What Benefits Will an Automotive POS Strategy Bring?
Before we start, we need to look at what an automotive point of sale strategy is and who would benefit from having one in place.
A good Point of sale strategy will ensure that plans are in place, to maximise the sales at the point of purchase, through the clever selection of marketing materials. These will usually sit on a dealer’s forecourt or within their showrooms, to promote new and used vehicles and add-ons.
The marketing materials themselves need to be effective and will usually be tested prior to mass roll out. Remember you need to ensure you have a POS strategy that will deliver results for the most effective overall cost.
Without prior testing, or working with a manufacturers recommendations, how do you know the materials you have selected will optimise your strategy?
You only have a split second to capture someone’s attention and entice them with your offers, so each piece of the POS strategy needs careful thought and planning.
It’s important to consider what spaces you have available to place your marketing materials. The most obvious ones on the vehicles are front windscreens, bonnets, tops of the vehicle and stands placed alongside the cars for sale.
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You can also take POS materials into the vehicles, advertising on rear view mirrors, gear sticks, steering wheels and more. There’s also clever materials that work well on dashboards, which is often a neglected area, but offers a good space for dealers to promote incentives.
A good Automotive POS strategy will usually run for a minimum of 3 years, with some brands running them for over 5 years. This tends to be the Approved Used car programmes that most manufacturers run across their network of dealer sites.
In between the Approved Used POS programmes, the motor groups and manufacturers will often run special events, incentives and short-term promotions that are in addition to their main programmes.
So there may be additional smaller POS strategies required throughout the year, to compliment the overall main project. These are usually setup to help boost the sales of new and used vehicles in quieter periods, or to quickly reduce surplus stocks.
It’s also important to take notice of the design of your POS materials, to ensure it fits in with your overall brand image. We have seen many examples, where the dealerships are mixing materials and designs, which promotes a poor brand image due to lack of consistency.
Once you have selected your POS materials and managed your budget, the next stage is to work out how everything will be managed across multiple dealer sites.
The most effective way would be to utilise an online ordering facility that can be managed either from marketing HQ, or directly from the dealers themselves.
This would help to increase the consistency of POS materials from one site to the next, reduce admin time and print costs. Dealer sites are also kept updated with all the relevant POS materials as they are launched.
Finally the key to planning a successful POS Strategy for your dealer network, is to ensure you have a partner that has plenty of experience in this area.
For ideas for your next campaign, you can check out a few of our Automotive POS strategies and projects here: