Car dealership videos have become an essential marketing tool for car dealerships in recent years. These videos are designed to showcase a dealership’s inventory, highlight special offers, and promote its brand. With the rise of digital marketing, car dealerships should invest in video production to keep up with the competition. A well-produced car dealership video can capture the attention of potential customers and help establish the dealership as a trusted source of quality vehicles.
Car dealership video marketing is more effective than images and texts in creating powerful content and promoting your inventory. These videos posted on third-party sites such as YouTube and Instagram have the ability to gain and hold customer attention.
In this blog, we will explore the benefits of auto dealership video marketing and provide tips on how to create effective and engaging videos that can help boost sales and increase brand awareness. Whether you are a small independent dealership or a large franchise, this blog is for you!
What are Car Dealership Videos?
Car dealership videos are promotional visual content designed for automotive retailers to showcase their inventory, services, and brand identity. These videos are designed to engage and inform potential customers about the available vehicles, highlighting their features, specifications, and pricing. Through compelling storytelling, captivating visuals, and persuasive narratives, car dealership videos aim to attract and convert leads, ultimately driving sales and establishing a strong online presence in the competitive automotive market.
Benefits of Videos for Car Dealership Marketing
Car dealership marketing videos help customers better understand your product. Your dealership can use video marketing to minimize doubts about your products. Let’s look at some benefits of video marketing for car dealers.
1. Convert prospects into customers
Car videos give a realistic feel of the product and reduce uncertainty. A customer can see the product from all angles without actually physically examining it, building trust, and bringing conversions.
2. Build consumer trust
Product quality is the primary concern in automotive ecommerce since customers cannot see the car. Car dealership videos can help eliminate that concern, making shoppers more comfortable buying from you. It also helps build brand credibility.
3. Google prioritizes videos
Google tries to find videos relevant to searches. If you have a video marketing your car dealership on YouTube, with an SEO-friendly title, there is a high chance that it will appear on the first page of Google Search Results when relevant keywords are used.
4. Engage customers
A major benefit of video content is customer engagement. Reading lengthy descriptions can be tedious, it is better to give that information to your customers through engagement video.
Types of Car Dealership Videos
Personalization of car dealer videos for marketing can increase engagement and conversions. Let’s look at some video types that your car dealer video ideas should cover.
Awareness phase video
To cover this phase, make ads. Ads should be effective and targeted. Targeted video ads can help you reach potential customers at the right time. The ads should address the problems the person might be facing when looking for a car. These can be used on multiple platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, etc.
The key to making your ad campaign effective is personalization and targeting. Meet the customers where they are present and personalize your solution to their problems. If your automotive dealership is based in multiple locations, you can localize the ads for these locations.
Engagement phase video
New arrivals
A new arrivals video is a great way to inform and keep your customers up-to-date on your car inventory selection. It may even encourage them to make a purchase. If they became aware of you through your ads, you could even send notifications to tell them about new arrivals at your dealership. The focus of such videos should be engagement rather than selling.
Best deals
These videos will promote special offers and new deals that customers can find in your dealership. Again, the goal here is to engage the customer by showing off the best deals targeted to specific customers.
Newsletter videos
Don’t depend just on your Facebook or Instagram pages, invest in a newsletter as well. A customer doesn’t buy a car on impulse, a lot of time and research is done before arriving at a decision. So it is vital to build trust by sharing insights, industry trends, and your expertise. All these can be sent to your customers at the email addresses through a newsletter.
Consideration phase video
If your customers are engaged well with your brand, they may have begun considering a purchase.
Quotas & personalized offers
Such content is generally personalized through text formats, like in a PDF. But personalizing this information and presenting it through a video can help you stand out from your competitors. It is engaging and can be generated with the help of online AI-based tools.
After purchase videos
Buying a car is not the end of a customer’s journey. Interactions with the customer will also continue after the purchase. Dealership video marketing should also include this phase, showing how life looks after making a purchase from you. You can create videos of your team or customer testimonials to assure customers they are in good hands when they choose your dealership. Behind the scene, videos are also easy to make, and you should definitely include these in your marketing campaign strategy.
Conversion video
After the sale has been made, some customers may begin to doubt their decision to purchase. Videos can be made to battle this doubt. The goal here is to convince the customer that they have made a good decision. You should also send out welcome videos to show the customer that they have become part of a group and their money is well spent. Try personalizing the video with customer data rather than making a generic video and sending it to all customers.
Car walkthrough video
Car walkthrough videos are a must for car dealerships. They can help reach a wider audience, like those who are not able to immediately visit your dealership to check out the cars. This is also a touchpoint for building trust and establishing a connection. The video should be fun and have a personality to stand out. This does not mean high energy, it means you are able to connect with the customer on a personal level.
Retention & activation video
Such content is shared through automated emails. But sending automated personalized videos has a higher impact. People prefer watching a short video to reading texts, which is why video is more likely to stay in the person’s mind. Videos can be sent of your staff wishing a customer happy birthday, or a mechanic giving useful tips about car care.
Car Dealership Video Ideas
Here are some ideas you can use to begin your video marketing campaign today.
Inventory showcase (videos for VDPs)
The first and most crucial video idea for your car dealership – create videos to showcase the cars in your inventory. These can be 360 views of your car’s exterior and interior, highlighting special features to engage the customers.
Test drive and detailed walkaround videos
A vicarious test drive – via videos – is a great way to let people feel a vehicle virtually. Apart from that, you can also post thorough walkaround videos showing a car’s features and design in a detailed manner. You can also use motion graphics to add an extra level of excitement and engagement to your videos.
360° virtual car tour
One of the best ways to connect with buyers is by offering 360-degree virtual tours of the cars in your inventory. 360° visuals allow customers to take a detailed look at your vehicles from various angles, which is excellent for research. You can even highlight features (like body damage on used cars) by tagging 360° car visuals.
It increases transparency in the buying process, which helps improve customer experience, consequently increasing sales. Want to know how to create 360° car videos in a jiffy? Reach out to us and know how!
Tutorials/how-to videos
“How to” videos and short video tutorials are trending across the internet these days. Therefore, you should consider incorporating such videos into your marketing strategy. Try making step-by-step videos on topics like how to change a tire, how to check your engine’s health, and more. Before making these videos, ensure that your research is thorough so that the information you post is correct and relevant. Short tutorial videos are great for Automotive social media marketing; you can build your brand and connect with your audience using these.
Staff introduction videos
By introducing your team, you are making yourself familiar to the customers. After watching the videos, potential buyers would know the people handling the sales and services, which will smoothen their buying journey. So, when they arrive at your dealership for a purchase, they won’t be clueless about whom to meet.
Also, introducing employees to your audience will help humanize your business, which increases consumer trust. By taking the time to make a good introduction video, you’ll be on your way to becoming a successful car dealership.
Car launch/new addition to inventory
You can post teaser videos for upcoming cars that will soon be added to your inventory/brand lineup. Instead of plainly putting the information about new and upcoming car models, you can create an exciting video series where you slowly reveal the info in different stages. This will keep the audience hooked to your content.
FAQ videos about cars or your dealership
FAQ videos are also a great way to drive more traffic to your website and digital showroom. Such videos can help people learn about cars (or your dealership) in a fun and engaging way. Adding some FAQ videos on the VDPs is a great way to elevate your vehicle merchandising game.
You can take this to the next level by hosting a live Q&A session on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and more. Here the viewers can comment to ask questions related to vehicles in real-time, which you can answer during that live session. This will greatly improve your dealership’s customer service.
Testimonials by happy customers
Positive testimonials are a great way to convince new buyers to buy from you! Remember that people are more likely to trust existing customers than just marketing collateral. As per BigCommerce, around 92% of buyers read online reviews before any purchase. Therefore, you must add testimonials to your website.
Video testimonials are more impactful than simple text ones. The best way to shoot them is by asking your existing customers to share their honest opinions when they visit your dealership, either to take delivery of their car or for scheduled maintenance.
How to Shoot 360 Spin Car Videos with Spyne
Here is a brief video guide to shooting the best 360 car view videos for your VDPs, social media posts and YouTube channel.
Conclusion
In conclusion, car dealership videos have become an essential part of automotive marketing and have the potential to attract more customers and drive sales. Dealerships that invest in high-quality video content are likely to stay ahead of the competition and establish their brand in the market. With the advancements in technology, creating engaging videos has become more accessible and cost-effective, making it easier for dealerships of all sizes to produce compelling content.
Whether it’s a virtual tour of the showroom, a promotional video highlighting the latest offers, or a testimonial from a satisfied customer, videos can help car dealerships communicate their message effectively and build trust with their audience. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, car dealerships must adapt and integrate video marketing into their overall auto digital marketing to remain relevant and successful.
