Is Your Dealership Missing These 7 Powerful Marketing Tips?
Use these seven car dealership marketing strategies to get your dealership noticed, increase customer engagement, and sell more cars in 2024.
Standing out from the crowd is essential for dealerships to thrive, especially in the current automotive market. Effective dealership marketing can make all the difference. Marketing allows dealerships to highlight their unique selling points and differentiate themselves from competitors.
With the right automotive marketing strategies, you can increase customer engagement, drive more traffic to your dealership, and sell more cars. However, many dealerships overlook key marketing tactics that could significantly boost their sales. Here are seven powerful marketing tips that your dealership may need to include.
1. Create Engaging Content that Increases Brand Awareness
Marketing efforts help build and increase brand awareness. When people consider purchasing a vehicle, they are more likely to visit dealerships they are familiar with through marketing efforts. By providing valuable content, you can establish your dealership as a trusted authority in the automotive industry.
Good content is key to capturing the attention of potential customers. Engage customers with various marketing modes highlighting your inventory, such as blog posts, videos, and infographics. Provide car-buying tips and showcase your dealership’s unique selling points. Ensure your dealership’s website is optimized for mobile devices to provide a seamless browsing experience for users.
82% of consumers consider brand trust to be a key factor in their purchasing decisions
Studies show that consumers are 5.3X more likely to buy when they receive targeted, personalized marketing.
2. Have the Data to Back Up Your Marketing
With good data, dealers can be agile and adaptable to the ever-changing needs of what their customers are seeking in real-time. Marketing backed by data illuminates what’s happening in the landscape and what path to take to reach an audience effectively. A marketing strategy can then be determined with supporting content that offers solutions that solve customers’ problems.
Data and equity mining with predictive customer scoring can provide insights into underlying consumer needs and potential action behaviors. Based on service drive information, shopping behavior patterns, and other profiling methods, calculate what customers need and when they need it.
Collecting and centralizing data into a single platform provides insight into customer buying patterns. Gain knowledge of what your consumer base might require next through data analytics. This data lets you anticipate other vehicles or services your customers might need and when they need them.
3. Implement Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing remains a highly effective way to reach potential customers and nurture leads. Personalized and timely messages can be automatically accessed and delivered to top prospects earlier in their buying cycle, paving the way to transition them into a newer vehicle sooner and with less hassle for your customer.
Send service reminder emails to existing customers. Include information about the older inventory vehicles and any special promotions or discounts for service customers who purchase them.
Collect email addresses from website visitors and use targeted email campaigns to promote special offers, upcoming events, and new inventory. Personalize your emails to make recipients feel valued and engaged. Then, lead car shoppers to personalized landing pages to find more information and enhance the overall customer experience.
Customers who receive both direct mail and email communications make purchases at a 36% higher rate.
4. Digital Marketing is a Must
If you haven’t figured it out already, using social media platforms to connect with customers is pretty much expected these days. The average American spends more time viewing screens than sleeping, so it’s critical to reach them online. Use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc., to showcase your inventory, engage with potential customers, and build your brand.
Overall, social media content is shown to boost sales by 61%.
Having a consistent presence, creatively posting, and interacting with your followers will boost your dealership’s online reputation and build an even larger audience. Include these tips in your communication:
- Create interesting visuals. Your followers will be more likely to interact with and share appealing visuals.
- Write creative captions. Your picture should tell a story, and the words you add should accentuate that story. It’s good practice to test different captions to see what resonates with followers.
- Include a call to action or CTA. Followers will know exactly what you want them to do, but remember to keep your language simple, friendly, and straightforward.
- Utilize hashtags to increase reach. They will help you categorize your content and make it easier for target customers to find you. Consider taking advantage of trending hashtags, if they are relevant to your business, to gain new followers.
- Promote your other content. Consider directing followers to a permanent page, like your website, a recent article, or even a promo or deal you’ve got going on.
Emails receive a 4.5X boost in the click-thru rate when a video is included.
5. Don’t Be Intimidated by Video
Video marketing is one of the most effective ways to engage with potential customers. Video content is more engaging and memorable than text or images, making it a powerful marketing tool for dealerships. This Hubspot study offers great insights on the effectiveness of video.
Create high-quality videos that showcase your inventory, highlight the features of different car models, and provide virtual dealership tours. You can also use video testimonials from satisfied customers to build trust and credibility.
Offer virtual test drives and walkarounds. Many customers prefer to do their research online before visiting a dealership in person, and virtual test drives and walkarounds of your inventory give potential customers a detailed look at the cars you have available. You can even use video calls and live chat to answer any questions they may have in real-time.
6. Don’t Forget to Market on the Service Drive
Marketing aging inventory on the service drive can be a creative way to clear out older vehicles and generate revenue. Here are some marketing strategies tailored specifically for the service drive:
- Create service specials that are tied to the purchase of old inventory vehicles.
- Place the older inventory vehicles prominently in the service drive area.
- Send out service reminder emails to existing customers. Include any special promotions or discounts.
- Offer incentives to attract buyers, such as financing options, extended warranties, or special promotions.
- Display brochures, posters, or digital screens in your service waiting area that showcase the older inventory vehicles.
- Collect and share testimonials from satisfied customers who have purchased older inventory vehicles from your dealership.
Nearly 50% of dealership service customers are unaware of the other services offered by the dealership, beyond the reason for their current visit.
7. Track and Analyze Your Marketing Efforts
Not all content will resonate with your audience. It’s essential to track and analyze the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Your decisions about moving forward with certain marketing campaigns will depend on what your data analytics show is spurring customer action.
By tracking the results of marketing campaigns, auto dealerships can calculate their return on investment (ROI), determine which marketing channels are providing the best returns, and allocate their marketing budget more effectively. Marketing reports can also help dealerships identify customer behavior and preferences trends, allowing them to tailor their marketing strategies accordingly.
Use tools like Google Analytics to monitor website traffic, track leads, and measure the success of your marketing campaigns. By analyzing this data, you can identify what’s working well and what areas need improvement, allowing you to refine your marketing strategy and achieve better results.
Effective automotive marketing strategies help engage customers, keeping them informed about new products, services, and promotions. They also help you tell your brand story in a compelling way, draw people in, and keep them interested so that you can begin to create relationships. This engagement builds customer loyalty and increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals.
By implementing these seven powerful marketing tips, your dealership can attract more customers, increase engagement, and sell more cars. It will take a little bit of work, but you definitely won’t regret taking the time to build and execute these dealership marketing tips.
