customers to experience the difference for themselves.