3 Ways To Advertise Your Car Dealership

Before internet marketing took over, walk-in car dealerships were all the rage. All the dealerships needed were a few ads in the paper, TV or radio, and perhaps a billboard or two. However, as with most businesses, there is a serious change in dynamic about how car dealerships approach advertising. Clients don't pay as much attention to traditional means of advertising, and with just about every other dealership setting up online, dealerships have to find more efficient ways to market themselves.

 

Social media advertising

Social media presents the perfect platform for dealers to market their business. With a single post, you could reach thousands of potential clients. Of course, to do that effectively, you need to set up a dedicated page or account for your dealership and go above and beyond to outsmart your competition. Assuming that all a client wants is a good picture of the car with a price tag attached is a grave mistake. While the picture goes a long way, people generally make more informed sales decisions now than they used to. Including detailed information on the status of the car and its features goes a long way into proving your credibility as a trustworthy dealership. You need to think outside the box when it comes to how you approach your social media audience. Look up various ways of improving your social media marketing campaign to boost and update your knowledge especially since trends are always changing. For instance, you could include videos instead of just pictures.

 

Offers and events

People have a higher inclination to spend money at your car dealership if you offer them something extra, which is where offers and events come in. The goal of the events should be to show your potential customers around your dealership without forcing sales pitches on them. Nevertheless, you should design each event in such a way that it brings you a profit. For instance, you could find out how to host a charity auction where clients bid on cars, and a percentage of the profits go to charity. Placing offers on your vehicles is also an excellent way of attracting customers to your dealership. Since most other dealerships will have the same idea, you should find creative ways to outsmart them. For instance, instead of just offering discounts on your car prices, you could provide a servicing guarantee on the car where the customers would get their cars serviced for free within a given period.

 

Research consumer interests online

Understanding your market is a necessity when coming up with an effective advertising strategy. When buying a car, one of the most influential factors is location. Would a 4x4 be better opposed to an AWD? Are the clients in a particular area more inclined to buy convertibles or station wagons? Such information could come in handy when designing targeted advertisements. For that kind of research, you would need to access the browsing traffic from different locales, which is usually impossible because most sites tailor their searches to location. However, you can easily find browsing traffic of other locales with a VPN, allowing you access to the search traffic from different regions.

 

The Takeaway

Social media advertising, conducting research on the consumer interests and coming up with offers and events are only three of the many ways you could advertise your car dealership. However, they all have a few things in common. For starters, your ideas should be creative and original because you can’t hope to win over the market if you leech off the ideas from other dealers. Additionally, you should come up with strategies that have short-term and long-term implications. For instance, making a servicing offer has the short-term goal of boosting your sales and a long-term goal of repeat customers and referrals.

by Rahul Paul via Everyone's ADM Blog Posts - Automotive Digital Marketing