We’re Perrys, one of the largest independently owned car dealer groups in the UK.
“Trust and recommendations are huge in our industry, but until now we’ve been unable to really harness that customer advocacy. Referrals and loyalty schemes haven’t painted a true picture of where our customers COULD come from. Then we worked with Herdify to find this out – and discovered that it was 9 x times cheaper to acquire customers from these community areas.”
~ Louise Bradbury, Head of Digital & CRM, Perrys
Before Herdify
As a car dealership group with more than 110 years of history, we knew that customers were coming to us through word-of-mouth and local advocacy. We thought that these recommendations were as a result of social media activity and customer proximity to our showrooms.
We were suffering from the same challenges as many in our industry – CAC had gone up exponentially, the cost of impressions had increased by 25-30% across all channels, and the IOS privacy updates had impacted the performance of social channels.
When Herdify explained the behavioural science behind herd mentality and community growth, we understood that this was something we should tap into.
After Herdify
We worked with Herdify to apply their community detection insights across our paid digital channels.
We were able to understand which community areas were driving customer footfall, and therefore further target those locations to drive community conversation and growth.
Herdify’s community insights also enabled us to develop awareness around one of our newer, underperforming showrooms in Kent.
By detecting where community conversation was already happening about the showroom, we could target those locations with our marketing activity to turn recommendations into revenue.
The numbers
- It was 9 x cheaper to acquire customers by targeting our brand community areas than any other method we’ve tried so far
- 56% of new customers came from community hotspot areas
- The amount that we saved on acquisition costs over three months would cover the cost of using the Herdify tool for over a year
Behind the scenes
In the automotive industry, trust and recommendations are key to the buying journey. As marketers, we know that – and we know that these recommendations are most powerful when they occur within “real” communities, ie not on social media or online, but rather among friends and family.
We are a legacy business that has grown through word-of-mouth; it’s always been an important part of our growth story. We know that cars with our dealership stickers serve as adverts in themselves. They often trigger conversations (“Where did you buy your car?” “Would you recommend Perrys?”), and customers will visit our dealership as a result.
The issue is that there is so much consumer choice, and consumers often get confused or forget about the recommendation. By being strategic with our marketing activity through Herdify’s community location insights, we have been able to target those locations where community advocacy is already happening.
In this way, our digital ads have served as a nudge – or a reminder – to visit our showrooms, reinforced by the recommendations from people our customers know and trust in the real world.
