How To Market A Dealership For Increased Sales And Client Referrals

In today's market, customers are very well-informed and more careful about spending money. Dealerships need to be more competitive to attract buyers because they have a lot of choices when it comes to big-ticket items like cars. The good news is that you can use the services of an automotive marketing agency to bring in clients even in a highly competitive market.

Automotive businesses rely heavily on marketing tactics to gain and keep customers. In this dealership marketing guide, we'll explore a few strategies to help you attract more clients and increase sales:

Choose the appropriate marketing campaign.

What is the ideal approach to bringing in new consumers? 

There are many marketing approaches, such as email and affiliate marketing. To let you make an appropriate decision, here are some of the most popular strategies available:

• Email marketing

Email marketing has been used in all types of businesses for a long time. Email marketing, when done well, can generate revenue equivalent to $36 for every $1 spent. As a result, it's a good investment. There are numerous kinds of emails you may send, including:

• Customer feedback: 70 percent of companies use surveys to get input from their customers. Why? You may utilize the data to provide more personalized service and a better vehicle purchase experience. Doing this will create a base of loyal customers who are more likely to come back to you in the future.

• Promotions: Offering special discounts and special offers to your consumers is an excellent method to ensure their long-term patronage. Time-limited promotions and reductions can also pique the interest of potential consumers.

• Service reminders: Service reminders are one method to showcase excellent customer service. It's also an additional marketing opportunity.

• Content marketing

Another popular choice is content marketing, with more than eight in 10 businesses employing it by 2021. You may produce content to educate consumers, such as films, blog articles, white papers, infographics, and podcasts.

Creating helpful content allows you to gain your consumers' confidence. As a result, content marketing may assist you in becoming the industry's go-to source for automotive information. You may utilize content marketing for the following purposes:

• Boosting brand awareness.

• Increasing customer engagement.

• Building brand loyalty.

• Launching a new product or service.

• Increasing organic traffic.

• Generating and nurturing leads.

• Telemarketing

Even though nearly everything is online, phone conversations are still a preferred choice among clients.

Why?

People generally prefer talking to real people as opposed to machines. It has a more personal feel, and customers can ask questions and get into detail much more accessible. That's why telemarketing is still such a valuable business tool today. Some benefits of telemarketing include the following:

• Building a relationship with clients

• Generating leads

• Following up with leads

• Learning about your customers

You can quickly establish auto-dialers and other sophisticated features with a cloud-based phone system. You may also outsource to a telemarketing firm that can provide you with actual leads.

You may use automotive sales training to talk to your customers.

• Social Media Marketing

It is witnessed that 8 out of 10 customers will utilize social media to help them make a purchasing decision. Businesses have taken notice and are investing more in social media marketing than ever before. 

Dealerships may use social media to reach out to potential clients. You may also engage current customers using hashtag contests and other material (more about this later).

Keep the consumers' best interests in mind when devising a social media marketing strategy. Videos became famous in 2020, and the number of minutes watched increased by 85%. Furthermore, you must optimize your content for each platform. Since Twitter has a 280-character limit, you'll want to make changes to content from other sources so that it fits within the limit.

• Affiliate marketing

Attracting customers and generating sales can also be solicitation-based through affiliate marketing. In this type of marketing, an influencer or customer agrees to promote your product to their network in exchange for a commission per sale.

Commissions are often a percentage of the sale, so you have to pay when there are outcomes. This might be why affiliate marketing spending is expected to reach $8.2 billion in the United States by 2022.

Creating an effective affiliate marketing sales funnel takes time. However, several affiliate marketing platforms are available to assist you in finding and managing affiliates. Furthermore, by including links on major websites and social media sites, affiliate marketing may help you do the following:

• Boost dealership awareness.

• SEO ranking improvement.

• Give social proof to your business to succeed.

• SMS marketing

The typical American spends 4.1 hours each day using their phone, an hour longer than they spend watching television.

Thanks to its high ROI, SMS marketing is a great way to reach customers and get ahead of your competitors. You could see an increase in ROI by 10% to 20%. You can use SMS messages for:

• Service and appointment reminders.

• Requesting feedback.

• Promotions like part exchange deals.

• Thanking customers for their business.

• Remain in contact with your current customers

We all know that existing customers can vouch for our businesses and act as ambassadors, sometimes through word-of-mouth about us to friends and family. 

But you might not realize that many customers are willing to leave an online review or post about their experience on social media. In other words, satisfied customers can be some of your best marketing tools. Let's explore the benefits of this further.

• Customer reviews: Most people (76%) have bought a product after hearing about it from someone they trust. Therefore, good customer reviews make your business appear trustworthy and more credible than if you talked about your products. To get customers to leave reviews, try the following:

After your customers visit your dealership, ask them for their input and feedback on their experience.

Include a call-to-action on your landing page and other marketing channels.

Send them a card or an email following servicing their vehicle or selling them a product.

Reviews are the best ways to build social proof and improve your website's SEO.

• User-generated content: Customers trust user-generated content (UGC) based on social proof. If someone posts a photo of their new vehicle purchased at your dealership, that's UGC. There are several ways you may encourage customers to contribute to UGC, including:

After all, six out of ten customers want brands to give them ideas about the content they should create. You could make a page with helpful tips and branding info, then share it on your website and other places online.

• Create a hashtag contest: These are excellent for getting your consumers involved. A hashtag or tagging a company on social media is used by 64 percent of customers. You could ask consumers to use your hashtag to submit a photo and give the winner a complimentary service check or other goodies.

In Summary

In order to increase sales and client referrals, it is important to make sure that your dealership is marketed in the correct way. By following the tips we have provided in this blog post, you can be sure that your dealership will be more successful than ever before. If you have any questions or would like more information on how to market your dealership, please contact us at DealersGear. We would be more than happy to assist you.