Trends in the US Auto Industry: Key Insights from the 2025 Auto Forum New York

I covered Automotive Forum New York, the day before the New York International Auto Show. This event connects Automotive thought leaders with Manufacturers and Dealers. Attendees learned about trends and insights in the Automotive industry, focusing on the dealer side of the business. 

The auto forum started with an economist who analyzed the US Economy as a whole, followed by Thomas King, President, Data & Analytics Division, Chief Product Officer at JD Power, who analyzed the US auto industry, addressing the issue of tariffs and electric vehicle mandates on the automotive industry.

Thomas shared some interesting statistics and analysis.

The State of the Automotive Industry

The US put a 25 percent tariff on vehicles made outside the United States. 

Vehicle exposure for US Retail sales amounts to $62 billion, translating to $4782 on average for every vehicle sold, or 10.6 percent of the price. However, this spread is asymmetric across brands. For example, brands where the tariff makes up 1 to 4 percent of the sales price sell more than brands where the tariff makes up a higher percentage of the sales price. As a result, dealers can not simply pass a 25 percent tariff on to their customers without a significant sales decline.

What can dealers and OEMs do immediately for the long term?

Dealers can focus on pricing incentives, shipping, rationalizing their portfolio, leveraging a global sales footprint to increase prices in other markets, right-sizing local production, optimizing part sourcing to increase US production, and eventually building more plants in the United States. 

Thomas predicts that vehicle prices will increase 5 percent on average $2300, with an annual retail sales pace SAAR decrease of 8 percent or 1.1 million sales.

Industry Regulations & the EV Landscape

In the 2025 Industry Regulations & the EV Landscape panel, there was a conversation about how manufacturers and dealers are impacted by differing incentives, fines, compliance, and manufacturing mandates from the federal and state governments, resulting in a lack of uniformity. This will impact sales and profitability.

Improving the Customer Experience at Auto Dealerships

Anu Roberts, Director of Product Marketing at CDK Global, shared a study highlighting a correlation with shorter purchase time on the customer journey (2 hours or less), improved customer experience, and an increased net promoter score. Anu also shared how dealers are using AI, which included:

1. AI assistant for lead generation and qualification
2. AI assistants for providing information to customers 
3. Scheduling appointments for customers 
4. Targeting marketing campaigns based on segments
5. Analyzing customer feedback

She suggests dealers audit their buying process to lower customer friction, testing how long it takes to purchase a car. 

What’s next for OEMs, Dealers, and Manufacturers?

Senator Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer, advised dealers and manufacturers on improving relationships with one another and the US Government in the Golden Age of Retail panel. He suggested working with the Trump administration in a collaborative partnership to manufacture cars people want to buy instead of cars they need to sell because of mandates and regulations. 

It was a great event with many great panels. I learned a lot about the automotive industry. 

I want to thank J.D. Power, NADA, and the New York International Auto Show for having me as their guest. 

Creating content that engages customers is key. Another key element to creating customer-centered presentations and digital content is knowledge of buyer learning styles.

In other words, how do buyers learn best?

There are three learning styles, Visual, Auditory, and kinesthetic. 65 percent of learners are Visual but this is not everyone.

Survey Results

I surveyed my LinkedIn Audience to ask which types of content helps them to learn best and what type of content they value most.

As you can see, people learn best from a mix of written, video, audio, and content formats.

Of the types of content, people want to read, many want to read industry insights, how-to, insights from conferences, and a mix of all of the above.

Based on my findings, I would recommend that content be:

1.Created and repurposed in multiple formats

2.Content is about industry insights, how-to, and insights from conferences

The overall content strategy should be based on how your customers learn and the types and format of content based on their wants and needs.

Bonus Content

In the presentation below, I provide ideas and strategies to:

1.Collect information on your buyer’s learning style

2.Create presentations and content that will engage buyers with content that is optimized to their learning style making it more engaging**

3.Create differentiated presentations and content for all learners when buyer learning styles are unknown

** How to Customize Presentations & content to Buyer learning Styles **

from

Dan Galante

How do you learn best and which content format helps you most? Comment and share.

What is the hardest part of Product Marketing?

LinkedIn poll of my audience

Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy. It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.

What is the role of a Product Marketer?

I covered the Product Marketing Community workshop to find out.

Workshop Topics included how to:

1. Build and execute go-to-market plans
2. Develop actionable buyer insights
3. Create effective Messaging and Content for buyers
4. Enable Sales and Product Teams

Businesses should identify their ideal customer.

Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.

To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.

Product Marketing involves more than Marketing and Product Team support. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales, and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all grow the business and serve customers.

Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.

What is Product Marketing?

Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragmatic Framework.

Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities

Product Marketing needs a separate brief.

Just as Marketing has a plan or brief, Product Marketing does.

SmartSheet.com Product Marketing Template

Here are nine things to address in a Product Marketing Brief.

1. What does your company do? Does your product offering align with your business goals?
2. What are the features of your product? Do others understand what you are building and why?
3. Does this Product address gaps in the Market? Include an overview of a Competitive, win-loss and, SWOT analysis.
4. Who is your ideal customer or target market? Include an overview of findings of demographic, psychographic, and buyer persona research. Does your product solve customer pain points?
5. How will you measure product success?
6. What are can go wrong? Can failure be anticipated and corrected?
7. What is the roadmap and schedule of the product? Who’s responsible and in charge?
8. Who needs to be included in the project and who needs to approve deliverables?
9. How will goals be tracked? How often will they be monitored? What insights are you trying to glean from the data?

Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.

The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyer types.

Product Marketers, what’s the hardest part of your job?

How do you know if you are successful?

Share your thoughts.