Top 10 Marketing Tips for Car Dealers
In recent years car dealers have had to adapt their marketing methods from offline only to include more online promotion. Read our top 10 marketing tips for car dealers below.
- Create a buzz
Competition is fierce amongst car dealers so you need to set up your marketing efforts in order to create a real buzz about your business. For example you could create a Twitter contest to win a sought after make or model of car for the day.
- Create a viral video
Viral videos on sites like YouTube have the potential to drive huge amounts of traffic to your website. A spoof video that sends up the stereotypical car sales person for example could create a lot of publicity for your dealership.
- Be innovative
Simply copying an offer or promotion that another local car dealer is running isn’t going to win you any prizes for originality. Why not have a brainstorming meeting with your staff to see if you can generate some innovative ideas to get more potential customers through the door?
- Run a competition to gather customer data
Taking one of your cars to a local shopping centre or community event to give away as a prize is a great way to raise your profile locally as well as gathering information from people for your marketing activities such as email or SMS marketing. You could repeat this over the course of a month and give the car away as a prize at the end of it.
- Carry out market research
The internet and social media have changed people’s buying behaviour. Your target market is now much more likely to look online when thinking of buying a new car than reading the motoring sections in the local press. Carrying out market research can help you identify where you should be focusing your marketing efforts in terms of the balance between online and offline advertising.
- Save money by using email marketing
Many car dealers still spend small fortunes every year sending out mail shots to potential customers that end up in the bin. Rather than paying for design, printing and postage, you could use email marketing instead which is far more cost effective.
- Make videos of your sales team
Why not break down the barriers between customers and your sales staff by having short videos of each team member on your website? This will help build a rapport with people before they even step into the showroom and allow you to explode the myth that all car sales people are the same.
- Offer exclusive online promotions
You can increase the amount of traffic to your website by offering exclusive internet only deals on new cars. An idea would be to have an ‘internet car of the week’ where customers had to check the website for full details as this would encourage repeat visits to your website.
- Make your website interactive
Allowing customers to customise the colour of the new cars you have for sale on your website is a good way to get them to interact with the site. Another tool you may want to consider is having a driving game on your website that people can play and send their high scores to their friends.
- Let people book a test drive online
Being able to book a test drive online is a convenient feature for your website to have, not just for your customers but for your sales staff as well.
Automating this process rather than asking people to call up and talk for a while on the phone frees up more of everyone’s time to do other things.
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