Car shoppers still hate to visit dealerships. Ask them why and they'll tell you they don't like pushy salespeople, they're afraid of being ripped off and that buying a car still takes too much time (among other reasons).

In an attempt to banish these customer fears, dealerships come up with marketing slogans like, "No haggle guarantee," and "Your friendly neighborhood dealer." But car shoppers remain skeptical. They take to social media, ask friends for recommendations and read online reviews. And increasingly, they're watching videos.

Video is by far the most powerful communications medium because it taps into our emotion at a sub-conscious level. As human beings we evolved to pay attention to how other humans talk. We interpret their body language. We sense their sincerity. Our very survival can depend upon whether we decide to trust someone--or not.

Instead of telling prospects to trust you, show them they can trust you with videos designed to banish their fears. Create a video showroom on your website that mirrors your sales process and answers your customer's biggest question: "How will I be treated when I visit this dealership?"

Once you have some good video content, your strategy needs to evolve around getting this video content in front of the right shopper at the right time. Just throwing it on the Homepage or About Us pages of your website doesn’t solve the problem.

Think about it: you train your sales team to “sell the dealership, sell themselves, and then sell the car” when taking an up. This should also be your strategy on your website. Your value proposition and testimonial videos need to be on a landing page along with your inventory videos. So when shoppers click to watch your inventory videos, you are selling the dealership and building trust when it matters most. 

What videos should you include on your inventory video landing page?  Here are some great ideas:

Value Proposition Videos. After a car shopper decides which make and model they want, the next question they ask is, "Where should I buy it from?" Your video showroom should contain several value proposition videos that give your customers reasons to buy from you.

These videos may have titles like, "Family owned," "Community involvement," "Huge selection of vehicles," or "Fair and upfront pricing."

Educational Videos. First-time customers and even repeat customers who have not purchased in a while may not know what to expect when they visit your dealership. One of the best ways you can avoid disappointing customers is to set expectations. Create at least one video that takes the customer step-by-step through the process of buying a car. Tell them how much time it will take and explain why each step is necessary.

Customer Testimonials. Today's car shoppers want social proof. It's critical to have several customer testimonials in your video showroom that show ordinary people talking about why they like your dealership. When videotaping your testimonials, ask your customers to share what their biggest fear was, and how it turned out they had nothing to fear at all.

Intro Videos. Introduce your general manager, sales manager, service manager and parts manager with personal profile videos. Ensure that the subject is at ease and comes across as likable and friendly. People want to do business with people they like. Video can immediately create that perception, giving your prospects the feeling that they already know and like your staff.

The more you can remove your prospects' fears and objections, the more you should see an increase in calls, appointments and ups.

What are you customers' greatest fears? Do you have ideas for videos that will banish those fears?

Urbandale, IA--November 15th, 2016--Kia of Puyallup has increased the volume of its website visitors by 23 percent, video views by 500 percent, new car sales by six percent and used car sales by three percent since implementing a new video marketing strategy using Flick Fusion's SmartFlicks platform.

In June 2016 the Kia dealership went live with more than a dozen content-rich value proposition, customer testimonial videos and a video showroom. The store also upgraded the quality and visibility of its vehicle inventory videos, and integrated them onto video landing pages. The improvement in metrics was immediately noticeable.

"From June until now there has been a steady increase of website visitors every month," said Ryan Sawyer, President of Kia of Puyallup. "Our website used to average 13,000 visitors per month and now we are averaging 16,000 visitors per month. Prior to June, our inventory videos averaged 300 views per month and now they average 1,800 views per month."

Located in the competitive Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, Kia of Puyallup is one of Washington state's largest volume Kia dealers and a multi-year recipient of Kia's prestigious Kia Dealer Excellence award. Sawyer's primary goal for the store's digital marketing strategy is to give the online customer a sense of what it's like to do business with the dealership. Sawyer believes video is the ideal medium to accomplish that goal.

"I've been interested in video marketing for a long time," said Sawyer. In fact he has been using Flick Fusion's SmartFlicks platform to produce stitched-photo inventory videos for several years. However, prior to June the videos had not performed as well as Sawyer had originally hoped for.

"The inventory videos were buried within the Vehicle Details Pages (VDPs), so a person would have to click on the pictures and then on the last picture there would be a link to the video," said Sawyer. "In some cases the videos were hidden behind a tab. This year I wanted to take a different approach and give the videos a more prominent position on our website."

In January of 2016 Sawyer partnered with What's Next Media, a video production company that specializes in auto retailing, as well as a Flick Fusion partner. Andrew Myers, one of the founders of What's Next Media, is very familiar with the SmartFlicks platform.

"What I like about SmartFlicks is that it's all automated," said Myers. "We create the videos and load them into the back end, and Flick Fusion does the rest. The pages are created automatically, the videos are pushed out to Autotrader and other sites, and the videos are immediately accessible from the dealership's CRM. We used to do all this manually but with Flick Fusion we can focus purely on creating great videos."

What's Next Media and Flick Fusion both worked with Kia of Puyallup to develop a video marketing strategy that included the following steps:

• Upgrade quality of existing inventory videos by switching from Text-to-Speech videos to Human Voiceover videos
• Ensure video links are clearly visible on every VDP page
• Feature every video on its own landing page with a lead form and four other videos to keep viewers engaged
• Create more than a dozen value proposition, service department and customer testimonial videos
• Create a video showroom on Kia of Puyallup's website featuring all videos including Autoflicks, Flick Fusion's educational model-level videos that showcase new model releases

The new videos and marketing strategy went live in June 2016. In the five months since, Sawyer has noticed a steady increase in the number of website visitors, video views, phone leads, showroom visitors and sales.

"What's interesting is the overall number of website leads has not increased, but we have noticed a pretty sharp spike in the number of people who are calling and coming into our showroom," said Sawyer. "Many customers come in with a specific car in mind, especially in used. They are fairly educated about the car they want and the closing rate on these customers is well north of 50 percent."

Andrew Myers with What's Next Media emphasizes how Kia of Puyallup's video marketing strategy matches the store's sales process. "The measurement I would use is not hits and views, but how well the videos reflect the process and personality of the store," he said. "The goal is to attract customers with videos of vehicles they're interested in, then bring them down funnel. Once they're in that video showroom it's about flooding them with information about the dealership; how the dealership is part of the community, why you should do business with them, what other customers have to say, etc."

Sawyer is enthusiastic about the results. "The video landscape is competitive and we're not the only dealership that's finding video is important," he said. "Upgrading the quality of our inventory videos has proven to be a win-win."

The next step for Kia of Puyallup is to further expand their video marketing strategy. "We're fine tuning the process of how we can get these videos out and visible in more places," said Sawyer. "We're just starting to get them integrated into our email marketing, social media and every day lead follow up. We're excited about all the opportunities."

For more information visit www.flickfusion.com.

About Flick Fusion

Flick Fusion offers intelligent video marketing solutions to auto dealers, making it easy to create vehicle inventory videos, video emails, dealership branded videos and more. Flick Fusion's innovative SmartFlicks hosting, marketing and distribution platform delivers automated, integrated, rule and behavior-based video content in real-time across multiple channels throughout the entire purchase cycle.

With CRM integration, auto dealers can capture video viewer data from any touchpoint, match that data to customer records in the CRM, and receive real-time alerts when certain viewing parameters are met.

Flick Fusion's mission is to give every consumer a better car shopping experience. Video is proven to capture buyers' attention, build emotional value, increase organic SEO rankings and convert more website visitors into leads. Flick Fusion is the preferred video marketing platform of more than 4,500 brands and partners.

Flick Fusion COO Tim James explains why dealers should incorporate video into their lead follow up process.

There is a lot of talk and buzz building about the importance of video marketing – as there should be. Video is quickly becoming the preferred medium for consumers. Don’t believe me? Literally thousands of articles exist on the Internet illustrating the benefits of using video in your marketing.

But for this blog I would like to take a step back for a minute. I’ve talked about using video in emails, virtual reality, etc. However, it’s time to get back to basics, because, despite the power of video, there are still some dealers who don’t even have videos of their vehicles on their websites.

Let’s get real here. You spend tons of money on your website. That website has one major purpose – to show off your inventory so that a car shopper can get emotionally attached to a vehicle and call you. And I am sure you also spend quite a bit of money driving traffic to your website and vehicle display pages. As well as a considerable chunk of change to get your vehicles on third party listing sites in order to influence and engage with car buyers there. Seeing as all this money is spent to market inventory and drive traffic to it in order to do the only thing that matters – sell a car – then it makes sense to ensure the greatest return on your investment by having the very best advertisement for your vehicle on that vehicle display page!

If you aren’t actually taking full-motion videos to merchandize your vehicles, the next best thing is stitched photo videos. Yeah, I have heard the naysayers that don’t see the value of stitched photo videos but, at the same time, are not doing any video whatsoever. Those dealers are missing out on customers. You don’t have to listen to me… but you should be listening to your customers – and here’s a nugget of data for you:

According to data, stitched photo videos on vehicle display pages have an average 75 percent completion rate.

Now let me ask you a question. Would stitched photo videos have a 75 percent completion rate if customers DIDN’T like them? Of course not. Most dealers have about 40 or so pictures of each vehicle along with a written vehicle description designed to provide information while simultaneously creating an emotional attachment to the vehicle. By presenting this same information with a video (even a stitched photo video), you increase both the informational and emotional value of the content, which means you get more leads.

Look, let’s remove our “opinions” from the equation and just focus on the data, which clearly shows that consumers like and are influenced by stitched photo inventory videos. Time and time again we see dealers go from NO video whatsoever to stitched photo videos -- and very quickly realize a significant increase in some of their most important KPIs. We have seen122% increases in unique VDP views, 110% increase in total VDP views, 75% increase in return website visitors and lead form conversions of 95% or more. These are actual increases realized by your peers, just by adding stitched photo inventory videos!

If you’re NOT using video, don’t you want these performance increases from your website? And these are results from dealers that simply flipped a switch with their video provider and turned on stitched photo videos. This took no extra effort on their part whatsoever. The pictures are already being taken. The software does the rest.

Nobody ever said video marketing needs to be overwhelming. Sometimes you have to crawl before you can run. But what really matters is that the mere act of crawling will get you farther than doing nothing whatsoever.

There are many other reasons that inventory videos are critical to your Video Marketing Strategy, even if you only use stitched photo videos -- particularly when it comes to the data capture and utilization power of inventory videos. The bottom line is that customers want to watch inventory videos and they will have a significant impact on your sales. If you don’t provide it for them, you may find them watching another dealership’s videos. And that probably won’t work out in your favor.

Great leaders and organizations inspire people because they are good at explaining why they do what they do. Their why gets people motivated. Their why makes people want to work for that company. Their why makes people want to buy their products.

For auto dealerships, your purpose is your “why buy” or “value proposition” message. The goal of this message is inspire, motivate and make people want to buy your cars.

Dealers, if you don't know your why, I highly recommend finding it. Author Simon Sinek has a book called "Start With Why" and a course on how to find your why. There are dozens of articles on the Internet that can help you find your why. I won't go into that here because the purpose of this blog is not to help you find your why.  

The purpose of this blog is to help you communicate your why.

Chances are you have some “About Us” content already on your website, and you may even share your “story” during your onboarding process for new employees. But what happens then? The most successful companies throughout history, and the most successful automotive dealerships, are passionate about their “why”.  But having a “why” and communicating your “why” are two very different things.

Once you have your why, you've got to get that message out there. You've got to be excited about it so your employees are excited about it and your customers are excited about it.

And the best way to communicate your why? Video.

People remember 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see and 70% of what they see and hear. Video is the ideal medium to communicate your why. The emotion that video conveys can inspire both your employees and your customers.

To illustrate my point, read the following paragraph:

"You can write everything down if you want to. Be brave enough to write every one of your goals down, but I'm gonna tell you something. Life's gonna hit you in the mouth and you gotta do me a huge favor. Your why has to be greater than that knockdown."

What do those words make you feel? Anything? Now, if you watch a video and listen to those same words narrated to visual effects, you'll get an instant chill down your spine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNQhuFL6CWg

See how the same words in a video have a much bigger emotional impact than simple text? Your videos can have a similar effect. If you're going to make the effort to create videos, you must take advantage of the emotional impact that videos can convey. Otherwise you're not using the medium to full effect.

Once you have created a powerful “why video," put it to work for you and you will be amazed at the impact it can have on your business. There are a lot of places to share your “why video”, but for now I’m going to focus on a place where it can have an immediate impact on your sales: your website. I often see dealerships hosting their “why videos” on YouTube, embedding them on the homepage of their website, and that’s it. This is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, if the video that you have embedded on your website is hosted on YouTube, then YouTube is claiming your SEO value for that video. You should either self-host your “why video” or utilize a 3rd party host who will let your website claim the SEO value. This way, when the video is found on Google and engaged by the shopper, they are directed to your website and not YouTube. 

Next is where your “why video” should be displayed on your website. Your homepage is a great start; however, the goal is to get it in front of the shoppers where it is more likely to be seen and have an immediate emotional impact. One of the best places to display your “why video” is on your VDP Pages, alongside your inventory video for a vehicle. Not as a pre-roll on your inventory video, but as a standalone video that is visible and can be easily engaged by the shopper as they are browsing your inventory and watching your inventory videos. This is also a great place to have a testimonial video or two as well. And don’t forget the "About Us" pages of your website. This is another relevant page of your website that should include both your “why video” and your testimonial videos as well. 

Why wait? Communicate your why to create an emotional connection, inspire and motivate your customers. Video is the most effective medium for doing so.

In this short video blog, Flick Fusion COO Tim James explains why dealers should care about and be prepared for adding virtual reality into their vehicle merchandising strategy.

If you haven’t drunk the video marketing Kool-Aid yet. Or, perhaps are overwhelmed by the thought of creating and distributing videos, it’s time to consider the advantages of having a video marketing strategy.

There was a time in my career when dealers used to complain about having to take multiple PICTURES of a vehicle. Now, however, most dealers include as many as 40 or more for each vehicle. Why? Because buying a vehicle is an emotional purchase and your online merchandising must transfer information while inspiring emotion. By providing more photos (and a good vehicle description) dealers give shoppers more information and help to facilitate them in becoming emotionally attached to a vehicle.

Once dealers understood that with multiple pictures customers would be more interested and they’d receive more inquiries, that’s all that mattered. And then along came video….

Look, technology is rapidly advancing and consumers are advancing with it. If video marketing didn’t benefit you in the only way that matters -- which is to help you sell more cars -- I’d be the first to tell you not to worry about it. But, the facts are the facts.

An excellent article published on Business2Community shared a wealth of statistics on the benefits of video marketing for businesses in general. While all of them are impressive, here are some highlights from the article that I thought applied specifically to an automobile dealer:

1. Including video in an email leads to a 200-300 percent increase in click-through rate.
2. 90 percent of people say that a video is helpful in the decision making process.
3. Including a video on a landing page increases conversion by 80 percent, while including one on your homepage can increase conversion by 20 percent.
4. Video ads increase purchase intent by 97 percent and brand association by 139 percent.
5. An introductory email that includes a video receives an increase click-through rate of 96 percent.
6. Video increases organic traffic from search engines by 157 percent.

Think about these statistics. The highest converting (as in sold) leads come from your dealership’s website. Why then, would it not be prudent to increase conversions on your home page by 20 percent? Or how about an 80 percent conversion increase on a landing page (like a VDP)? How many leads are you getting per month from your website and inventory? You do the math. These leads are gold waiting to be mined.

And what about your salespeople sending follow up e-mails to customers? Or replying to leads for the first time which get no response at all? Don’t you think that increasing click-through rates by 97 percent by having the customer watch an introductory video tailored specifically for them would increase engagement?

Give your sales staff (or BDC) an edge with video. The stats are there to prove that you’ll interact with more people. Think of it this way. If you had a lot full of customers, but your salespeople weren’t allowed to interact with them until the customer interacted first, you’d probably sell less cars. Of course, you wouldn’t allow that to happen! But that’s what’s happening with all of those people on your virtual lot!

People can be lazy. Most people would rather watch the movie than read the book. Why? Because it’s easier. We enjoy it more. The same applies to your marketing and follow-up efforts.

Want to increase views, conversions and engagement? Send your customers a video. You’ll see how powerful video content is.

And, before I forget, I’d be neglectful if I didn’t answer the question I posed in the title of this blog. According to Forrester Research, one second of video filmed at 30 frames per second (which means that it has 30 pictures per second) is the equivalent of 10,000 words. This means that a 60-second video is worth 1.8 million when it comes to the amount of information that you can deliver with a video, versus static photos. However, you can’t even begin to measure the increased emotional impact that a video will have versus the static photos…and emotion sells.

Want to make an impression on your customer? Seems as if video says – and produces – more than a picture by far. Take advantage of video marketing. The results will speak for themselves.

In my last blog, I shared the five types of video content you must have when beginning your video marketing initiative. To recap, they include: New Model Test Drive, Inventory, Value Proposition, Testimonials and Lead Follow-up.

Hopefully you’ve begun the process of creating this content. Now for the next step!

Effective video marketing requires much more than just content creation. In fact, if used strategically, video can be one of the most effective ways to steal your competitor’s business. However, if no strategy is involved, you will simply be wasting your time.

So, as promised, here are some strategies that can be used to make those videos effective and capture more business.

The keys to transforming your video CONTENT into a video marketing STRATEGY are:

1. Exposure – If nobody ever sees your videos, they’re pretty useless. Consumers look at up to 24 different touch points in their buying journey. You have to ensure that your videos get on the right touch points to be seen by your buyers at the right time in the buying cycle and without them having to work to find it. The problem is that some of those touch points make it difficult for dealers to get videos onto these sites. Video files are extremely large and most touch points don’t want to host the video. In fact, they would prefer (some even require) that your videos are hosted elsewhere and then just hyperlinked or embedded on their site.
   
   That is why the right hosting platform is so important. It will automate a large portion of your exposure and make it very easy to integrate your video content with your Sales & Marketing strategies, getting more of your video content in front of your shoppers, at the most critical decision points, which brings me to my next point.
    
2. Data Capture – The right hosting platform can be one of your biggest assets when it comes to video marketing. By having your videos all hosted together your hosting company can capture your viewer’s data from more touch points and then you can use that data to communicate with a shopper in real-time via the video. This data can also be utilized to generate real-time alerts via your CRM, no matter what video is being watched, and no matter what touch-point the video is being watched on. Which brings us to personalization.
    
3. Personalization - How cool would this scenario be: You send a video email campaign out to your existing CRM database. The data from your existing customers (and all of your abandoned leads) that engage with that email is then captured and matched with your video viewer database from your video host. From then on you receive an alert in your CRM every time someone from your database is back “in market,” because they are watching one of your videos.
   
   Armed with this knowledge, you can then send personalized videos to that specific customer with various messages. Perhaps the customer has been consistently watching videos of Honda Civics in your inventory. Sending a video message informing them of special offers on Civics would certainly be relevant and give you the fast track to selling them a vehicle before they start shopping at your competition.
   
   However, there’s a fine line between personalization and creepy. So make sure that the video doesn’t necessarily inform the customer that you KNOW they’ve been shopping. The video message should be something relevant to the behaviors you have seen them make, without crossing that line.
    
4. Tracking – Because you’re capturing this data and it’s being matched to buyers, you’ll get a notification that your buyer is watching one of your videos, along with which touch point that they are watching it on. Now you know that right at that second Joe Smith is on AutoTrader, Cars.com, or any other touchpoint out there, and what vehicle(s) videos they are viewing. Wouldn’t it seem like a good idea to call them at that point?
    
5. Conquest/Geo-Targeting – This technology allows you to know which site they are viewing your video on and you can also see where (as in physical location) they are watching it. Imagine getting an alert that Joe Smith is watching your video and happens to be on your competitor’s lot at that exact moment. The right hosting company would enable you to know this information, call Joe and in addition queue up a “last chance offer” as a banner ad right there on the video they are watching… all in real-time!

A video marketing strategy isn’t just about the video. It’s a strategy that involves getting MORE of your videos on MORE touch points while capturing MORE data. Then utilizing that data to your advantage to know exactly how and where your customers are watching your videos. Then sending more personalized, relevant and perhaps even deal-saving messages to them in real-time.

There is nothing more powerful than to communicate with your customer exactly at the right time, with the right message, in a way that they know is just for them.

Urbandale, IA--September 12th, 2016--Flick Fusion today introduced FlickWidget, a responsive video display tool that has been proven to increase the number of video views on auto dealers' websites. In a pilot trial conducted with website and digital marketing vendor Dealer E-Process, FlickWidget was installed on the home page of seven dealership websites; including three Toyota stores, a Honda store, a Mainline (Buick, Chevy and GMC) dealer, one Ford and one BMW dealership. Over a period of five months, FlickWidget increased the number of video views on each website by a mean average of 155%.

Dealer E-Process featured one of the dealership's websites in a recent case study. The addition of FlickWidget to a Toyota store's website increased monthly video views from 237 per month to 877 per month, for a 271% increase. Additionally, Dealer E-Process saw similar results with other customers. The Honda dealership saw an increase from 464 video views per month to 1,616 video views per month for a 248% increase.

"We've always known that dynamic video outperforms static pictures of vehicles on a website, but the results of this trial really showcase the power of video as a website conversion tool," said Tim James, COO of Flick Fusion. "Car shoppers prefer watching videos to reading text, and the longer a customer engages with videos the more emotionally invested they become in your dealership's inventory and brand."

"With our customers' websites we find that sometimes there is so much information and so many vehicles to choose from that customers can get overwhelmed," said Dave Page, Owner of Dealer E-Process. "FlickWidget draws the focal point on each page to the videos, which are naturally more interactive and give customers specific suggestions, helping them to narrow their choice and bring them down the purchasing funnel."

FlickWidget offers each car shopper a personalized experience based on his or hers individual viewing behavior. When a customer visits a dealership's website, they immediately see an attractive display tool featuring several inventory videos, with suggestions based on that person's browsing behavior. With each returning visit, the customer will see a reminder of the videos they viewed last time along with suggestions for new videos to watch based on their individual interests and viewing history.

FlickWidget is an eye-catching visual tool that can be featured on the homepage of a dealership's website or on other pages, including Vehicle Details Pages (VDPs). FlickWidget can also be used as a banner ad on any website where the dealership advertises, effectively increasing click-through rates.

FlickWidget displays several videos at a time in a series of sliding windows that are completely customizable. The sliders can be any size or dimension, horizontal or vertical, and the dealership can choose which videos to display in the windows; including inventory videos, test-drive videos, customer testimonial videos, service department videos and more.

Flick Widget is fully responsive, making it easy for car shoppers to view videos on their mobile devices. More than 50% of car shoppers use mobile devices to conduct research prior to a purchase, and more than half of auto shoppers watch at least 30 minutes of video during the purchasing process.

For a limited time, dealers can try FlickWidget for absolutely FREE! Any dealership that signs up for FlickWidget can get the first 60 days free with no further obligation required. Dealers can find out who their Flick Fusion reseller is by calling (800) 247-2502.

For more information, visit www.flickfusion.com.

About Flick Fusion

Flick Fusion offers intelligent video marketing solutions to auto dealers, making it easy to create vehicle inventory videos, video emails, dealership branded videos and more. Flick Fusion's innovative SmartFlicks hosting, marketing and distribution platform delivers automated, integrated, rule and behavior-based video content in real-time across multiple channels throughout the entire purchase cycle.

With CRM integration, auto dealers can capture video viewer data from any touchpoint, match that data to customer records in the CRM, and receive real-time alerts when certain viewing parameters are met.

Flick Fusion's mission is to give every consumer a better car shopping experience. Video is proven to capture buyers' attention, build emotional value, increase organic SEO rankings and convert more website visitors into leads. Flick Fusion is the preferred video marketing platform of more than 4,500 brands and partners.

Video content is now the preferred medium for consumers and statistics show that consumer Internet traffic for online video will increase by 80% by the year 2018. That’s not too far away.

And, when both are presented on the same page, consumers would rather watch a video than read text. For that simple reason, video content simply converts better.

There are many types of video content and unless you devote (or outsource) this content, it can be difficult and take some hard work to produce all of the different types of video you need. This can include: Pre-Roll; PPC & Re-Targeting video campaigns; promotional; model comparison; video email campaigns; in-market video display; new model test drive; value proposition; testimonial; inventory lead follow up; delivery; service department; and, finally, life cycle marketing videos. Are you overwhelmed yet?

While all of these are important, I would like to help simplify this for you by focusing on the five types of video content that have the biggest impact on conversions, leads and sales.

Here are the five types of video content you should focus on:

1. New Model Test-Drive – According to Google, the top three types of video content that auto shoppers are searching for are: test-drives, features & options and vehicle walkthroughs. In fact, the time consumers spend watching these kinds of videos has doubled in the past year. For this reason, if you fail to provide this video content for your customers, I guarantee that they will watch it on someone else’s website! If your competitor has New Model Test-Drive videos and you don’t, they may be getting the shopper into their funnel higher in the buying cycle -- and you may lose them before you even get started!
2. Inventory – Your VDP pages on both your website and 3rd party sites are THE most important advertisements your inventory could have. You spend a lot of money trying to get traffic on those pages. However, it’s becoming harder to differentiate your dealership from VDPs by your competition. Most websites are very similar – especially the VDP pages – and you really don’t have much control of the content you can put on them. So how do you create a more compelling VDP page that sets your vehicle apart from all of the other similar ones? Through video. Yes, perhaps you think it’s difficult to take full motion videos of each of your vehicles. But here’s the thing: video is no longer an option. If you can’t do it, have your lot service do it. If neither of these is an option for you, then use automated services that stitch together the phots into a video format. Why? Because they work. Your time on site will increase by 20% or more, videos will have an average completion rate of upwards of 75%, lead form conversions will increase by 20% and engagement by 200%! Inventory videos have a significant impact and are ridiculously inexpensive to create.
3. Value Proposition – As much as shoppers are looking for a vehicle to fall in love with, they are also looking for a dealership and salesperson they can trust. One of the first things you train a new salesperson to do is to sell the dealership, then themselves and then the car, right? Why would you do it any differently when the “salesperson” that the customer first encounters is your website? Consumers simply want a dealership that they can trust to be fair and honest with them. That’s what this type of video content is designed to achieve.
4. Testimonials – These videos reinforce the trust factor and compliment your value proposition videos with a combination of selling both the dealership and the salesperson. Consumers trust other consumers and video testimonials are a powerful way to show potential customers that previous customers had a great car-buying experience with your dealership and/or salesperson. They also show that it was so good that they were willing to broadcast it publicly via a video testimonial. People communicate through tone and body language – something that text cannot fulfill. Video, on the other hand, can. Prospective customers watching your testimonial videos can identify with, understand and be influenced by that testimonial, just as if the person giving the testimonial was standing in front of them.
5. Lead Follow-up – When consumers submit inquiries via third party sites, oftentimes they are contacted by more than one dealership. Even if they convert on your own website, the chances are great that they are also cross-shopping you with your closest brand competitor. Most e-mails coming from dealership CRMs are templates. Consumers can smell these a mile away. They know these weren’t created specifically for them. If you send these, the consumer isn’t going to be impressed. However, sending a personalized video e-mail, makes an impression. In fact, it makes so great an impression that video e-mails see a 200% higher click-through rate and 80% get more replies. They also have a 70% higher conversion rate and 65% of the consumers watch 100 percent of the video!

Starting your video marketing with a focus on these 5 types of video content should immediately increase VDP views, conversions and, ultimately, sales. Keep in mind, however, that simply creating the videos is only the first piece of the puzzle. You can create all of the video content you want but if you aren’t doing it with a strategy in place, you may find less success.

In my next blog, I’ll show you what a strategy looks like, how to implement it and why choosing WHERE your videos are is extremely important.