How Leads Can Become Your Next Big Automative Revenue Stream

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Running a small business in the automotive field is competitive and expensive. More auto repair shops, dealerships and a range of technological solutions hit the market every day with the potential to disrupt the entire industry. This means business owners who want to be successful in this sector must remain vigilant and take advantage of every opportunity possible.

Generating leads is tough, and converting them can seem downright impossible. Some automotive business owners focus more on appeasing current customers at the expense of attracting new ones. Other owners might fail to put a fully concentrated effort into converting a sales lead into a new client.

Go mobile with your marketing

From immersive augmented reality video games to dominating commercial transactions, it’s no secret that people are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to conduct the majority of their everyday tasks. This includes shopping for a car.

Consumers in the automotive industry just crossed a new threshold in this aspect as well. Now, for the first time ever, more than half of new-vehicle internet shoppers used a mobile device to assist them during the research aspect of purchasing a new car, according to the J.D. Power 2015 New Autoshopper Study. This 51 percent of respondents to the survey not only prefer to use a mobile device to research a new car, but they expect the option as well.

Small automotive companies that fail to effectively leverage a strategic mobile marketing campaign to assist potential new-vehicle buyers could potentially lose out on attracting a majority of the consumer base.

Nurture your leads

Just like you need to cultivate any seeds you plant in your garden, it’s also vitally important that you nurture your leads along the path to becoming customers. Once that initial contact has been established and a potential customer shows the slightest interest in your product or services, it’s imperative that you or your marketing team reach out and follow up with the curious party. Without re-establishing contact to follow up, the interested individual might forget about your company, get pulled in by a competitor or simply think you don’t want his or her business.

All too often, small automotive business owners are not performing this crucial follow-up step. Nearly 25 percent of respondents failed to follow up to a direct sales inquiry a customer made on their website, according to the Automotive Industry edition of Conversica’s Sales Effectiveness Report: Lead Follow-Up. If you let one out of every four persons visiting your website walk away without reaching out to see what it takes to get their business, you’re leaving money on the table.

While not every lead ultimately converts into a sale, making that extra effort to follow up with every last lead you generate can create that additional impetus you need to reach your next business milestone. Then, by carefully managing customer expectations, you ensure these newly converted customers stick around and turn into another consistent revenue stream.

Always be ready for the conversion

Once that big marketing lead finally converts, you need to have your operations geared up and running too quickly handle the new order. But what happens when an order comes in that’s more demanding than what your current capabilities can accommodate? Chances are, you’re going to need to rapidly scale operations and handle the surge in new business.

A successful automotive company will need a significant investment in machinery and equipment necessary to operate. Whether it’s diagnostic equipment, paint booths, emissions testing or more, each piece of machinery that’s purchased depletes savings, interrupts cash flow and carves out a chunk of your available working capital. Thankfully, automotive equipment leasing can help transform every lead into your next big revenue stream.

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