Empty Your Lot: 10 Car Dealer Marketing Tips to Try This Year
Every year, there are more than 17 million cars sold all across the U.S. There are also more than 90 million cars sold globally on an annual basis.
Do you want to make sure your car dealership is selling as many cars as it possibly can? You can do it by putting a series of car dealer marketing tips to good use.
As a car dealer, you should focus a lot of your efforts on the different digital car dealership marketing strategies that you can use in this day and age. From posting blogs on your dealership’s website to putting up photos of new cars on your dealership’s Instagram page, there are so many ways to attract customers to your lot.
Are you stuck as far as where you should even start? Take a look at 10 car dealer marketing tips that will help you get things going below.
1. Start a Blog About the Cars on Your Lot
Do you have a blog on your car dealership’s website?
If not, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. There are so many good reasons to create a blog for your car dealership.
For starters, a blog will allow you to show off some of the vehicles that you have on your lot today. You can provide people with blogs about your selection and do it in a way that feels a lot more organic and natural than just putting up photos and specs for different cars.
A blog will also provide you with plenty of fresh content for your various social media platforms. Rather than just putting up a photo of a new car, you can link to a blog you did on it and drive traffic to your website.
There is no reason not to have a blog for your car dealership in 2019. It’ll give you a leg up on your competition and help you sell more cars in no time.
2. Use Facebook to Target Ads at People in Your Area
Facebook has been at the center of a lot of controversy in recent months thanks to the privacy issues that have haunted the social networking service.
But despite the controversy, there are still millions of Americans logging into Facebook each and every day. About two-thirds of Americans have Facebook and use it regularly.
With that in mind, you should try targeting Facebook ads at people in your area who are currently in the market for a car. You can even get as specific as you want and target ads at those searching for the kinds of cars you have on your lot right now if you want.
Don’t ignore the power of Facebook if you own a car dealership. There are all kinds of ways that you can use it to market your business more effectively.
3. Show off Your Dealership’s Cars on Instagram
While Facebook remains the most popular social networking service in the U.S. at this time, Instagram is hot on its heels. “The gram” is especially popular among those who fall into the millennial category.
Studies have shown that about 60 percent of millennials use Instagram right now. So if you’re not showing off your dealership’s cars on Instagram, you’re making a big mistake.
Get into the habit of photographing one car from a bunch of different angles every day and post it on Instagram. Your followers will be able to scroll through the photos to see everything a particular car has to offer.
You should also encourage your customers to put up photos of them in the cars you sold them on Instagram and share them when they do. This will create a closer connection with customers and show others in your community that you’re a name they can trust when it comes to car sales.
4. Take to Twitter to Share Info on New Arrivals
The popularity of Twitter seems to have plateaued over the last couple of years. The company isn’t growing as quickly as it once was.
But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still use the social media site to plug the new arrivals on your lot. After all, Twitter accounted for more than $700 million worth of car sales just five years ago, and it had a lot less active users back then.
It’s easy enough to throw up a tweet about a new car on your lot without putting in too much effort on your part. And if you’re able to come up with something clever as a caption, it could inspire one of your followers to come in and take a test drive.
5. Put Together YouTube Videos on New Vehicles
The majority of Americans shop online for just about everything these days. And that includes cars! Before heading off to a dealer’s lot, people will usually look around to see what kind of information they can find on different vehicles.
You can provide people with tours of your new vehicles by setting up a YouTube channel and populating it with plenty of car videos. From videos about the ins and outs of a car to videos about car maintenance, you can attract a lot of viewers with your clips.
As an added bonus, these videos will also familiarize people with your staff. They’ll feel more comfortable coming in to talk to you when they feel like they already know you.
6. Use Social Media to Shares Stories About Your Dealership
Did your car dealership just take part in a local charity event? Are you the lead sponsor for a 5K in the area? Or did you just help a celebrity pick out a new car, truck, or SUV?
You should be sharing stories about these things on social media!
Humanizing your car dealership should be one of your goals when doing car dealer marketing. And it’ll be easy to do it when you put some personality into your social media posts and make them about more than just the new cars you have to offer.
7. Respond to People Who Contact You Online
If there are a lot of people who reach out to your car dealership online, either through Facebook, Twitter, or some other social media site, you should make it a point to interact with them.
As we mentioned earlier, one easy way to do this is by asking people to share photos of cars they’ve purchased through you and then sharing them. But you should also interact with those who reach out to you for other reasons.
Social media has made it simpler than ever for businesses to “talk” to their customers. Take advantage of that.
8. Encourage Satisfied Customers to Leave Positive Reviews
Before coming down to your car lot to see what you have to offer, most people are going to go online and read the reviews people have left for your business. What are they going to find?
Ideally, there should be lots and lots of positive reviews that your customers have left. But if there aren’t, you should do your best to change that. Good reviews are worth their weight in gold for car dealerships.
If a customer lets you know how much they enjoyed working with you, thank them and encourage them to leave you a positive review. And if they do, send them a token of your appreciation, like a coupon for a free oil change.
9. Set up Special Online-Only Offers
You shouldn’t clog your social media feeds up with too many “special” offers. People are going to stop following you if all that you do is try to convince them to come in and buy a car by offering deals.
But every once in a while, you should offer your followers online-only offers on certain vehicles. It’ll keep them more engaged and make them consider coming to check out the cars you have to offer.
You should also think about listing a lot of specific parts for cars on your website. It’ll make it easier for people to find parts they need online.
10. Improve the SEO for Your Website
If you don’t use any of the other car dealer marketing tips on this list, use this one!
Search engine optimization is something that’s very important for car dealerships. You want to make sure people are finding your dealer website when they Google dealerships in your area.
Starting a blog is one good way to give your SEO a boost. But you can also do it by creating content for your service and product pages and using the right keywords.
Use These Car Dealer Marketing Tips to Drive Sales
As you can see, there are tons of ways that you can increase your car sales in the coming year. The car dealer marketing tips listed here are only the beginning when it comes to marketing your dealership more effectively.
Try a few of the tips out and see what kind of response you get. You should start to notice an uptick in business before too long.
Check out our blog for more great digital marketing tips.