Top 5 Online Marketing Innovations for Car Dealers in 2019

In the highly connected world we live in today, car dealers need to be innovative, in order to stay ahead in the game.

Online marketing has changed more in the last 5 years than it has in the past 20 years put together. Trends come and go within short time-spans, and responding to them at the appropriate time is important if dealers want to see results. 

In this article, we will point out some interesting online marketing trends for auto dealers in 2019.

01. Chatbots Becoming More Prevalent

Remember, your prospects are social beings and they always prefer to have someone to interact with in real time, instead of sending email and then waiting for replies. This is why so many retailers see the appeal of chatbots.

Even if it isn’t a real human being speaking to the customer, chatbots have become sufficiently advanced these days to handle basic to moderately difficult customer queries in a human-like manner.

02. Profiling Customers Using AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is definitely being taken seriously now and it is deployed in the areas such as click tracking, push notifications, retargeting, and even customer segmentation. Many car dealers are now using AI to refine their delivery systems and in designing their marketing campaigns.

One of the main ways artificial intelligence helps car dealerships in achieving business growth is through personalization.

Customers these days do not want mass marketed promotions. Instead, they are much more likely to choose your vehicle dealership if they receive offers that are custom made for their tastes, at a time when it is appropriate for them.

AI is enabling car dealers in personalizing their marketing to each lead, in order to turn them from a marketing qualified lead into a sales qualified lead.

03. Accelerated Mobile Pages

Search engines such as Google drive huge volumes of traffic, and around 60% of this search traffic comes from mobile devices.

If your auto dealership website’s loading time is higher than average, it’s bounce rate, consisting of the percentage of people who spend less than a minute on your site before leaving, can increase as well, leading to a lower ranking on Google.

This has led to the accelerated mobile pages project by Google. These pages load in less than half a second, and therefore usually see a significantly lower bounce rate.

04. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

Progressive Web Apps are the middle ground between a native app and a typical responsive auto dealer website. In addition to offering a quicker load time, progressive web apps provide a better user experience than a simplistic mobile website, and it supports push notifications as well.

PWA also has the added benefit of not requiring a dedicated smartphone app to be made for your car dealership, thereby saving you money on app development and support costs.

05. Omni Channel Marketing

Prospective car buyers are now more sophisticated than ever before and they obtain their car buying information through many different channels.

For instance, prospects can be introduced to your auto dealership through email, your dealer website, social media channels, or by physically walking in to your brick and mortar showroom.

In multichannel marketing, different channels are available for communicating with customers and prospects. The difference in omni channel marketing is that all the different channels - phone, email, website, social media platforms, mobile, etc. - are connected as well. For example, your dealership staff may begin interacting with a lead on social media, and then move to email, phone, etc. until closing the sale at the dealership.

Despite the fact that they’re interacting with you through different channels, omni channel marketing enables auto dealers to keep track of the prospective customer’s interactions. This also helps your staff save time because they won’t need to restart the conversation every time the customer moves to a new channel of communication.

For more information on the online marketing innovations of 2019 and to know howizmocars can support your car dealership, Contact Us.