You may have noticed that marketing these days has moved towards digital. You may also be wondering why your dealership should make the change and how they can accomplish this.
At 7Social, we're happy to answer these questions, but first, let's look at how digital marketing differs from traditional sales methods.
What Distinguishes Digital Marketing For Car Dealers From Conventional Sales
The distinction between digital and traditional marketing is the medium via which your advertisements reach your consumers and clients. Digital marketing allows for an omni-channel approach and a seamless sales funnel from start to finish. It meets customers where they live most of their lives online.
The term traditional marketing, however, refers to a type of advertising and promotion that companies used in the early stages of their existence. Print ads, billboards, flyers or pamphlets, TV, newspapers, radio, and other forms of mass media are all part of this strategy, as are fliers, postcards, and brochures are sent through the mail.
It should be noted that traditional marketing generates half as many customer interactions as digital marketing does each year. Digital marketing is also much more highly customizable and targeted than the traditional approach with more readily available data about the effectiveness of your campaign.
When Compared to Traditional Sales Methods, What are the Advantages of Using Digital Marketing?
Data helps you understand your customers.
Expanded scope and audience.
You can converse with numerous persons simultaneously while using targeted communication.
Your consumers can help you increase your digital advertising.
What Are Some Strategies For Digital Marketing in the Automotive Industry
As we make our way into the future, we become more intertwined with technology. This especially true of the younger generations who have grown up with modern technologies from an early age.
Digital marketing for the automobile business has never been more important, but you must remember that digital marketing is a level playing field across all industries. The competitors in the same zip code as you may compete for the same clients. This must be kept in mind at all times, whether creating material or planning future projects.
Everyone is always promoting. Realizing that your rivals have the same advantage as you should encourage you to consider methods to interact with your consumers via digital marketing. There is a distinction between presenting advertisements on social sites, publishing information that needs interaction, and engaging with automobile purchasers. Let's now review some effective web marketing strategies.
Content Marketing
Connecting with customers using content marketing is doing so without directly pitching them. Think of it as uninterrupted marketing. You provide your customers with information that will increase their product and brand knowledge rather than selling them your goods or services. The idea that companies will be rewarded with client business and loyalty if they give customers consistent, continuous useful information forms the cornerstone of this marketing strategy.
An industry-specific manufacturer's blog posts and articles may be syndicated on prominent social media platforms and give specialty product information, such as features, pricing, etc. Specific questions from your intended audience can also be addressed.
Email Marketing
Many customers spend as much time in their email inboxes as they do with their families in the digital realm. At 7Social, we can help you develop an email marketing campaign to target these customers.
Mobile Optimization
The most often utilized digital platforms are cell phones. It's time to optimize your web pages for mobile devices.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the act of optimizing content for higher placement in search results. The words you use in your ads will have a big impact on how they show up on search engines like Google. SEO optimization allows you to control the flow of traffic to your site naturally. SEO is a good way to boost your site's visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Once you have SEO optimized content, it becomes much easier to promote that content on social media platforms or through other marketing techniques without spending any extra money. SEO offers great benefits for automotive businesses because there are so many ways to market your products and services. SEO can help you dominate your competition, even if they are already established.
If you're looking for ways to improve your automotive business, SEO should be one of your top priorities. Not only will it help you gain a competitive edge, but it's also an affordable way to market your products and services. It will require more time and attention to detail but it is far less expensive than paid search engine placement and makes your website seem more trustworthy. Customers can tell when the website they visited is not relevant.
Social Media
One of the greatest advents of our time is social media. It has allowed our society to be more connected than we have been in thousands of years of the written word. However, social media is more than about building connections between friends and family. It is also about building relationships between businesses and their current and future customers. Social media is, therefore, the perfect place to market your dealership, and the options are endless! At 7Social, our favorite social media platform for dealerships is Facebook!
Video Marketing
Manufacturers of automotive components will particularly benefit from this approach. It helps explain the functions of machine components more clearly, can be easily disseminated, and has a large audience. It is also great for reviewing the various makes and models available on your lot.
With so Many Options What is the Best Method for Digital Marketing
In reality, an omnichannel marketing strategy will always be the optimal method for automobile dealerships, With an omnichannel marketing approach, companies are able to reach their customers where they are and provide a relevant message at the right moment. Omnichannel marketing enables firms to create a unified customer experience that recognizes the previous contact points in the customer journey.
Omnichannel marketing may look much like multichannel at first glance, but they are not one and the same. As the name suggests, it's all about bringing together your many digital platforms into one cohesive whole. Oneness is appreciated and acknowledged by customers. However, multichannel marketing focuses on executing campaigns across several channels, even when those channels don't constantly interact with one another.
Final Thoughts
Your daily objective while working at a dealership should be simple: to increase your client base. You want your client base to expand and purchase more, whether you're attempting to attract more vehicle buyers, fill your service bays, or sell more auto components from the parts department.
Digital car sales are increasing. Automobile manufacturers in North America and Europe have begun providing consumers with the option of purchasing vehicles online as opposed to visiting a dealership. Using a computer or a mobile device, consumers may shop at their leisure, explore, pick the options they wish, and acquire the financing they need. In addition, car dealerships now provide online sales, virtual walk-around technology for internet customers, in-home road testing, and home delivery of the vehicles they sell. More dealers will do so in 2022. With so many parts of the sales funnel going digital, it is no secret that marketing should as well!