Utilize QR Codes to Drive Leads to Your Car Dealership

If you keep up with the latest digital trends, you know about QR codes. They're similar to bar codes (only with a 2-dimensional pattern) and can be scanned by any smartphone with a QR reader. Once someone scans a QR code, he sees a coupon, special website, video, or whatever the advertiser chooses to use. The opportunities for automotive advertising with QR codes are endless, and we've talked about several ways to use them in the past.

Some car dealers might dismiss QR codes as a passing fad and insist on sticking with traditional advertising. But QR codes are being used everywhere from bookstores to movie posters, and (a bit closer to home for dealers) by auto manufacturers such as GM and service centers such as Jiffy Lube. A QR code in a direct mail piece, flier, window sticker, computer screen, or anywhere else offers great potential to engage consumers beyond just a passing glance for both sales and automotive service center marketing.

It's just a matter of time before QR codes become so widespread that everyone knows about them and is using them. Dealerships would do well to get ahead of the game.

Running an Ethical PPC Campaign for Your Dealership

Recently, we were searching one of our dealership clients (Bill Rapp Superstore) in Google and found that a competitor, Nemith Nissan, is bidding on their dealership's name in search. So when we typed in "Bill Rapp Nissan," a pay-per-click ad showed up saying "Bill Rapp Nissan-we beat their price." Further investigation showed that Nemith is bidding on several other nearby dealers' names.

Now, it's all fair to bid on keywords for the cars you sell, like "Nissan" or "Nissan Altima" or even "Nissan Altima Albany" to try to rank your ads as high as possible. But a dealer crosses an ethical line when he bids on the actual names of competitors.

Every car dealer wants to drive leads and sell more cars, but with a well-planned search engine marketing campaign you can do this without using competitors' names. Besides, a car shopper that sees a dealership using this kind of tactic will not trust them to be honest in selling a car. Ultimately, a campaign run like this will hurt a dealer's reputation, causing lasting damage that extends beyond the few extra leads that might come from the ads.

Facebook is still a Gorilla and not showing any signs of slowing down!  Here is a quick tidbit that should make you think hmmmmmm do I really have a Social Media Strategy!  A real Social Media Strategy actually planned out.

There are 57,514 apps on Facebook with over 200,000 developers currently evaluating the platform.

These applications were used 34,175,797 times in the last 24 hours and have a combined valuation of $269,323,488.

My point for the stat above... If app developers are doing this well then how can your dealership start to benefit from all of this traffic.  I am not saying you need an app but I am saying it's time to understand the Social Selling Ecosystem and develop a strategy to capitalize on the traffic Facebook has every minute of every day.

Event Planning to Drive Traffic to Your Dealership

Overwhelmed with the prospect of planning an event at your car dealership? You know that you want to get people from your community to come out. But you're not sure about how you'll go about all the work involved in organizing everything from finding food vendors to sending out fliers.

That's when you should sit down and figure out your process for planning and promoting the event before jumping ahead blindly. If you're going to invest time and money into an event, you want to make it the best it can possibly be to get the most people from your community out.

You want to make the event nice enough that people will want to come--a free burger isn't going to be enough to get the whole neighborhood out, but a chance to win a car is. And it doesn't have to be a giveaway as big as a car; if promoted right, giveaways for service like free oil changes or inspections or even free gas cards can pull a lot of people out. A live band or DJ, free food, and play areas for children can do a lot to bring families out.

Use as many mediums as possible to promote the event. You can combine email and direct mail marketing with Google pay per click ads, social updates, and web panels. Get your salespeople involved and give them buttons and fliers to help them talk about the upcoming event.

You can drive hundreds of people (and potential car shopper leads) to your dealership with a well-planned event.

You can increase leads and conversions through your dealership's Facebook business page. However, you need to take an approach different from hard-sell methods you may have used in the past with traditional advertising. Social media marketing is all about building relationships with your dealership's followers instead of just blasting a message out to the world.

Offer content that people will want to see. For some people buying a car is an impulse decision, but for others it is a process of months or even years of research. You should promote your current sales and specials, but you should mix those with things that people will be interested in seeing and make your page worthy to be followed.

To drive people to your dealership, you can market car service specials and giveaways. They might not be in the market for a new car right away, but more people will come in for a free oil change they won or a discount they get for checking in. That could lead from a good experience to a purchase when they need a car.

Social media marketing for auto dealerships has the ultimate goal of driving people to come and convert.

Paul Potratz

Increase Open Rates for Your Automotive Email Marketing Campaigns

The shotgun approach to automotive email marketing is the best way for your dealership’s message to end up being marked as spam.  Working with our dealers we have found that targeting email messages to customer based on their specific vehicle models tend to have higher open rates than those blanketed approaches do.  Below are three ways your dealership can target your automotive email marketing to increase open rates.

Recently we have found a lot of success in getting customer feedback for our dealers.  Using an automotive survey in an email message will increase interaction between your dealership and your customers.  People generally enjoy being able to give their feedback and your dealership can use this as way to improve your customer satisfaction.  Once your customers finish your dealership’s survey you can reward them with coupons by driving that traffic back to your website.

Most dealers tend to use automotive email marketing to promote their sales events or their ridiculously low lease rates.  Every now and again it is nice to reach out to your past and potential customers with a greeting.  Greetings are a great way to keep your brand fresh in the consumers eye.  By reaching out and wishing your customer a Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas might not generate a lead in the short term, but they will remember that the next time their ready to schedule a test drive.

Another great way to stay in contact with your customers is by reminding them of service.  A recent poll we conducted shows that customers overwhelming prefer Email for Service Reminders by 88%. You can drive traffic to your lot by sending out email messages with incentives to get their tune up at your dealership.

If your dealership is looking for ways to keep that top of the mind awareness for your vehicle inventory and automotive services we suggest using Surveys, Greetings and Service Reminders in your Email Marketing Campaigns.  Each of these are great ways to increase open rates while reducing unsubscribe rates of your dealership’s automotive email marketing.

PAUL POTRATZ

Want to see an example of an automaker getting on board with social media marketing? Buick is striving to appeal to the social media generation with its latest promotion, Quest for the Keys, integrating location-based social sites like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places as well as Twitter and a custom Facebook application. This promotion involves a scavenger hunt in major cities around the US in which people use social sites to find clues to win money or even a new Buick. They can also enter from home with a Facebook trivia game.

This promotion shows a well-developed automotive social media strategy that takes advantage of multiple platforms to appeal to as many people as possible and engage the millions of people using social media across the nation. Members of younger demographics who might not otherwise consider a Buick as their next car will get involved in tweeting and using these social sites to enter to win.

Dealerships can learn from this example to come up with smaller-scale promotions around their communities. Car dealers need to take advantage of location-based social media advertising to engage people who might not normally connect with them. Also, a promotion like this encourages people to post on their Facebook and Twitter profiles (especially if they know they could win), giving added exposure to a dealership.

Paul Potratz

How much of your dealership’s advertising budget goes into promoting your Service Department? Often times it seems that Car Dealers put so much time into getting the Front End ready for Lights, Camera and Action that the Back End gets neglected. Promoting your Service and Parts Center as well as the Body Shop is a healthy way to keep Car Buyers coming into your Service Bay even after their warranty is up.

Consider the age of the average vehicle on the road in your market. All of those expired manufacturer and certified pre-owned warranties are opportunities for your dealership to bring in new faces. And your dealership doesn’t have to spend big bucks using traditional media outlets like radio, newspaper and television either.

Interactive Media is a great way to promote your Dealership’s Service Center. By posting updates on your Facebook Page of the latest limited time Service Coupons you can create conversations with car drivers. Often times we see dealerships giving away Apple iPhones and that can create a community of Prize Hugs that are not necessarily loyal to your brand. Why not giveaway a couple free service specials on your dealership’s Facebook Page to spawn activity? At least that way you can keep the conversation about the products and services offered at your dealership.

Keeping your website updated with Service Specials is a great way to keep driving traffic to your website. You could use an Email Marketing campaign to drive past customers directly to your current selection of Service Specials and even create a Mobile Marketing Campaign to keep them in the loop by sending Text Message updates.

Not everyone is in the market for a new vehicle and you can reach those people by creating a marketing campaign promoting your Back End services. This is a great way to build retention and can help a lot of your customers become loyal by saving them money on their next tune up!

Paul Potratz

Ever wonder how many people really see what you post on your car dealership's Facebook page? Facebook recently added features to its Insights for business pages, offering new opportunities to see how people are connecting with pages.

Now, you can see how many people saw a post or interacted with it by commenting or liking, and also which posts got the most views and interactions. The new Facebook Insights also lets you see interactions, new likes, and more for any specific period of time you choose. This tool will let you see what kinds of posts are the most popular.

You can fine-tune how you write posts and what kinds of links you share. In looking at Facebook pages that our Automotive Ad Agency manages, I found that informal posts unrelated to automotive sales got the most interaction. For example, last week, posts asking about favorite and least favorite Christmas songs received many comments on one page.

To access Insights for your dealership's Facebook business page, just click "Edit" right below the profile image, and then "Insights" along the left side. If you're not satisfied with the stats for your page, contact us today for help building a social media following for your auto dealership.

Paul Potratz