6 Auto Dealership Marketing Tips & Ideas

In this digital world, all businesses face enormous competition. Auto dealerships are no exception to this fact. It is definitely necessary for auto dealerships to be technology-savvy, responsive, and customer-focused.

Nowadays, car buyers do not walk into any dealer showroom without researching a lot of dealerships online. Only at the last step do they visit the dealership to make their purchase. It’s certainly a challenge to market to these tech-savvy customers.

Here are some easy auto dealership marketing tips and ideas.

Have you thought about a mobile-friendly Auto Dealership Website?

Before finalizing on a car, customers search for specifications, reviews, testimonials, and dealerships on Google, mostly on their mobiles. So, it’s highly important for your dealership to be visible online, with a mobile-friendly responsive website.

Grab the attention of potential customers and create an indelible first-impression through a new generation car dealership website with online inventory, virtual showroom tools, online specials, and more.

How does a CRM help auto dealerships?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution has become a necessity for every auto dealership. This very useful tool helps in directing your leads as well as your staff in improving sales. The marketing and sales cycles are perfectly synchronized by a good CRM with rule-based processes, which makes everyone’s lives easy.

Auto Dealer CRMs help in bringing leads through:

•  Online and social channels
•  Showrooms
•  Email
•  Service
•  Phone

Most importantly, it personalizes your follow-ups and manages contacts in a professional way.

Organic Marketing or Pay-per-click (PPC) Marketing?

You cannot choose between organic and paid marketing. Car dealerships need both to drive traffic and sales to your auto dealership.

In organic marketing, make sure you focus on website search engine optimization (SEO) best-practices for the car makes and models in your inventory as well as your dealership location, and dealership specific keywords.

In PPC marketing, your campaigns need to be optimized for makes, models, and years of your vehicles as well as special offers and incentives.

Which Media should be used for Your Target Audience?

You need to be very careful about your marketing media-mix when optimizing your campaigns for better returns on investment (ROI). Thorough research in this area has to be made to choose the best media type to promote your brand and sales. It needs to be a judicious mix of digital media and social platforms as well as radio, TV, newspapers, print, or local promotional avenues, with digital marketing and social media accorded the biggest chunks of your media budget.

Why not try Video Commercials?

The effectiveness of video commercials in the automotive retail industry is beyond doubt. Make space for it in your dealership marketing. Video commercials leave a memorable impression of the brand.

SEO techniques have to be applied even during video promotions on YouTube for better searchability.

Your videos should be unique and creative, which differentiates you from your competitors.

What is your Online Reputation?

No doubt that your dealership’s best sales professionals have earned you an offline reputation. But, it is important to earn an online reputation as well. Prospective customers go through your brand’s reviews and comments before they even talk to you.

Create accounts on social media, top review sites (Google My Business, Yelp, etc.), dealership specific sites, and more. Encourage your existing customers to leave a review or testimonial, which can promote your sales.