Did you know that the automotive industry is one of the largest in the world, consisting of numerous companies covering design, development, manufacturing, marketing, and sales? It also generates massive yearly revenues globally, with countless dealers, brands, and independent sellers jostling for their market share. In this cutthroat industry, pooling in new buyers with a proper automotive marketing strategy up your sleeve is possible.
As per research, expenditure on digital automotive advertising in the US will surge by 11.7 percent in 2024, paving the way for more intense competition in the global market. Therefore, it’s time to buckle up, chalk out some great digital marketing strategies, and seize the deals.
What is Automotive Marketing?
Automotive marketing refers to promoting and advertising vehicles and related products or services within the automotive industry. It involves strategically planning and implementing various marketing techniques to attract and engage potential customers, increase brand awareness, drive sales, and build customer loyalty. Automotive marketing encompasses a wide range of activities, including traditional advertising, digital marketing, social media campaigns, content creation, events, sponsorships, and other promotional efforts tailored to target specific demographics and meet the needs of consumers interested in automobiles.
The goal of automotive marketing is to position a brand or a particular vehicle as a desirable choice in a competitive market and to establish a strong presence in the minds of potential buyers.
Simply put, it is marketing for the automotive industry. All the players in the industry – manufacturers, dealerships, car marketplaces, and even automotive parts and service providers – need great marketing for success.
Interestingly, only 7-9 percent of car buyers know what they want to buy, while the rest still need an immediate purchase intent. Automotive marketers, using effective marketing strategies, can capture the attention of these people and drive them to make a purchase. These campaigns also need a marketing manager, who oversees the planning and deployment of all promotional activities.
Why is an Effective Auto Marketing Strategy Important?
Car buyers spend nearly 14 hours online during their car search, here, automotive marketing plays an important role. Now some of these buyers may prefer searching on Facebook marketplace, and some may prefer a different online marketplace, and then contact the dealer or seller directly. Some may keep juggling between platforms to compare their options, and so on. You might only attract buyers if you apply eBay-related techniques to Facebook or vice versa.
There is no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy; if needed, you must develop different auto-marketing strategies for other platforms. You must also determine what works best for each channel and focus your efforts accordingly. These strategies help in targeting new buyers and increasing its audience.
These are the most significant reasons you need to care about having a top-quality vehicle marketing strategy.
Modern vehicle buyers expect you online
Over the past few years, the automobile market has become heavily dependent on digital channels. However, buyers’ behavior is quite complicated. They constantly switch channels; they may start their journey on their mobile devices or convert to a desktop. Your automotive digital marketing strategy should be responsive to all channels and target them smartly without being spooky.
Buyers want you to surprise them
Around 54 percent of car buyers are willing to pay more if you provide them with a seamless buying experience. But, the first step towards an enhanced user experience is to assist them in identifying their needs and showing relevant and high-quality results, which starts with effective marketing techniques.
Improve your data and lead management
More often than not, car manufacturers and dealerships don’t have excellent communication between departments, like marketing, sales, etc. Thanks to harder competition, retailers need better marketing and management tools. Maintaining crucial data and managing leads properly could prevent losing sales through mismanagement.
How can Auto Marketing Solutions Drive Sales?
All efforts and strategies come down to increasing sales and profits. The appropriate marketing tactics to support your dealership’s competitiveness.
Here are five ways how automotive marketing strategies can help you seize deals.
1. Propel repeat purchases
Building personal relationships with clients is perhaps the oldest trick in the book. Buyers trusting your business also increases their chances of approaching you for future purchases.
2. Increase referrals through offers and word-of-mouth
Referral programs incentivize your existing customers to recommend your dealership to others. On the other hand, happy customers singing praises of your business brings in free word-of-mouth promotions, which can get you a few more buyers!
3. Get into Google’s good books
Google and other search engines are usually the starting point of any car-buying journey. If you are untraceable on SERPs, then you are completely untraceable. Ranking in online searches is one of the most vital car dealership marketing strategies.
4. Get a lead management tool
To ensure that no data or leads leak out from your system, you need a good CRM tool like HubSpot, Zoho, etc. These can put you on alert as soon as a visitor lands on your dealership page, request their contact details, etc., through automation.
5. Improving buyers’ trust through reviews
Online reviews from existing customers can work wonders for your business. Positive reviews help build a compelling use case; you can use it as promotional content for Automotive Social Media marketing. You can also display these on your website and other digital touchpoints, paving the way for a positive first impression.
Top 10 Strategies for Automotive Marketing
To secure your place at the top of buyers’ minds and stay in the competition, here’s a curated list of the 10 best strategies for automotive digital marketing.
1. Leverage customer reviews
Did you know that more than 90 percent of people trust brand recommendations from people more than advertisements? Collecting favorable reviews and promoting them on different platforms is crucial. When an existing customer reveals their trust in your brand, it will help persuade a new one to try out your vehicle.
Again, when those new customers enjoy doing business with you, they might be the ones to write a glowing review that you can further include in your next car marketing campaign.
2. Frame effective SEO strategies
Nearly 90 percent of people browse only those sites that appear on the first page of the SERPs. People hardly care to look at the second or third SERP. Therefore, engaging in SEO tactics is not a choice but a necessity. All promotional content and car dealership advertising copy should be SEO optimized, ensure more visibility, and rank higher on search results.
3. Focus on other search engines as well
The digital world resides mainly on Google, which controls a 92 percent market share. However, you won’t like to miss the chance to tap into buyers who prefer browsing other prominent and second-best search engines, viz., Bing, and Yahoo.
Regarding Microsoft’s Bing specifically, the platform has a range of business profiles and provides highly relevant results and info to searchers. Don’t let this potential resource take a back seat.
4. Remarketing tactics
Remarketing means showing ads to people who have previously visited one of your channels – website, mobile app, etc. Because you’re reaching out to customers who have already expressed interest in your business, there’s a good chance that you can convert them later.
5. Go for relevant keywords
Be sure to include thorough keyword research in PPC auto dealer advertising campaigns. When selecting keywords for PPC ads, apply caution. Ask yourself if it’s a good idea to bid on competitive keywords. Negative keyword management can improve your target search phrases and weed out unrelated leads.
6. Prepare a budget for automotive advertising
Organic traffic is excellent. However, if your competitors use paid advertisements and you are not, you are losing out on the market. Paid promotion can help your content gain traction, spread your ads to more people, and publish your dealership’s name on various platforms for increased visibility. Paid ads are available for banner adverts on websites, social media, and search engines.
Pick the best solutions depending on your company’s budget and audience behavior. Invest in advertising space where you know your target market will see it. Also, you may need to research car buyers’ browsing and purchasing patterns before developing a paid advertising campaign. You can even employ an auto advertising agency to help you.
7. Plan your car marketing campaigns smartly
A successful car dealership marketing campaign comprises the following steps:
- Understand your audience
- Build brand awareness for your dealership/marketplace
- Expand your online presence – website, smartphone apps, social media, etc.
- Engage audience across all channels
- Check your customer interaction across different channels
- Adapt your campaign to automotive industry trends
Let’s look a little deeper into the last point.
You should modify your vehicle marketing campaigns to reflect advertising, SEO, and auto sector changes. Get a comprehensive understanding of the latest trends through newsletters, blogs from industry experts, or discussions on social media channels.
For instance, a current trend in automobile purchasing suggests that more customers look for info online before calling or visiting a showroom. You may profit from this trend by investing more time and energy into your content marketing and PPC efforts to capture leads online during those initial searches.
8. Email and text marketing can still bring leads
The emergence of blogs, videos, and automotive social media marketing doesn’t mean that email and text marketing is medieval. They are still very much relevant. They can help retarget or offer engaging post-purchasing experiences. You can collect feedback, and info about consumers’ needs, communicate about your offers, new collections at your dealership or marketplace, etc. All this info will help engage buyers and act as first-hand info for future marketing strategies.
9. Make the best use of social media
Social media platforms, especially Facebook, are a vital resource for auto marketing and car buyers for research and purchasing. Use relevant keywords to help buyers find your page.
Additionally, you will find numerous features to boost your ads and make them more visible. Also, consider joining communities of car enthusiasts and learn more about car buying behavior and leverage their influence.
10. Offer unique content
Customers love it when you play with your content. Placing a bland car image or writing bullet points about your car features will never attract them and is a bad automotive marketing practice. They want you to engage them, keep them hooked, and convince them the vehicle they’re checking out is worth it. You can also collaborate with auto influencers, and conduct contests, quizzes, etc., to keep people engaged.
Bonus tip
Unique content, images, and videos are critical for car dealership marketing. Make sure your images are high-quality, with a good-looking, uncluttered background. In addition, you should also list your vehicles with videos; you can go for 360-degree visuals or detailed walkaround videos. Audiences love creativity, and such high-quality visuals will entice them to click on the images and ultimately check your offering, improving your conversion rate!
Best Auto Dealer Marketing Ideas for 2024
The online landscape for car marketing is transforming like never before. You need to adapt to all the buying patterns and build a plan that’s not only digital-first but also outshines everyone in the market. Here are a few vital elements of the auto market you need to adopt to battle the automotive game in 2024.
1. Mobile responsive marketing
An average car buyer spends 33 percent of their journey time on mobile devices. All your content, visuals, and ads should be mobile agnostic. Usually, companies design content keeping the desktop in mind and then force-fit it for mobile, which should never be the case. Google charges a penalty if you don’t have a mobile-responsive website and content.
Additionally, Google has introduced a dedicated channel that helps automotive players ensure an immersive mobile experience. Compared to conventional automotive digital marketing strategies, mobile ads can boost conversions by 45 percent and reduce CPA by 30 percent.
2. Optimized voice search
Around 27 percent of the global population uses voice search features today. With digital assistants like Siri and Alexa, these statistics will likely increase manifold in the coming years. It’s not a great idea to leave this potential group behind.
You can notch up customer experiences by embedding paid search for blogs and videos for voice search. In the future, content that’s not voice-optimized might not rank on SERPs!
3. Go for live streaming and target live events
Live streaming is another potential tool to attract and engage buyers. You can talk about your car features, new arrivals or offers, conduct live sales, solve buyers’ doubts and concerns, and so on. In addition, you can also collaborate and participate in other live events. Participate in webinars and discussions and emerge as a thought leader for the automotive market.
4. Integrate AI capabilities for seamless customer service
Bots can do wonders for your dealership page. It can identify car buyers’ searches, recommend products, solve generic issues, and escalate to a customer service rep in case of a technical problem. Bots will also help you personalize the car buying experience by offering buyers relatable content in addition to searches. However, ensure that the bots prompt the right solutions at the right time. It should not reply in a loop and drive away the buyer.
5. Use detailed, informative videos
Personalized movies are a great way to engage viewers as they are interactive and user-adaptive. These Car Videos are created to emphasize the traits of the car buyers they will serve. Google says 70 percent of car buyers took the help of videos to learn about vehicles, and that the watch time of test drives on YouTube surged by 65 percent in the past two years. By tailoring the experience, marketers can make the most of this channel.
Quick Trick
While personalized videos are a must-have element for the digital car marketing strategy, creating professional and high-impact visuals can be cumbersome and expensive. That’s where AI-led car studios come into play.
With the help of AI-led car photo booths like Spyne, you can capture, edit, format, and publish car visuals like a breeze. All you have to do is:
- Download the app on your smartphone.
- Open the camera on the app and follow the on-screen guide.
- Once captured, edit the picture. You can choose from 100+ backgrounds or apply a custom one.
- Process over 1000 visuals simultaneously and make it marketplace and social media ready.
Isn’t that a piece of cake?
Final Word
Strategizing your automotive marketing approach is critical for your Car Retail Business. However, it can take a lot of work to keep up with the trends and practices and the infinite transformations in space. These are just a few tips and ideas to help you get a hold of marketing reins. However, you must evolve and adapt seamlessly to beat the competition.
To learn more about increasing conversions for your automobiles using visual merchandising, contact us and book a free demo!