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As more and more people shop for cars online, they will inevitably find your dealership through search engine results. As a car dealer, you should adapt your automotive marketing strategies to this new reality. There are several ways a car dealer can stand out when marketing to a digital audience in search of cars to buy.
Keep your website attractive but friendly to shoppers
One of the best ways to market online is with a quality website. A quality website should be attractive to customers and yet be useful enough to deliver a painless and seamless user experience as they go through the information you provide.
What will help your customers in going through your website, for example, is valuable and relevant content and tools to organize the content to make it easy to read and use. Even something as simple as a chat tool with greater functionality than traditional chat which serves as mainly a lead capture. With AI-powered chat, like Digital Air Strike’s Response Path, website visitors can quickly explore your inventory, get prequalified for credit, and estimate their trade-in values.
Chat is also a great place to showcase your safety measures, hours, location, and 5-star reviews. This automotive marketing strategy requires time and attention, but it will be all worth it in drawing potential leads into the car sales cycle.
Ensure that you use paid and organic SEO to keep your online presence on top.
As most of your potential customers rely upon search results to find car dealers, rather than word-of-mouth referrals, it’s essential that you take the time and money to invest in a good SEO strategy. There are benefits to doing this. The most important of these benefits is that, if done well, you’ll be top of mind and atop the search results.
Automotive marketing strategies relying on SEO are of two kinds. Paid SEO uses such things as search result advertising that search engines place at the top of search results. Organic SEO, however, will prove to be more important and offer a higher return on investment. People often skip paid search ads and head down to the organic search results. This means that your SEO strategy must focus on ensuring that when people search for a car dealer, they will find you on the first results page.
One of the best ways to do this is to optimize your Google My Business profile which helps consumers – and Google – – learn about your business. This means adding your hours, location, and photos to your Google My Business profile as well as other free opportunities to advertise your dealership, special offers, 5-star reviews, and your open positions.
Make sure to get reviews from satisfied customers after their visit
This automotive marketing strategy does not require you to be pushy. Customers, however, will welcome the opportunity to leave positive feedback immediately after their visit, especially if the experience they had exceeds their expectations. Sending a text message asking visitors to leave a review on social media platforms or review sites may nudge them to do this without making them feel obliged to do so.
Learn how to manage your online reputation politely and honestly
Because negative reviews can hurt your business in an online age, it is important as part of your automotive marketing strategy to manage your online reputation. Good, honest, polite, and professional communication with negative commenters will help you assuage their concerns and hopefully change their minds and their public comments. Learn more about how to respond to negative online reviews here.
While malicious reviews are a problem, some negative reviews are opportunities for you to improve your business. Being ready to engage with people leaving those types of negative reviews means that you take your car dealer reputation seriously enough that you want it to be better. Today’s negative comment may become a more favorable one. This will improve your online reputation and keep your leads interested in your dealership.
These are some of the automotive marketing strategies you can use to help your business become competitive in the online marketplace. The time and investment you make in them will pay off in increased sales and willingness to use after-sales services. Don’t have time to manage this on your own? Digital Air Strike can help! Let’s start with a free Intel Report of your entire online presence. Request your free custom analysis here.
