Ah, car dealerships.
Selling a car is no easy task—no matter the grandeur and sophistication you see from the promotions and sellers themselves, many car dealers are actually struggling to get customers. After all, cars are not inexpensive and especially harder to cater to younger buyers today.
Car dealerships often use the traditional way of marketing through print ads, TV and radio commercials, and even by word of mouth. While these types of marketing can still pull in customers, the whole thing would be better if it’s backed with digital marketing.
Digital marketing has been around for a long time and many car dealerships are already using its features to their advantage. So, this is not exactly a new thing but if it’s for you, it might be the best time to learn more about it! The vehicle industry is fast changing, products, and systems are getting more advanced and attuned to younger and more agile consumers. This is very true in the Philippines, where there is a blowing demand for cars and where digital marketing is a venture that is being more and more embraced by society.
Benefits of Digital Marketing for Car Dealerships
When you engage in digital marketing for your car marketing purposes, the number of benefits you are receiving from traditional marketing can double up. First off, digital marketing makes your presence known in the online world where most of your potential customers are lurking. According to a study, 79 to and 82% of consumers rely on search, brand websites, and customer reviews for their product research. Here are some more benefits:
Wider reach
There are billions of internet users in the world and it is not impossible that many of them will stumble upon your brand, especially now that you made yourself identifiable in the World Wide Web. If you’re already an established car dealer, putting yourself out there is even more important as you will be able to get new customers. Now you can go beyond what your billboards and flyers can go and it’s all because you are utilizing the cyberspace.
Customer trust
Digital marketing is all about connecting with your probable clients. Aside from backdoor customer relation building such as improving your site’s mechanisms, directly interacting with them is one of the facets of digital marketing that you should focus on.
In social media, you can converse with people inquiring about your vehicles. If you answer them in a satisfying manner, expect your customer service rating to go up. When you continue to build up your reputation in social media and other channels of digital marketing like Google (NAPs and reviews), you grow likable. And people will have the confidence to purchase one of your products.
Learning Experience
Digital marketing works both ways, it benefits your customers as well as you. And no, we’re not just talking about the sales! When you continue to practice digital marketing tactics, you learn many things. You will discover how to optimize your brand so more people can see you, you become well-versed in speaking with your customers. You will also tend to have the grasp of what works and what does not for your car dealership marketing.
In retrospect, embracing digital marketing for your car dealership will gain you sales, customer trust, and ample knowledge of the trade needed for a stable business.
Types of Digital Marketing for Car Dealerships
Like other businesses, a car dealership can use digital marketing strategies that are already regarded as effective. We recommend that you work with a digital marketing company in the Philippines to know which really the best is for your car dealership company. Nonetheless, here are the general digital marketing methods that you got to have for your car dealership business.
Search Engine Optimization
Of course, you need to make sure that you have a website that is optimized or more commonly known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What do you mean by optimized? An optimized website is a website with the right and enough keywords, meta tags, and other optimization strategies to rank in search engines.
More than, if not all, of car-seekers are using search engines for the best car deals so it’s best that you’re in the top results and this can happen if your website has some top-notch SEO.
Social Media
For sure you know the magnitude of social media these days and recently it had become a hub for businesses executing their digital marketing plans. In fact, 88% of companies are now in social media as according to a study by AdWeek. Social media is where your clients are and it is particularly more manageable to get a following here than any other avenues.
With social media, you could put out ads and create communities through appealing content, and even get the aid of social media influencers to further broaden your scope.
Content Marketing
Content is all around us and they are primarily essential to when you are trying to sell cars. Words, images, videos, and other forms of content can convince people to strike a deal with you particularly if they are made with an emotional appeal. You can connect with your audiences and eventual partners through written content that reflects your expertise in the industry and through video content that features life stories of vehicle users and captivating sequences of the cars themselves. According to Wordstream, 46% of users act after viewing a video ad in social media so there’s a high chance of your phone ringing after they saw a video produced by your car dealership.
Usually, content marketing meshes with other digital marketing strategies, such as SEO and social media marketing which is why it’s important to learn about this to master in the future.
Effective Web Design
For more traditional customers, an effective web design could do you no wrong. When potential customers go in they expect a website that shows them the vehicle on very flattering angles—packed with details such as specs and prices to help them gain better intelligence about the car they are looking into. With this, visually striking, dynamic, and responsive web design is what you would want for your website. According to Opportunity Max, 62% of car seekers would rather choose to use a website than to talk to a salesperson so this element should be in your top priority.
Due to its value, a car is more than an investment for many. To help your customer build their trust on you as a car dealer, show them that you are also willing to evolve as a business and you can prove that through digital car marketing!