Since the rise of internet sales and online marketing, our industry has become more competitive than ever. In the modern world of cut-throat advertising, it’s crucial that car dealers be up to date on marketing trends, responsive to their customers, and committed to excellent service.

In the past, customers would often go to car dealerships looki ng for information about different car makes and models so they could decide which was best for them. Today, customers do their research before they buy. Because of the abundance of information available on the internet, car shoppers can easily do comparison shop online before seeing any vehicles in person.

Because many people who are in the market to purchase cars are turning to the internet for information, it’s imperative that car dealerships meet them there. If you are wondering how you can get more exposure for your business online, keep reading for the top six local advertising strategies you need to try:

1. Clean Up Your Website

The first step to increasing your business’ online exposure is to revamp your website. If you’re able to successfully get traffic onto your site, many prospective customers will decide whether or not they want to visit your dealership based on the look, feel, and functionality.

Ask yourself:

• Does our website load slowly? If so, can we compress our images or minify code, etc. to make our site faster?

• Is our website overwhelming? Is there too many images, navigation buttons, clashing colors, etc. and how can we tweak that?

• Is our site personable and friendly? Does it tell our story?

Nowadays, it’s important to view your website as if it were the front of your business. It must look clean, professional, and have consistent branding as much as possible.

2. Optimize Your Website

Once you have a well designed site that is easy to navigate, you must ensure that it is optimized. If necessary, hire an SEO firm to do keyword research and optimize each page. Remember to use terms that your customer will use when searching for location-specific car dealerships and information, not formal terms most commonly used by us in our industry.

For example, this ‘things to do with kids in SF’ page is focusing on a specific local audience: families with kids who are in San Francisco or plan to be there in the future. Using short terms like “kids activities” would not suit well, as the short terms are much too competitive. With this in mind, look for ways that you can be unique and stand out online.  

3. Use Social Media

In order to reach your audience you have to interact on the same platforms. By engaging in genuine conversation on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, you will make connections within your customer market. Sign up for a monthly social media managing site such as Hootsuite or Hubspot so you can schedule your posts and dedicate your energy to engaging with other local businesses and residents.

A few helpful tips: When posting on social media, use broad hashtags to attract a wide audience as well as local hashtags to attract the eyes of those who live locally. Always have your address and phone number easily accessible in your profile and be sure to respond to messages within a reasonable amount of time. Remember that your presence online represents your brand so be sure to always keep your posts relevant and professional. Make sure your tone, content, and schedule are consistent.

4. Get Local Testimonials

People don’t just go online to get information about different car makes and models. They will also use the internet to get information about your business. Improve your chances of converting online researchers to real-life customers by making reviews available on your website.

While reviews from any of your customers are better than no reviews, be sure to spotlight those from local residents who are well known or work for prominent companies. Put reviews from accredited people at the front and center of your presence online and you will be able to more quickly gain the trust of anyone researching your business online. Claiming your business locations on Google My Business, Yelp, etc. are a must in 2018 and are an easy way to reach more prospective customers while showcasing your reviews.

5. Target Your Ads

In our industry, it’s essential that you properly target your ads. Not only do you have to target the people who live in your area, but you must also target the right age group, income bracket, etc. for specific make/models of cars. While TV commercials and placed newspaper ads used the be the extent of local marketing, successful businesses are now turning to the internet to reach their target market.

While there are many ways to advertise online, Facebook has a created a user-friendly platform that allows advertisers to target very niche markets. Businesses are able to narrow down their audience by their location, age, interests, level of education, and more. By A/B testing the messaging of the ads and different audiences, businesses have been able to fine-tune their marketing reach and serve ads to those who are the most likely to respond to them.

6. Target Local Publications

Another excellent way to get your business in front of new, local eyes is to appear on other popular online publications. In order to do this, you must first conduct research to find other websites and blogs that cater to your local target market. Why? Because these online publications have already done the hard work of attracting your audience.

To tap into another publication’s audience, you have a couple options:

1. The first is to purchase ad space. When designing your ad artwork, try to make a local connection. You can do this by creating an ad that mentions a local landmark, upcoming event, etc.

2. Another way to be featured on a local publication is to request a write-up about your business or pitch an article for publication that caters to their readership and gives mention to your business. This method is the most likely to be accepted if you offer some sort of incentive.

When you can figure out how to strategically position yourself to be in front of your ideal customer, you don’t have to sell nearly as hard.

Conclusion

While local advertising strategies have evolved dramatically over the last few decades, things have gotten a lot easier under the surface. We now can directly target the “perfect customer” and only pay for those interactions. We can test to see which version of a landing page performs better. We have access to all the data we could need, and now it’s our job to interpret it correctly. I hope you enjoyed my top 5 local advertising strategies!

Navigating the modern digital marketing landscape is enough to quickly make your head throb. In our industry, sales is the dominant driver of our successes and failures. How can we equip our sales teams for success?

The answer is simple: smart marketing.

I’m not talking about old school marketing like print ads and junk mail that we send out. We know that doesn’t work very well.

I’m talking about creating a digital empire online — and empires take time to build. So how can we grow efficiently, quickly, and support our sales teams? We focus on the marketing channels with the highest overall ROI:

Highest Marketing ROI Per $1 Spent

- Email - $40

- SEO - $22.24

- Internet Display - $19.72

- Mobile - $10.51

- Catalogs/Print - $7.30

- Banner Ads - $2

At Bowman Auto, we focus on the top 2 channels the most: email marketing and SEO. Together, these two channels create a powerful cycle that fuels our growth online. Let me explain:

The 2018 Marketing Strategy for Dealers - Prioritize Email Marketing

Let’s start with email marketing strategies. Email marketing has an average of 4,000% ROI for every dollar spent. And while building a healthy, organic email list is difficult to do in our industry, the effort pays off.

When you have built an email list, these are typically people that either have: 1) already bought a vehicle and done business with you or 2) shown interest in potentially buying in the future.

Most dealers are sending out sales emails, chalked full of sales jargon. Instead of giving out value, we are asking for a sale or asking the potential customer to “come check out our incentives.”

This just doesn’t work anymore in 2018. We need to find unique ways to provide value to our prospective customers. What do they want? The simple answer: not sales emails.

They want relevant emails based on where they on in the buyer's journey. Sending unique content and tracking how they respond to it with opens, clicks, etc. will give us the insight we need to move them along further in the sales cycle.

We can start to remedy this by segmenting our email list into multiple lists:

- New email subscribers

- “Hot leads” - high email opens/CTRs

- One-time purchasers

- More than one-time purchasers

You can get more granular and segment into make/model lists if applicable. The key here is to segment your lists so well that your email recipient will be happy to read your emails, because they are tailored for them and feel personalized.

When we align this strategy with SEO efforts, we can really see improvement.

SEO Based Content Marketing will Rev Up Your Email Marketing Efforts

We need qualified traffic coming to our site - visitors who are on our website to buy a vehicle or browse our inventory. Keyword stuffing and other poor SEO practices don’t work because if a landing page is irrelevant to the searcher, they will simply click the back button and go find another website.

We want to create landing pages that are exactly what our visitors want to see. This means that if someone is searching for a “new Land Rover” they probably don’t want to see “used Land Rovers.” Seems simple right?

By optimizing our pages with keywords to specifically only show what our visitors want to see, we can increase our chances of conversion.

Strategy Example: Create Content About Solving Automotive Repair Problems in Hondas

I know, it seems crazy. Why would we want to tell the potential customer how to fix their problems, if we want them to buy a car from us?

Here’s why: by giving value, you’re establishing yourself as a trustworthy resource and an authority. If they do end up getting their Honda fixed, then they won’t be buying a new car from us soon. But when their car inevitably does kick the can, or they are ready for another purchase, we have already established ourselves as a credible, trustworthy source and they are more willing to buy from us.

Another fact of the matter is people will not want to go through the trouble and cost of paying for repairs. Once you detail what needs to be done to fix a problem, cover how much it costs to fix, etc., many will not want to deal with the trouble and will start looking to buy a replacement vehicle. And now that they are on your site trying to figure out whether to invest in the cost of repairs or buy a new vehicle, they are only one or two clicks away from browsing your inventory.

And once you have content based around specific makes and models, you can then send these articles to your tailored email lists.

Instead of “Hey, we know you just bought a Mitsubishi from us, so here’s another marketing email asking you to buy another car from us” it is now “Hey, we know you were looking at a fuel-efficient Mitsubishi, so here’s a free gas-mileage calculator to help you cut back on costs.” Link the customer to free tools, helpful articles, and provide value to help them to actually open your emails, click the links, and potentially convert.

It might seem counterproductive at first, but this is the evolution of marketing. The customer holds all the power now.

Conclusion: Dealers Need to Invest in Email Marketing and SEO in 2018

Don’t fall into the old school way of sales and marketing. Focus on the customer and providing value first, and your dealership will always come out on top through referrals and 5 star reviews. It’s time to make a change and invest your marketing dollars the right way!