Marketing is not the same as it was 15 years ago. Now, if you want to position your car dealership higher in the eyes of customers, you need to rank better on digital marketing platforms. As you work on improving your online status and create a good following of customers, you need to intelligently experiment with various automotive digital marketing strategies for promoting user engagement and conversion. You must also have a solid analytical program in place for improving your marketing efforts, hence results in increased ROI, brand reputation, user experience, and usability of your website. Are you looking for ways to improve your digital marketing? Look at these simple tips below:
Answer Your Calls – Follow Up ASAP
Let’s start with something easy for getting you into the digital marketing groove. As you probably do know, digital marketing is all about consumer experiences. You must do everything in your power to ensure the customer receives value in every process from your car dealership. This involves answering customer calls on the number you have listed online. You must have a receptionist present to answer calls instantly and respond to customer queries.
However, if you fail to answer a call for some reason, don’t panic. Instead, try your best to follow up as soon as possible. Statistics reveal that consumers like doing business with car dealerships who take their interactions seriously. Subsequently, if you call them back and solve their issues/problems, you can feel assured they give five-stars on their user experience. On the other hand, if you fail to answer your business calls in a timely fashion or forget to follow up ASAP, you may lose many potential customers.
Use Google Analytics (GA) to Create Targeted Ads
Google Analytics is the ultimate tool when it comes to monitoring and recording demographics data to target advertisements. GA can easily report on the interests, age, and gender of your users. This information can be used for creating highly effective and efficient remarketing lists. If you have never used the demographics feature on GA, you will have to turn it on within the application and then make a change to the code on your website.
Once your site starts recording demographics information with the help of Google Analytics, analyze this info and start watching for patterns. You will begin noticing people within different interest group and age group categories most likely to convert on your site. Next, you create automotive marketing campaigns that target those very demographics. However, bear in mind that understanding the behavior of people isn’t easy. You need to look at three months of data or more, before making a final decision on who you want to target (based on demographics).
Try Facebook’s Website Custom Audiences
Last year, Facebook rolled out a new feature that helps businesses target customers in the best way possible. The feature is known as “Website Custom Audiences (WCA)” and can enable car dealerships to show Facebook Advertisements to those prospective customers and visitor who visited and explored your website. In order to start using this feature, you will have to convince your web provider on installing a tracking pixel on your website.
Once that is done, you can begin targeting people who viewing specific pages on your website. By using Facebook Ads Manager, you can automate the process of showing different ads to people with varied interests. Before you begin using WCA though, you need to decide whom you should target. You could target everyone visiting your page, but that is rather inconvenient and a little heavy on the pocket. A better option would be to take a subset of individuals who looked at certain pages of your site.
This way, you can avoid overspending, while allowing your car dealership to be more specific with your landing pages and ad copies. For instance, if you’re selling KIAs, you could target visitors who browsed the Kia SUVs inventory. Then, write an ad copy about Kia SUVs for targeting those very customers.
Reach out to Your Prospects with Video
There aren’t many people in the world who would wake up early in the morning and think that “oh, today is a good day to head to the car dealership”. Unless your customers are avid car-buyers and speed-enthusiast, many prospects will actually be scared of you. This can be owed to the negative “stealership” stereotype everybody tends to affiliate with car dealerships. Many people have this negative thinking that they moment they set foot into your lot, they’ll be hypnotized into buying a ride.
To prevent prospects from thinking this way and show that your dealership is staffed with people who genuinely like what they do, try creating a video to send a message. You can start by recording short and informal interview videos of your service team, receptionist, service manager and sales manager to showcase their personalities. Post these videos on your main website or social media pages to humanize your dealership. For boosting results, try choosing the most charismatic and friendliest folks for videos.
Monitor and Respond to Customer Feedback
An important part of digital marketing is to ensure that your customers are satisfied with each level of your service. This involves your first interactions to the buying process, as they are most likely to share their experience with your car dealership on their social media profiles or your car dealership page. Measure feedbacks and experiences on a regular basis to ensure there is no gap in any service from your end. Monitor how customers feel about your website and its products/services. The more feedback you collect, the better results you can gain from digital marketing.
Tell Real Customer Stories on Your Blog
Last, but not the least, don’t hesitate on sharing real customer stories on your blog. There is nothing better than allowing your customers to speak and market your website. Post pictures of your customers and their responses to questions. To add a personal touch, begin asking questions like, “What feature on your car are you most excited about” or “How will this car make your life easier?”. Write up the responses and post them on your blog.
So, now that you are familiar with the tips mentioned above, improving the digital marketing of your car dealership won’t be a problem.
