The automobile business continues to offer a lot of opportunity for local media organisations.

Gannett has made auto a key priority for its local sales and client strategy organisations. The strategy is rooted in providing deep insights to local dealers using various data sources, new sophisticated tools, and go-to-market storytelling for individual dealers.

Lift, a new insights tool, was built as the cornerstone of the go-to-market strategy for auto. The tool combines dealer sales and inventory data, enabling sales reps to work with dealers to better tailor their marketing plans.

Lift is the Web platform that integrates a dealer’s core geography, registration data, and inventory volumes, providing a holistic view of current performance. Using this information, sales account executives can look at any model-level marketing inefficiencies and upside potential both in the brand and the market.

Overall, this platform is a critical asset to utilise when building out a dealer’s data story, providing the ability to benchmark current performance, assess competitive insights, and quickly identify opportunity.

Lift is a key tool in the process, but significant investment in time and training has gone into this this new go-to-market strategy. All sales staff from managers to reps had the opportunity to spend one-on-one training on the data, tools, and story lines.

After reviewing market-level trends and insights, reps identify what dealers reside within opportunity makes, segments, and models. This segment provides insights to reps that makes it clear with which dealers to dig deep and identify opportunity.

It is important to understand what “type” of dealerships make the most sense to engage at a deeper level and which dealerships should be handled at a transactional level.

This strategy is paying off for Gannett, which is seeing incremental auto revenue and deepened relationship with local dealers.

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