The best car dealers understand the importance of keeping up with the ever-changing world of auto marketing. It’s an extremely competitive marketplace where falling behind also means going bankrupt, and this race to be the best dealership in town is only growing tougher.
Any advantage you can gain or method you can implement to beat the competition is invaluable, and digital marketing can be the key to doing just that.
The concept of digital marketing is not a new thing; however, in this rapidly-evolving marketplace, it represents one of the most important steps to success. This quick list of the keys to digital marketing for car dealerships will provide the essential tactics to implement into your marketing strategy.
Content Marketing
There’s a reason why content marketing represents one of the most popular trends among digital marketing experts. It simply works!
Through the use of media channels such as vehicle reviews, blog posts, and more, you can give your prospective customers all the answers they’re searching for. This process makes up a significant part of an effective content marketing strategy today.
Content marketing helps you stand apart in the customer’s eyes. If you provide content that truly helps them during the shopping process, you automatically move to the top of their list when they make a purchase decision.
When you can become the leader in helping prospective buyers, you gain trust and a significant competitive advantage. That’s why content marketing is such an essential part of digital marketing for car dealerships.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
In the digital marketing world, SEO is always a primary step towards success. Its importance is undeniable. For car dealers, the ultimate goal should be to get your dealer website to the top of the search results page for a range of popular search queries.
Believe it or not, the search engine ranking of your website can be the difference between closing a sale and losing it to one of your competitors. If you do some research for certain search words, you might find that as much as 1000 people are doing that search on a monthly basis. The numbers can add up very quickly.
With every increase in your search ranking, you can expect a significant increase in opportunities to sell more cars.
An SEO consultant could be a great idea for your dealership, but some of these SEO firms can be a scam. Just make sure that you do your research first. Otherwise, you can focus on optimizing the content of your website and targeting the right keywords. These are some of the best ways to increase your search ranking.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
One of the newest, and most effective, trends in the digital marketing landscape revolves around conversion rate optimization. This concept provides a creative an efficient way to reach more prospects, boost web visits, increase conversions and close more sales.
Through the use of detailed testing procedures that show exactly how consumers are interacting with your dealer website, CRO provides valuable insights into the processes that are working and the processes that are falling short. In turn, it gives you the ability to make big improvements to your website.
Let’s say that you feel like a certain page on your site isn’t doing the job as effectively as it should. You could use CRO testing to analyze its effectiveness and come up with ideas on how to improve it. Once you find the optimal changes, you can publish them to your permanent website and increase your sales opportunities!
Specialized Advertising
Even if your car dealership has the most complete, optimized and well-designed website in the local marketplace, it won’t count for much if you can’t effectively market your dealership to your target consumers. This is where digital marketing for car dealership places such a key role.
Your advertising campaigns should focus on putting your car dealership in front of your target customer at the best possible time and place. That’s what truly increases your odds of beating the competition. Strategically-placed
display ads and Facebook ads can help you accomplish this.
Advertising campaigns like these can also help you reach new target audiences so that you can increase your total market share in the area. Your strategy should also be fully integrated with the sales and specials you’re featuring on your website at any given time. That way, those same specials can appear on your display and Facebook advertisements.
Nurturing Your Leads
Once you do all the right things and start helping your customer with great content on your website, you need to find a way to convert that opportunity when the customer is ready. In many cases, a consumer will read and appreciate your content, but they’re just not quite ready to buy yet. You can use lead nurturing tactics to keep this prospective customer in your pipeline.
This interested (but not quite ready) consumer should be captured in your consumer database. As this database grows larger, you get more and more chances to close sales and improve profits. Through lead nurturing, you can stay in touch with all of these prospective buyers through targeted, automated emails.
These automated emails allow your dealership to stay on the mind of the prospective buyer. Once the time is right, you’ll have a much better chance of earning their business.
The old days of advertising in the auto industry are long gone. The constantly-evolving marketplace of today requires more detailed and flexible strategies. Digital marketing for car dealerships is quickly becoming one of the most important steps to success.
With all of this constant change, one thing remains the same. Your primary goal as a car dealer is to sell more cars. However, reaching this goal consistently can be a daunting task. With these digital marketing tools in your arsenal, you’ll be one big step ahead of your competition towards. Without them, you’ll just be a part of the crowd struggling to keep pace!
You don’t need to be afraid of all these terms and acronyms. Just invest some time and learn all you can. Then, you can choose the tactics that make the most sense for your dealership!
Lucie Gauvreau is the CEO of Turbo Marketing Solutions. You can contact her by email here or reach her by phone every weekday at Turbo Marketing’s head office.