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June 08, 2004
GM's test-drive results
GM rolled out its 24-hour test-drive program in April 2003. It's an outstanding bite-size chunk strategy that lets prospects try your product, no matter how expensive, in a setting that's familiar to them. Even if prospects don't purchase, they still have the potential to become an evangelist for the product because they have experienced it.
A factoid buried in a Wall Street Journal article today mentioned the program's results to date: 700,000 people have taken cars on overnight test drives, leading to sales of 240,000 vehicles.
That's a conversion rate of nearly 30 percent.
Other blogs that reference GM's test-drive results:
GM must be "formalizing" that strategy of late, because my experience since 1994 has been that car dealers generally will offer you the opportunity to take the car home "overnight" and return it the next day. The local Honda dealer pushed that hard, and we opted not to as we didn't want to be responsible for the vehicle for that long of a period of time.
Sidebar: A former car salesman told me the term they had for this kind of thing was "glue".
This is like bottled water companies marketing their product as "Atkins friendly". It's like, were there ever carbs in water? Intentionally, I mean?
(Not saying any of them have done that, although it amused me to see escargot marketed as "Atkins Friendly". Good grief.)
Typical of my experience was a few years ago, when I took an Audi TT out for an hour-long test drive. When I returned to the dealership, the salesman seemed visibly alarmed I was gone that long. I still bought the car.
Most car dealers I've dealt with won't even let you drive a car without a salesman going out with you. However, I remember a few years ago expressing an interest in a Saturn and those folks insisted I take that car home overnight. Of course, I bought it. :-)
Darrin's experience is more evidence that Saturn is an automotive industry marketing pioneer!
Ben,
Out of curiosity, why did you get an Audi (at the time)? The reason I ask is, for all practical intents and purposes, Audi *is* VW, except for under the hood. Some VW's have Audi engines (such as my wife's Jetta wagon).
I'm not knocking your decision, I am just curious about what tipped you in one direction vs the other. (I suppose I should really be going after the people who bought Plymouth Voyagers instead of Dodge Caravans, but hey.)
...answering my own question somewhat, I would suspect the TT did not have a VW equivalent.
Well, my decision was between a Plymouth Voyager and an Audi TT, so...
OK, not really.
My decision to purchase wasn't rational. It was a decision to join the Audi TT fan club. I don't recall where I first saw the car, but it spoke to me. It was the design. It was the retro-cool detailing. It was built for me. After an hour-long test drive, I wrote a $1,000 check to get on a waiting list. Nine months later, it arrived.
Same for me. I had a gut reaction. It was during the dot-com craze and demand for the TT made it such that it was impossible to find it at anything lower than $5K *over* asking price. Most places were selling them at $10K over. I had to wait for nine months as well for it to arrive on a boat from Germany (after being built in Hungary). Then, when I moved my family back to my wife's home town in Italy in 2001, I shipped it back on a boat to Italy (where I now pay $5.50 a gallon for gas!). It's in the blood.
Why doesn't GM start a rental car business to promote their vehicles? I have in the past tried to rent the same model vehicle I intended to purchase to have an extended experience with it.
This is the sort of thing that all companies should be doing. I really want to experince a car before buying it, half the time I go for a test drive the radio isn't even wired up so I can't listen to how it sounds, and you better believe I bring a CD along with me.
A car rental deal would be great, a friend rented a VW Beatle a while ago and was raving about it. Even though it's not his type of car and he didn't end up buying one he at least ended up speaking very well about the car. I wouldn't mind renting a car I'm interested in buying and taking it on a road trip or something to really try it out. Just the customer satisfaction and service alone will get people to buy.
An experiential rental program is a great idea. It would produce waves of buzz for great cars that might otherwise struggle against so many choices.
But it'll never happen.
Why? Most auto manufacturing marketing chiefs would rather be mauled to death by vengeful chupacabras than give up their insanely large advertising budgets.
A bigger ad budget each year for auto marketing honchos consolidates their power internally. As the wizard behind the company's Oz image, a big mass media budget makes CMOs VIPs within satellite industries like networks, ad agencies, and the press.
Not that image sells cars. For the most part, word of mouth does. But try telling that to most marketing execs in Detroit.
