Every business needs a website, and probably every business already has one.

But is that all?

What do you get from your website? Does it convert enough of its visitors? Does it help you sell more cars?

If your website is equipped with the right tools to capture the leads that visit it, then you’re on the right track to doubling your sales faster than you know it.

So, what are the ways you can turn your website into a sales machine? Let’s discover them!

1- Increase Your Website’s Load Speed:

People don’t like to wait. If your website loads faster than 2 seconds, then your visitors will stay for longer and discover more of your offers.

To make sure your website loads fast, you need to optimize its content. Although it’s important your images and videos are of high quality, you should make sure they aren’t taking up too much space.

To optimize your images while maintaining their high quality, try a compressor tool such as OptimiZilla. Plus, if you’d like to display high quality videos of your cars, then you should try hosting them on a different server than your website.

For example, try hosting your videos on YouTube or Vimeo and then link to them on your website page.

2- Make Your Website VERY Easy to Use:

Your website should be very easy to navigate even for the least savvy people. This means that your call-to-actions must be very clear and to the point.

People should easily be able to find the category of cars they’re looking for. They should be able to sort through your inventory by make, model, year, mileage, price or even color if they wanted to.

It is YOUR job to make your visitors’ journey through your website as easy as it can get if you want them to buy a vehicle from you.

3- Focus On Only ONE CTA:

Having a visually appealing, easy-to-navigate website with strong call-to-actions is important if you want to turn your website visitors into customers.

What does any of this mean?

A visitor just came to your website, let’s call him David, he sees your inventory and clicks on a car. On the vehicle detail page, David sees a lot of buttons. One asks him to schedule a test drive, one asks him to apply for financing, and another asks for his email address to be contacted about the car.

Here is what David will do: nothing.

What do you want David to do? Schedule a test drive, give you his contact information, or apply for financing? Decide on what you want from him, and ask for that ONE action only.

4- Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly:

Most people are on their phones nowadays. In fact, it’s more than just “most” people. 82% of all internet users in the US are using a mobile device.

You get the point. If your website looks good on mobile, people are more likely to stay on it for longer.

5- (BONUS) Sell More Cars With Exit Banners:

There will always be visitors who leave your website without giving you their contact information. That’s just how it is and there is nothing we can do about it.

BUT!

There is a way you can capture visitors RIGHT BEFORE they leave your website. How? Using Exit Banners.

An Exit Banner is a popup that appears when it detects that a visitors’ mouse is going towards the exit button, hence the name. The popup contains an exclusive offer that is given nowhere else.

All the visitors have to do is enter their contact information and they will benefit from the offer. These offers are usually in the form of discounts, promo codes or even free guides that help car buyers advance in their car-buying journey.

Having a well established digital car sales funnel is key to establishing a high performing car dealership. Why? Because the most common customer paths to purchasing a vehicle are digital. 90% of car buyer journeys happen on a digital device, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, or computer. This means that having a strong online presence is vital for your dealership’s success.

In order to map out your online marketing strategy, you need to have an understanding of the typical journey a car buyer has online. We’ve broken it down into 4 stages.

1. MARKET CONSIDERATION

The first stage of the shopper’s buying process is when they have developed a need to purchase a car. The shopper hasn’t decided what car to buy or where to buy it from. They are just about to begin their research process to explore their options.

The research process during the market consideration stage includes:

• Using a search engine like Google

• Browsing a third-party site

• Seeing an online ad

• Asking family, friends, and coworkers for insight

• Viewing test-drive videos

• Reading consumer reviews online

• Searching an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) website

Within all of these digital touch points, the buyer is just observing and browsing, they are not clicking in to buy a car or schedule a test drive. However, this exposure is still pushing them along the sales funnel.

2. MODEL CONSIDERATION

The second stage of the car buyer’s journey is deciding what type of vehicle they are looking for, this automatically narrows their options and, of course, what they’re searching for online.

The shopper will now potentially interact with experts online to help them with their search.

The common activities during the model consideration stage include:

• Searching vehicle models online

• Researching vehicle models

• Clicking on an online ad

• Viewing photos on dealership websites

• Reading dealership reviews

3. DEALERSHIP CONSIDERATION

The third stage is where the car buyer has a stronger idea of what they want. They have defined their budget as well as the brand and model they’re looking for. This is the stage where you need to work to convince them to buy from you.

The common activities during the dealership consideration stage include:

• Revisiting a dealership’s website

• Asking for an online quote

• Applying for financing

• Messaging or texting the sales team

• Leaving a comment on a car listing

This phase is still happening online. Your leads are starting to get an opinion of your dealership by visiting your website and your social media. As well as based off of your online interaction with them.

4. DEAL CONSIDERATION

The final stage of the car buying process is when the shopper reaches out to you and is very close to buying.

The common activities during the deal consideration stage include:

• Visiting a dealership

• Test-driving a vehicle

• Completing the purchase at the dealership

• Sharing photos on social media

• Leaving reviews on Google and Facebook

KEY TAKE AWAY

When setting up an online marketing strategy for your dealership, make sure you are targeting car shoppers at every stage of the buying process. Taking the time to review your analytics to see the performance of your marketing channels as well as to understand user behaviors is the best way to understand and improve your online dealership sales funnel.

We help dealerships build their online marketing funnels with online advertising.

The fastest and most effective way to build up your sales pipeline and get your inventory out to many car shoppers is by running an online advertising campaign. While there are many online advertising channels that can be leveraged to market your dealership, Facebook has become one of the largest and most efficient advertising channels. It gives automotive dealerships a means to reach car shoppers in their zip code as soon as they show car buying intent. 

With over 2 billion active users on Facebook, businesses (both small and large) are leveraging the platform to run ad campaigns and increase sales. Automotive dealerships are just one of the many business types to also jump on this bandwagon and reap the benefits. 

What sets Facebook and Instagram apart from other online advertising channels is its affordable price and wide range of campaign targeting options. However, in order to capitalize on Facebook’s advertising functions, you need to make sure you have an experienced advertiser creating and managing your campaigns. 

To help guide you in the right direction, we’ve prepared some tips on how you can run high-performing Facebook automotive ad campaigns. 

1. DEFINING YOUR CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 

Before you decide to launch any campaign, you need to make sure you have a campaign objective. 

AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS

Awareness campaigns are great at generating interest in your dealership. If your dealership has recently opened, run a brand awareness campaign to tell people what makes your business valuable. 

CONSIDERATION CAMPAIGNS

Consideration campaigns pull people to want to seek out more information about your dealership. For example, if your dealership is offering a special promo or sale, running a campaign about this might drive people to visit your website or give you a call to learn more. 

CONVERSION CAMPAIGNS

Conversion campaigns encourage people interested in your dealership. For example, you can run a retargeting campaign for people that have visited your website encouraging them to stop by your dealership. 

Having a campaign objective will help you formulate the Facebook ad and determine what audience is best to reach out to. 

2. TARGET THE RIGHT AUDIENCE

As a car dealer, you probably know everything there is to know about the cars you’re selling, now you need to make sure you understand the people who will purchase them. Where are they located? What are their interests?

Facebook provides the targeting tools needed to reach out to your target audience at the correct time. Make sure you are targeting the right audience with your ads (based on their location, their age, their interests, etc). 

To narrow your target audience, make sure to exclude certain types of people from your ad campaign. For example, people below the age of 16 are most likely not in the market to buy a car so you are better off excluding them from your target audience. 

3. TEST OUT VIDEO ADS

Video ads have become a popular ad type over the years. More than 4 billion+ video views are generated on Facebook each day. What’s great about Facebook ads is they allow you to make videos in the format of slide shows, which means you can turn a set of images into an easy to watch a video of your inventory. 

Using a video helps you share multiple aspects of your dealership and vehicles in one ad. 

4. CAPITALIZE ON RETARGETING ADS

Retargeting ads are ads that target your website visitors that did not complete any action. Facebook allows you to use its ads as a reminder to past visitors as to why they should buy from your dealership. When running retargeting ads, make sure you include a sense of urgency or exclusive offers as an incentive for your audience to reach out. 

5. PERSONALIZE YOUR AD EXPERIENCE WITH DYNAMIC ADS

Dynamic ads allow you to retarget your visitors with ads that are personalized based on their activity on your website. Prospective customers will be able to see ads that direct them to the vehicle they showed interest in. 

6. INCREASE CONVERSIONS WITH LEAD FORM ADS

Leveraging lead form ads increases the chances of gathering leads from your targeted campaigns. Lead form ads direct your target audience to a pre-filled form with the contact information, increasing the chances that people will submit the form to get a callback. 

CONCLUSION

The above tips are some of the tools/methods we are currently using to run successful advertising campaigns for our dealerships. For as little as $100 a week, our customers are bringing over 150 new website visitors to their website and capturing 20 to 30 solid leads a week.

We target car shoppers that are within 100-200 miles from their dealerships and run several targeting campaigns to convert their visitors into a lead! 

If you’d like to have your Facebook ad campaigns created and managed by experienced advertisers don’t hesitate to reach out and learn more about our advertising services.

Back in the 1950s, in order to ensure you had a steady amount of sales per month, car dealerships used to open up their dealership in a high-traffic corner lot and people in their area would walk in when it was time to buy a car. Shortly after, new and used car dealerships started to rely on listing their cars in local newspapers to get the word out about what’s on their lot.

With the rise of the internet in the early 2000s, posting on online classifieds evolved into the primary marketing channel that dealers rely on to reach online car shoppers.

While classifieds are still an effective marketing channel to generate leads, more and more dealers have realized the same way you can’t just showcase your vehicles on a lot hoping people will talk by and show interest, it’s no longer enough to list your vehicles on classifieds and wait for shoppers to reach out.

In today’s market, if you want to sell more cars, you have to showcase your cars where buyers are instead of waiting for them to look for you.

To increase the number of sales, especially in this time of pandemic, dealers need to be more proactive in their sales approach by making the whole web their own auto classifieds.

What that means is dealers need to make it easier for car shoppers to discover and buy their cars by reaching them with their vehicles whenever and wherever they are online. This can be done with online ads!

Dealers that are making the whole web their own auto classifieds are finding that not only are they generating more leads but they are also closing more of the leads they’re getting.

Learn more about how you can make the whole web your own auto classifieds!