AutoLeadStar is an AI-powered, automated marketing platform for automotive dealerships. The Covid-19 pandemic caused many auto dealerships to close, but AutoLeadStar helped many keep their doors open, and even increase their leads in some cases!

The AI-powered platform offers ad personalisation, audience targeting, automated campaign optimisation, and integrated lead nurture sequences. Given their hybrid SaaS platform and commerce enablement solution, you might even call the product the ‘Shopify for car dealers’.

We spoke with co-founder and chief product officer, Eliav Moshe, to get the scoop on this product, and to get some general tips regarding product management. Eliav is a top-rated application developer whose various mobile applications have reached number-one spots in key app-store categories. He brings to the table years of experience applying analytics to software and user-acquisition growth.

First and foremost, tell us about your product AutoLeadStar and how you came up with the idea.

AutoLeadStar is a platform that is changing the way car dealerships do marketing.

It started out as simply a solution for optimising dealership websites that were not performing well. We’ve expanded the solution greatly over the years and now provide traffic acquisition and data solutions that enhance dealerships’ ability to process their leads and manage a better overall shopping cycle.

Our team didn’t come from the auto industry, but we came with experience in data, marketing and conversion optimisation. From the beginning, it was clear to us that automotive is roughly five-ten years behind other leading industries when it comes to adopting new marketing technologies.

How do you and your team ensure that you understand your customers and their pain points?

We don’t consider ourselves to be automotive experts, but we are certainly technology experts. Developing software solutions is our bread and butter, and with it comes the art of listening to your customers, helping them analyse their pain points and using technology to find solutions that are relevant to their business.

We have strong relationships with some of the most forward-thinking automotive retailers in the market, so our product development is informed by high-quality, industry-based customer feedback.

I see that AutoLeadStar offers several different tools, including Acquire and Connect. Can you briefly explain each? Are these meant to be separate products, or do they work in unison?

The AutoLeadStar platform consists of several components that all talk to each other. Acquire is responsible for traffic acquisition, Connect is responsible for on-site engagement, and Nurture, which will be launched this year, will provide email solutions.

Each component can be used separately to solve a specific pain point, but using them together is the holy grail, where data is shared across the funnel, thereby leveraged to provide the best performance and shopping experience.

What do you think is the best way for companies to approach building out their products over time?

I have a few tips for this process:

1. Begin by ensuring product/market fit. You need to make sure that your product is addressing a well-defined, burning problem and that a strong market demand exists.
2. Land and expand. Start small, make sure your product provides a solution to a problem effectively before you expand it.
3. Be agile. The market is evolving constantly. Software development especially must be agile, otherwise you could get into a situation where, by the time you’ve finally finished developing a solution, it may no longer be relevant.
4.  Put your customers first. Constant dialogue with customers is super important. As the market evolves, your customers’ needs may be evolving as well. Listen to them and what they need.

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