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Taco Tuesday: 2016 Toyota Tacoma is a Tasty Truck Treat

Some things in life are worth waiting for, and to me, the 2016 Toyota Tacoma is one of them. With the chance to see it unveiled live at the Detroit Auto Show, I was defiantly impressed. Like a warm soft-taco shell, the Tacoma’s sleek new sheet metal lends the truck a stylish profile that’s loaded with accouterments.

Take one quick look and you’ll agree that this Taco(ma) certainly does look delicious (five bucks says you’re going to eat tacos next chance you get!). Taco puns aside, it’s been almost 11 years since the Tacoma got a redesign, and the timing of it couldn’t have been better. The worlds best selling mid-size pickup truck for the past 10 years is about to face some stiff competition from the recently introduced Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon. Anticipating an all-out battle royal for their long reigning title of “worlds best”, Toyota stepped up their game to make sure the 2016 Tacoma was ready to take on all challengers.

Nissan Sway Concept (next gen Nissan Micra) previewed ahead of Geneva show – IAB Report

Nissan will use the 2015 Geneva Motor Show (starting on March 3, 2015) to showcase the Nissan Sway Concept. The Sway concept is a “glimpse at how a future generation of small Nissan models could look if the company’s striking new design language was applied to a European hatchback”, the company said in a statement.

The next generation Micra, due in Europe in 2016, and, would no doubt be inspired by the Sway concept. Nissan’s B-Segment hatchback has drawn flak in the current generation in the European market for its dull styling. According to reports, the next generation model with the brand’s new and exciting styling language (also seen on the new Maxima which is yet to have its debut) will hope to put the Micra right at the top, at least from a design standpoint. Reiterating this is Nissan’s statement, which says that the “innovative design and product planning” which gave birth to the Nissan Qashqai and Juke will be applied to the small hatchback segment. The next generation Micra for Europe is very likely to be based on the modern CMF platform.

WHAT IS DEALERSHIP INTELLIGENCE?

Every day at dealerships across the country there are owners, general managers, eCommerce directors, and internet managers who are making decisions about the direction of their advertising and marketing. It isn’t like it was two decades ago when there were limited venues through which a dealership could get their message out to potential customers. Today, there are so many options that even dealerships with huge advertising budgets can only scratch the surface of the possibilities. This has created opportunities, but it also poses challenges. It isn’t just the plethora of vendor options in each segment of traditional and digital marketing. There is so much data about customers and the places that they’re going when considering a new vehicle, or even when deciding to service their vehicle, that it’s impractical for dealerships to make decisions based upon intuition alone.

This is where dealership intelligence comes into play. The concept and practice of business intelligence is nothing new. It might surprise some people to learn that it has been actively harnessed since the 1950s, that the term was first coined in in the 19th century, and that it has been in use to some extent since the rise of commerce within civilizations. When we talk about “business intelligence,” we mean “the transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes.” The automotive industry is the ideal playground to apply the philosophy of using business intelligence to purposefully direct advertising and marketing dollars. It’s also an industry that has unique nuances that require a deeper understanding than just about any retail industry on the planet. These idiosyncrasies mean that shoehorning “one size fits all” analytics products into working with a dealership’s data will either fail or necessitate expensive customization. A specialized industry necessarily requires specialized products and services. With dealership intelligence, all of the available data is collected, sorted, cross-referenced, and converted into actionable information that offers clear direction. Dealers have a ton of data at their fingertips from website analytics, recent purchase and market share data, click-thru reports, demographics, and likely purchase intent. Individually, each of these reports can supply a wealth of information to guide a dealership’s advertising path. When viewed as a whole and integrated in a way that makes sense, we have an opportunity to dramatically improve the insights that these data points can provide. In essence, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts when it comes to data. It’s like taking several flashlights that one can use to guide them on along the path and combining them to create a flood lamp so that a dealership can see further ahead as well as get a wider peripheral view. Here are a handful of questions that dealers ask every day that can most easily and accurately be answered when dealership intelligence is applied: Where do my ideal customers live? What models should I be promoting? What margins are realistic to expect from each model? Which advertising dollars are being spent wisely? How can we improve the effectiveness of a vendor’s product or service? Which zip codes have the greatest opportunity and what advertising should I apply there? Where are the easiest conquest opportunities? Are competitors creeping into my backyard and taking market share? This is only the tip of the iceberg. With dealership intelligence, a dealership can continuously improve on its campaigns, make data-driven decisions about its vendors, consolidate its reports, and integrate diverse data points to form – and execute on – truly useful action plans. String Automotive is proud to bring dealership intelligence to our industry through the Dealer Positioning System. The software that drives DPS combined with the proactive, hands-on analysis that we provide our clients every month helps dealers make empowered decisions about every advertising dollar they spend. The data is available. Combining and analyzing it all in a meaningful way is how dealers can go from guessing to knowing about their advertising and marketing, and that is a powerful and profitable place to be.