Maximizing Customer Retention with Clare Hetherington of DriveRightData

Clare Hetherington is the Marketing Manager at DriveRightData. She is a data-driven marketer, passionate about customer relationship management and the results that strategic marketing and marketing automation can deliver. At DriveRightData, Clare takes ownership of all global marketing activities, from branding, strategy, and value proposition building to lead generation and data insight.

In this episode…

Are you a tire manufacturer or retailer with a website showcasing your products? Do you include product and pricing information on your website, or do you ask that the customer call you to find out that information? If you require a call, you’re probably costing yourself business. Check out this episode of Gain Traction to learn more!

Buyer behavior is constantly evolving and has changed even more drastically since the start of the pandemic. As people have shifted to working from home, more and more shopping is being done online. According to Clare Hetherington from DriveRightData, customers who are willing to call for information only constitute about half of the average customer base. The other half is searching for information online, and if they have to make a call to find it, they’ll probably shop somewhere else. Are you keeping as many online customers as possible? 

In this episode of Gain Traction, Clare joins Neal Maier to discuss buyer behavior among those shopping for tires. They talk about customers who are and are not interested in calling about information. Many online customers want information immediately. If those online customers can’t easily find the product and pricing information they’re looking for, they’ll likely go elsewhere to do their shopping. Don’t miss this informative episode!

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Clare Hetherington talks about the history of DriveRightData and how the business has evolved
• How to find your tire size with DriveRightData
• The ways buyer behavior has changed since the pandemic started
• Why tire retailers need to have information and pricing available online
• How LinkedIn can be an effective marketing tool
• Why requiring customers to call you for information can cost you customers

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Clare Hetherington on LinkedIn
• DriveRightData
• How to Avoid Losing Website Visitors blog
• The Messy Middle 
• Neal Maier on LinkedIn 
• Mike Edge on LinkedIn
• Tread Partners

Thank you to our special partner Matt Peters from Tireweb Marketing, for connecting us with Clare and DriveRightData!

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Transcription

Announcer:

Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts, and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.

Neal Maier:

Hi. I’m Neal Maier, and I’m the host of Gain Traction, where I talk with top automotive business leaders about their journeys. Today I have a real treat. I’m going to talk to an expert about marketing and selling tires online. But before we jump in with today’s guest, this episode is brought to you by Tread Partners. At Tread Partners, we provide digital marketing for multi-location tire dealers and auto repair shops. By using our strategy, branding, and marketing services, we help shops sell more tires. Visit us at treadpartners.com.

Neal:

Today, I’m joined by Clare Hetherington, marketing manager for DriveRightData. DriveRight is an international provider of vehicle, tire, and wheel fitment data, and Clare is an expert on listing and selling tires online. Clare, welcome to Gain Traction.

Clare Hetherington:

Hi, Neal.

Neal:

Clare, let’s start off by talking a little bit about DriveRightData. Can you tell us some about the company?

Clare:

Yeah, certainly. We started a business back in 2001. Our founder, Richard Bailey, saw a niche for providing tire fitment data to the wheel and tire industry. As customer requirements grew, we expanded internationally to accommodate increased customer demand for both our tire and wheel fitment data; also introduced tire and wheel product data, and looked at different ways and better ways to deliver better user experiences with different search methods, such as license plate and make chassis model lookup. And the business has really evolved from there.

Neal:

You caught my attention at license plate. So, you have the technology where the consumer could enter their license plate and eliminate the process of looking for their tire size?

Clare:

Absolutely. I think one of the key things that we look at now is how do customers buy, and what makes it easier for them. One of the things that we look at is introducing that level of trust so that the consumer feels comfortable making that purchase online, and one of those ways is to make sure that they are beyond doubt able to identify their vehicle easily. And I think, as we lose touch with knowing our vehicles inside out and being able to change parts on them, and as they become more complicated, we start to lose that knowledge of which tire size is on our vehicle, and quite often even lose the ability to either go out and look at all the data that’s on the tire and find the tire size there. So, what we do is take that license plate, which is a license plate in a state that you would enter in, and from there you can then look up the exact vehicle and it will come up with the vehicle that is registered against that plate, and you can then find the vehicle fitment for that vehicle as well and match to Ace’s AAIA for North America.

Neal:

That’s incredible. It takes so much of the guesswork and just reduces that process. The consumer’s got to feel much more assured about the response, or about the size that’s returned.

Clare:

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things we’ve noticed recently is buying behavior has changed quite considerably since the pandemic. People became used to working from home. People are obviously not going out and not socializing, also looking at ways to reduce the times in store, so we’re looking to buy more online. And we’ve certainly seen that with wheels and tires as well, and the fact that people want to be able to buy products online now. Whereas previously a telephone number or a website where people would phone up and make inquiries was really popular, I think the pandemic has almost pushed people forward into not wanting that contact, and wanting to be able to just do their research, I think, online, and being able to make their decision as to who they want to supply their tires or wheels by research online, by what we call … or Google actually coined the phrase ‘the messy middle’. This is looking at buying behavior and the steps that people take, and it’s about …

Clare:

Because people are time-poor, they want to be able to do the research, and we tend to find that that can be, looking at our transactions, that Sunday night is a really good time for people to look for new tires. I think that … and this is my interpretation on it … is down to the fact that Sunday night tends to be when people have got the weekend out of the way, and that’s their time then. It’s like, “Right, okay, I need to get these tires sorted. Let me go online and have a look what tires I need for my vehicle, and where I’m going to buy them from.”

Clare:

So, they enter this stage that Google called a messy middle, and that’s where they evaluate the whole of the purchase. They look at, “What tires do I need? Where am I going to buy them from?” Another factor is that people, “I trust in the names that I’ve heard of,” and all the branding and marketing have come into it. But, ultimately, it’s being in that mix, and they will go onto a website and try and find the information they want. And one of the things that makes a difference, and that we’ve really seen helps drive people through to that customer basket, is being able to be confident that they are buying the right product for their tire, and the make chassis model dropdown or the license plate does that, and the fact that, with their license plate, you are picking up their vehicle and saying, “This is your vehicle. These are the tires that are the tire size for your vehicle,” and making that journey far easier and far more trustworthy. And because of the fact that they are then confident that they’ve selected the right tires, they’re then more likely to move that to the order basket.

Neal:

That’s really interesting. So, if I follow you, if I’m, say, a 10-location tire dealer and presently don’t have pricing listed online, then there’s a good chance that my existing customers are looking elsewhere for tire data just as well as my prospective customers?

Clare:

Yeah, absolutely. I think what happens is that as people … certainly as pricing is rising as well, I think that becomes really key; the fact that people want to find, “Okay, this is the product that I need. Let’s have a look what price it is from you. Let’s have a look what price it is from you,” and look at all the options that are available to them, maybe within a certain distance that they’re willing to travel. But, if you’ve not got that website presence, there’s a very good chance that you just get discounted from that picture, and that’s the worrying thing.

Clare:

And especially if you look at the time that they’re looking. If it’s going to be a Sunday night, and you go to a website and they’ve not got prices on there, and they’re just, “Ring the phone number,” the chances are that somebody is not going to be available to take that call on a Sunday evening.

Neal:

Of course.

Clare:

That the premises is probably closed. And rather than wait until a Monday morning to actually make that phone call, what we find is that that retailer just gets discounted. If they’re not providing the information then and there, they then no longer become part of that evaluation process, and therefore they’ll look at the remaining retailers and find prices from them. So, it’s really become really quite key to have that website presence, to have that ability to look up tires and look up prices, and that customer journey, being able to become trustworthy in the consumer’s eyes, someone that they know is going to supply them the right tire. They feel like they are happy with the purchase because they’ve done their research and evaluated the market, and they know that that’s a good price for that tire, therefore they feel more confident to go ahead in the purchase.

Neal:

That’s interesting. So, it serves as not only a point of validation, validating that I’m getting a fair price, but also a point of validation in that maybe my current tire dealer is recommending the same tire that others would, but ultimately it gives them a path to research it, right? To learn a little bit more about it and answer some of those questions, which really might be as simple as, “How much are these tires going to cost? Last time I was in, they told me I needed new tires, so this week is the week. What’s it going to cost?”

Clare:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think as well, one of the things that we can do with that data is actually have a look at the tires that were fitted by the manufacturer of what [inaudible] that was fitted, the brand that was fitted by the manufacturer. Certainly in the US, consumers are really keen to know what tire was fitted so that they can put replacements on, so they can find out exactly what tire was on, and we also show whether that tire is still available from distributors as well.

Neal:

Ah, got it. So, then I guess I’d feel more confident that I had the correct vehicle, was returning the correct size results, but if I’m an owner of, say, a new EV or hybrid, I may be keenly interested in buying the exact same tire as was designed for my car.

Clare:

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s sort of with wheels as well, looking at wheels, a lot of what we’ve seen in the rise of electric vehicles is that people are looking at what wheels they can put on as well, because they don’t necessarily like the styling of the wheels, so that can affect … Although obviously I would say that the electric vehicles wheels are designed for a purpose, it still doesn’t necessarily fit the aesthetic of that buyer, so yeah, there’s certainly a … We’ve noticed a high demand to change wheels on electric vehicles to something that looks aesthetically more pleasing.

Neal:

Now, all of this is, it’s really interesting to see how the pandemic has changed so much. It’s changed the way we handle customers in-store, it’s changed the way that we even interact with our vehicles, but especially it’s had a significant impact, and frankly created a big opportunity in the way that people shop from home. I think about my own buying habits and my own process, and if given the opportunity to schedule something or to do it online, I feel like I’m more willing to do that than I am to pick up the phone, just because of the convenience part. So, it’s interesting how—

Clare:

Yeah, absolutely. I think … Sorry, I was going to say, I think consumer behavior, I think we’re all very, now, time-poor. I think lives are so busy that it’s really key that customers are presented with the information as and when they want it. That’s what the consumer needs. It has to be available.

Clare:

And this is the same for anything. When you look at TV now, and where we used to have a number of channels and you used to flip between them to find something that you wanted, now it is the fact that we’ve got the likes of Netflix, where you can find whatever you want at any time and play it. That’s how consumer behavior is now, with the fact that we want it as absolutely when we want it, and we don’t want to have to go jump through hoops to be able to get the information. And I think if we do have to jump through hoops, we just won’t do it. We just stop and say, “No. I’ll choose from a different retailer.”

Clare:

And I think that’s sort of … If you look at the success of some of the online marketplaces, the majority of the success is because they make it so easy.

Neal:

Right. Right. You know, the number one objection I hear around listing pricing is, “Our team is so good on the phone, we don’t have that opportunity to talk to the customer if we give them the price on the phone.” And I think one of the ways to combat some of that, or to compete at that level, is to take what makes your company, your shop, your group of shops special, understanding where your most competitive … not on price necessarily, but on service … and then being able to translate that back into the website so that when someone is searching for tires, it’s evident that, “Oh, by the way, all of this comes with it, and we provide this information.” I think that’s critical.

Clare:

I think the interesting thing that you said there was, Neal, was that it could be that a group could turn around and say to you, “Yeah, we’re really successful on the phone. We don’t really want to introduce it to the website.” But, what you’ve got to look is that, how does that customer want to buy? And the customers that they’re selling to on the phone, they might be really successful with those, but is that just because that’s how they want to buy? How much more successful would they be if they combined a range of options so that they included all the customers? And I think that’s what is really key.

Clare:

For example, if I look at our marketing and how we reach our customers, we do a lot through LinkedIn, because it’s a professional network and we can highlight awareness of the products, our databases and what we deliver, and how we differentiate ourselves from competitors, and how our data is a lot more granular, how we manage to get down to a much lower vehicle spec so that we can get that exact tire auth, and then returning a range of options, which makes it easier for the consumer to buy.

Clare:

But we also have channels … We use LinkedIn, but we also have channels for Facebook, and we have Twitter. Now, we get very few replies in via Facebook and Twitter. We still put the same information on there, but we provide those channels so that if that is the chosen way that our customer would like to get in touch, those options are there too. So, it’s almost making sure that we’ve got the full plethora of options available so that we cater for every client.

Clare:

And I think that’s very key for tire and wheel retailers as well, is the fact that, yeah, they might be great on the phone, but how many customers are they missing that don’t want to buy through a phone, don’t want the pressure of a phone call, want to search at a different time, or very time-precious; maybe got a young family and are very busy during the week, so they haven’t got the time to pick up that phone and have that conversation. If they had a web presence that was equally as good as the telephone sales, how much more revenue would they be able to generate?

Neal:

That’s an interesting approach because I guess the customers and consumers who were going to call and were never going to look up tires online, you haven’t changed anything about that. They’ll still continue to do just as they want. On the other hand, the consumers who want to go search, whether it’s to get a price or to get more details, but those who want to do research, right now there is no path. So, until you add that path, you’re almost excluding that type of customer from your business.

Clare:

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that’s very much the case. I don’t think people are going to change. If they’re happy with the way that they purchase, if they’re happy with a telephone call, they’ll probably always make that telephone call. But, I think the pandemic has pushed more people towards looking at things digitally and looking online. And the fact that we’re now so time poor, I think certainly … Looking at my experience, having a young family, it is difficult to fit everything into the day, and I certainly wouldn’t have time to ring around to find prices. I tend to do it when the kids have gone to bed and I can grab an hour. “Let me have a look at what it is we need to buy,” and do my research then. And if there is only a phone call, then that sort of rules that out for me.

Neal:

That’s an excellent point. Well, thank you, Clare. For one, you’ve given me something else to consider in this, and hopefully given some additional consideration to our target audience, to our tire dealers and auto repair shops who are looking to ultimately sell more tires. I appreciate the input and the insights.

Neal:

Clare, if people want to learn more about DriveRightData, where should they go?

Clare:

Well, we have a website, which is www.driveright-data.com, and we have a range of our services on there looking for … You can look by customer solution, so tire manufacturers can go on and have a look at all the services that we offer, and tire retailers can go on and it’s all very specific. And we also, under our About Us page, we have a blog where we talk about pages like Google’s messy middle, how to avoid losing website visitors, and lost order baskets, and give advice for how you can make sure that you are providing a service that is going to maximize your revenue and maximize your results. Rather than just sticking to one consumer type, you can meet the needs of many.

Clare:

And it’s about … According to Google, they, on their messy middle, they’re looking at … Google’s advice to stand out from the crowd is to ensure that you’ve got brand presence, which is obviously having the imagery and the right looking website and branding. The other, they say to employ behavioral science principles, so, look at when people want to buy, what products are they looking to buy, what should you have in stock, and we can even help with that as well. We do have data, of course, that actually show for a certain area which models of vehicle are most prevalent, so that you know what products to stock for a certain area, so we can help with that as well.

Clare:

But also, the key thing for Google is to close the gap between trigger and purchase, and it’s that messy middle area where the customer is doing their evaluation and I’m looking at exploring all the different products that are out there, and all the different retailers that are out there. It’s making your buying experience stand out from competitors with better service, search functions, more accurate data, and helping to build trust with your customers by being able to show which tires and wheels fit their vehicle, and also which tires were fitted when manufactured. The combination of those areas also help to convert more sales, prevent lost order baskets, because you’re giving those visitors the confidence to buy online or in store, but they have all the information that they need.

Neal:

Excellent. Excellent. And Clare, we will add a link to the Google’s messy middle blog post. We’ll add it to today’s show notes as well, along with the website, and I encourage you to go read and learn more. DriveRightData is a provider of not just data, but some incredible insights on our industry. Thank you, Clare. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, and hope to talk to you again.

Clare:

Fantastic, Neal. Thank you so much.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to the Gain Traction podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click ‘subscribe’ to get future episodes.

• Clare Hetherington
• DriveRightData
• Gain Traction Podcast
• Neal Maier
• Tread Partners

Transcript