Unbelievably, there was a time when social media was considered as a “passing fad” that will eventually lose its popularity. Businesses thought that it was just something for “the kids” to play with and could never really help a brand grow. As time passes though, the skeptics were obviously proved wrong. From the 3.5 billion number of internet users, 2.5 billion actively use various social media networks. Popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn have even become marketing giants. Therefore, social media is no longer “optional” but rather “mandatory” for marketing.
Even so, there are many automotive websites and car dealerships out there, which haven’t yet embraced the power of social media marketing (SMM) for selling their products and services. No social media presence can directly affect your reputation, as to being an “amateur”. This puts your car dealership at risk of failing and being beaten by the competition, as you won’t even know what your customers are saying about you. To prevent this from happening, it is essential that you engage in SMM. Below are a few benefits of implementing SMM in your automotive strategy.
Learn About Target Audience – Gain Valuable Customer Insights
As users like, share, comment, and upload pictures/videos/audio’s, a huge amount of data your customers is generated in real time. Every day there are 95 million videos and photos uploaded to Instagram, over 500 million Tweets from Twitter, and 4.5 billion Likes on Facebook.
This great activity is perfect for gaining tons of information about your customers, be it who they are, what they like, and how they feel about your automotive brand. By social listening and daily active engagement, you can gather relevant customer data.
This information can be used for learning more about your audience, allowing you to make better business decisions. However, first you need to create a social media profile and build a great following, before you get to gaining crucial customer insights.
Engage Your Target Audience – Increases Brand Awareness and Loyalty
One of the main benefits of implementing SMM into your automotive strategy is that you gain the ability of communicating with a huge number of customers, who might be willing to purchase a car. By using tools like Hootsuite Insights, you can differentiate between serious and non-serious customers. You can gauge customer sentiment and find conversations happening around your brand. At the same time, you have access to real-time reports.
By using this information, you can better meet the needs and demands of your customers. By helping them find and connect with you, you can develop a solid base. Once you start communicating with them and solve their issues/problems or provide them help, you’re more likely to increase brand loyalty and customer retention. The Social Habit conducted a study, which indicated that 53% of Americans are more loyal to those brands, whom they follow on social media.
No Reliance on Traditional Advertising – Lower Costs of Marketing on Social Media
When compared to traditional advertising mediums like TV ads, newspaper ads, telemarketing etc, social media proves to be a far better, budget-friendly, and cost-effective method of promoting your business and its products and services. Without a social media presence, you will be spending lots of money in traditional advertising mediums that guarantee no real results.
In fact, you can’t even track your performance and growth with such advertising mediums. This can prove to be incredibly heavy on your pocket, and could eventually lead to the demise of your business. By using social media, on the other hand, you can help lure in customers by posting attractive content in the form of text, images, or videos. All of this is free and reaches the appropriate audience in time, resulting in huge cash savings.
Generates Higher Converting Leads – Boost in Overall Sales and Conversions
As you build a great social media presence and become popular among your target audience, you get to benefit from increased sales and client retention. Customers will always refer your automotive website to others, if you manage to create a good experience for them. This can result in new prospects being introduced to your business.
A study from MHI Global (a renowned research institute) indicated that world-class companies have rated social media as an effective way for gaining new business opportunities and identifying key decision makers. Another study from Social Selling conducted in 2015 revealed that 75% of companies reported an increase in sales in 12 months, after getting engaged in social media.
This means, if you provide rich customer experiences and tick all the right boxes from your end, you will definitely benefit from a boost in your SERP rankings. This will result in improved web traffic to your site. As more customers begin visiting your site, you gain the opportunity to convert them. This can lead to huge profits, especially if you manage to retain customers.
Improves the Reputation of your Brand – Provides Rich Customer Experiences
Social media networks are vital channels for your brand’s content and voice. It proves vital in building your brand and making it more recognizable and familiar for existing customers. It also makes it easier for customers to communicate, approach, and shop with you.
For instance, a frequent Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram user may have only heard about your company for the first time – after they stumbled across it in their newsfeed (which could have been influenced by another friend liking the same page or a particular photo/post/video).
Share Content Faster and Easier – Direct Medium for Marketing
Last, but not the least, the best thing about leveraging social media for your automotive marketing strategy is that you can create posts and share them in a matter of seconds. Content can reach customers in the shortest possible time, be it in the form of infographics, images, videos, sound files, or simple text-based posts.
Do you want to receive the abovementioned benefits? If so, then perhaps it’s time, you considered implementing SMM into your automotive strategy too.
