The auto industry has been through quite the rollercoaster since the spring of 2020, going from a major sales drop to an unexpected demand coupled with supply chain problems.
Dealership Mobile Ads
Around 50% or more of car buyers are searching and doing car research on mobile devices. This means that you are ignoring 50% of your potential sales and leads if you aren’t effectively leveraging digital campaigns on mobile devices. A mobile-friendly is also a major source of traffic and leads, try looking and searching your inventory on a mobile device. If the experience isn’t great, this needs to be a major priority to build a great mobile experience for your audience.
Social Media Marketing and Youtube
Are you posting regularly on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and even youtube? These are major sources of traffic and should be a part of any dealership’s marketing plan. Build a monthly schedule of content that will be posted, content should be diverse in the types of posts that will be made.
Make sure to use video, whether live or produced on Facebook and Instagram. Video posts will get at least 50% higher CTR and retention than static ads. Once you have video content, post them as well to youtube. Youtube can be a great source of traffic, just make sure to properly keyword and tag each video post.
Also, we’ve seen some dealerships post 2-5 awful videos per day, generally, some sort of drag and drop photo to video program of specific cars in inventory- these videos almost always have a dozen or fewer views. This hurts your youtube/Facebook performance, not helps. Your audience will unsubscribe if they feel like they are being spammed with very low-quality content that doesn’t relate or connect with them. Having a sales team member tour a car even using an iPhone etc is a better approach. Just don’t spam the content. 1-2 car tours per week are all you should do unless it’s a major reveal etc.
Automotive Broadcast Ads
Broadcast, whether local, cable, and even radio are great sources of traffic in addition to digital sources. You will engage and get in front of a different audience on all these marketing channels, which means you are missing out if you don’t take advantage of them.
For broadcast, quality is important, you don’t want to be one of “those” car ads. Spending slightly more on production will drastically improve your overall campaign and give you a piece of video content that can be used across all your marketing channels.
Work with ad reps or your marketing team’s media buying expert to maximize your dollars spent. Keep in mind there’s little point in buying cheap spots at 2 am, etc. You’re better to have fewer spots but at more viewed time spots.
Often the audio from a tv spot can be easily edited into a radio ad as well, which improves overall ROI on production costs.
Dealership Video Ads on Digital
Depending on the study, using video ads in place of static ads increased ad performance between 50% to 300%. This depends on the industry, marketing channel, and keyword, but switching from static ads to video will absolutely get you more views, more clicks and improve the efficiency of your digital spend. Once you have a tv spot, you can typically just use this to run on your digital campaigns. Get your digital automotive marketing partner to A/B test video vs static ads.
If you want to create dedicated video content for digital ads, these can often use vehicle running footage or media content from the manufacturer coupled with animation and motion graphics to create a sharp and punchy 15-30 second ad.
Switch them up as offers change to keep them fresh.
Automotive Influencer marketing
This is a trendy marketing channel for national as well as regional brands, for automotive brands, like Ford, Aston Martin, and others this is a great way to get their vehicles in front of massive audiences – Just let YouTubers borrow the new Mercedes S class for the weekend from the press fleet and you’ve generated millions of views once you like a dozen or so YouTubers borrow it.
For local car dealerships, it’s a bit more tricky. That being said do your best to search youtube and Instagram and see if there are any local incluencers. If you are based in Atlanta, New York, etc, the answer will be a resounding yes. Reach out to several and offer them a specific model for a few hours or a day. You will 100% get in front of an audience you otherwise wouldn’t have. For dealerships in smaller towns and cities it’s a bit more tricky, but can still be done. Keep in mind even if the smaller town influencers just have 15,000 or 50,000 followers, that’s still a large number for a smaller city like Lexington, KY or Knoxville, TN.
Influencer marketing for dealerships is in many ways a close cousin of traditional sponsorship advertising, for example letting the high school football team borrow your new Ram 3500s that just happens to have a massive dealership logo sticker on the side, etc.
Both sponsorships and influencer marketing are here to stay with influencer marketing considered on of the trendy marketing channels of 2021.
Don’t forget to promote Service and Parts
Market yourself to local repair shops and body shops to help generate more part sales. This is a significant revenue stream for many dealerships.
Your service department shouldn’t be overlooked either. Build mention and promotion of your service department into email marketing campaigns, social media organic, and paid digital channels. Experiment with the profitability of the ads to see if it makes sense to run PPC for service.
Dealership Marketing Audience
NEVER forget your audience. The more you know about why your customers buy from your, the better. You should stay in contact with customers after they buy, ask them for reviews as well.
The more data you have, the more you can shift your marketing to match why your customers bought from you in the first place.
Sometimes it’s a great reputation for honesty and after-sales, sometimes it’s a massive selection, other times it the effective marketing of low to zero down offers.
Dealership Sales Training
Your marketing plan and partners can deliver great creative, great media placements and get people in the door, but if your sales team can’t effectively close sales, well that’s a major problem.
Constant sales training for your team is crucial to keep your team performing well over the years. Leveraging compensation correctly and setting sales goals targets that are both a stretch yet also reachable are some of the major considerations. Also simply make sure your sales team is knowledgeable about the vehicles you sell. We’ve all been car shopping at one time or another and realized we knew about the options list and features, or trim differences than the salesperson – this always is a major turn-off.
Volan Media is a Knoxville, Tennessee dealership marketing specialist, we’ve worked with numerous auto firms, having produced nearly 1000 automotive dealership marketing videos.
Get in touch today if you want to incorporate more video into your dealership’s marketing plan.
