Every year is an opportunity to turn your message around in automotive marketing. New releases will excite your community, and we’re all looking forward to what will turn up at the intersections of our roads. This year is when you boost your marketing performance and consider the methods you haven’t tried before. Start with your car dealer marketing strategies.
Automotive Industry Trends and Dealer Insights
- Driven by shared mobility, connectivity services, and feature upgrades, new business models could expand automotive revenue pools to $1.5 trillion.
- Despite a shift toward shared mobility, vehicle unit sales will continue to grow, likely at a lower rate of about 2 percent per year.
- Consumer mobility behavior is changing, leading to up to one out of ten cars sold in 2030 potentially being a shared vehicle.
- Reduction of the dealership’s carbon footprint will be a crucial focus for dealerships.
- The dealership experience will be vital in using word-of-mouth advertising and increasing referral business.
- Automakers are jumping on the subscription service model bandwagon. Porsche, Volvo, Cadillac, and Lincoln have introduced programs allowing drivers to swap vehicles weekly for a set fee.
- The empowered consumer who enters the dealership is informed, serious about buying, and knows the invoice price.
- A move from a standard four-walled dealership towards “a true multi-channel store,” making the most of showrooms, phones, information e-kiosks on the floor, and an active Internet presence.
- The “tethered” customer whose car is equipped with a mobile computer that makes an online diagnosis, sends service alerts, and can be used to schedule service appointments.
- City type will replace country or region as the most relevant segmentation dimension determining mobility behavior.
- Once technological and regulatory issues have been resolved, up to 15 percent of new cars sold in 2030 could be fully autonomous.
- Millennials prefer ride-sharing services to car ownership, a severe problem for automakers.
Key Automotive and Dealership Marketing Strategies
No dealer can overlook their automotive digital marketing. Building the right relationships is a natural but intimate process. It starts with some work and being strategic about how your brand is recognized or how well you connect to the industry. We’ve written a list to get you on the right path and boost your results.
Let’s look at the top automotive marketing trends you can use now.
The Dealership Experience
A recent Harris Poll revealed that 87 % of American adult shoppers dislike something about the process of purchasing a vehicle at a traditional car dealership. People are fed up with the old-fashioned style, in which the conventional dealers deal with customers when selling cars.
The “what can we do to get you into this car today” selling must be put to rest. Instead, dealers who show a little creativity in how they stage cars in the showroom and present themselves will be rewarded with consumer interest. Consumers are looking for an experience when they walk into dealerships.
Influencer Marketing
Modern technology gives you and your direct consumer access to the social media marketing automotive industry. The transformation that influencer and automotive marketing trends have undergone proves how web access is changing our lives and the messages we receive. Having an influencer is about associating essential and famous people with your brand. Your service area is the perfect place to start these automotive marketing solutions.
This strategy works to build on a connection that inspires your consumer and gives them a chance to hear your automotive marketing message through the voice of someone influential in your social media marketing automotive industry.
Copywriting and Messaging Strategies
Local car dealers will use all they can to boost the volume of their message and the distance it travels. Your automotive marketing strategies can be achieved with copywriting. If you’ve ever heard of “Cars like us. People love us,” you’ve listened to copywriting at its best. Maybe there’s a common saying you believe will connect with your buyers in your service area.
This type of writing covers slogans and ads. Businesses use messaging to speak directly to the consumer but with a sales objective. The reader won’t know that objective and why copywriting is a significant component of automotive marketing trends. You can integrate it into brochures, signs, newspapers, and ads.
Service Discounts
Try numerous automotive marketing strategies to get the word out that you exist, your unique service, and that people can expect the best deals. Automotive service department marketing helps to push people toward dialogue about your brand even if they don’t need services today. Knowing that you can offer fair prices with excellent service is a bonus for automotive marketing trends.
No one knows when they’ll need service, but knowing the options will mean a lot. In addition, you can provide this information to the public as a simple way of getting your agency’s name out there.
Service Level Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are so effective that participants must spend to earn points. This can generate new sales if you haven’t already implemented the system. The program rewards customers with value points for various services and products you offer. It’s all in your power, which means you decide what earns points and what doesn’t.
The purchase of a vehicle could be the foundation of your program and what provides consumers with initial loyalty. These would be just enough points to give your buyers a taste of what they can eventually earn. Your most significant advantage is that people can make purchases before you get a chance to ask them to.
Seasonal Content
It’s not a secret that shoppers make their most significant purchases during the holiday season. Season’s greetings are perfect for getting the word out and implementing your automotive marketing strategies. People will be making purchases for themselves and their families alike. Providing the right sales campaign not only promises to get customers to commit to a few purchases.
You can set the stage for your car dealer marketing and develop the image you want recognition as. The holiday season is infectious, and learning about a new or used car is a time many people are likely to share as they feel the festive mood. Ensure that this mood benefits you by providing a message that resonates with new buyers.
Automotive VR and AR
This year, virtual and augmented reality were all over the North American International Auto Show floor. The automotive aftermarket has adopted this. Recently, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen used the tech to show off their latest cars and concepts and give potential drivers a front-seat view of what was coming.
Customer centricity is the trend that came to stay. And car dealers can use virtual reality technology in dealerships to attract more satisfied customers and to foster sales.
Rethink The Traditional Dealership Web Design
We all know dealership websites are essential for a local car dealership’s success online and within Google. Although dealership websites have many challenges, there are ways to make them better and help increase leads. First, the website must mirror a high-level dealership’s in-shop experience and brand vision. This includes:
- You are creating a well-designed website that aligns with your dealership’s messaging and brand.
- There are better ways to break away from dealership templates and software whose only value is inventory management.
- Stop with the busy/clutters website design; the car needs to be the star of your website.
- Create additional content for your website that is the default content provided by the OEM.
Recommended service: Website Design Service
Focus on Online Reviews
The digital equivalent of “word of mouth” can be found in the power of online reviews. Roughly 80 percent of online readers trust the comments shared on a brand more than the actual testimony of that brand. This means online reviews are only effective when others share data about your dealership and its website automotive design industry.
We want you to know that this holds a particular clause to be aware of. Negative reviews have as much power as positive ones. We placed it within our list because receiving positive views is not challenging work, yet you will surely lose out if you don’t consider strategizing for the online review market.
Local SEO Is Key
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. New SEO concepts and strategies are entering car dealer marketing every year, and your company has to keep up with the trends. Every little bit you add to your progress keeps you ahead of competitors and allows you to learn the standards set for your market. The strategy you can take today is to partner with a professional agency to find out where you can get a boost of traffic.
Working your car dealer marketing strategies with local SEO allows your business to appear with map coordinates before competitors.
Focus On Video Content
Video content is essential when discovering where to stand out in your area. This form of content is picked up with the same focus that search engines put on other media you publish. The reason for this is found in how the viewer looks at your brand and how well they interact with automotive digital marketing.
Video now boasts the highest engagement rates as they are optimal for how-to instructional videos, comparisons, and stories covering your brand’s history. This form of media is well-received and has much attention given to it. It even fits into the email marketing automotive industry.
Create Great Website Content
Continue to publish and distribute blog content if you already know it. You should undoubtedly adopt written content to be published regularly. The quality of this content must be a central component of your work process. Your goal is not to post content in hopes that you’ll gain traction just because it’s there.
Your content will enter the digital world with an extensive industry to compete against. You’ll improve SEO the more you expand on your writing, and there are many emerging online agencies to provide you with content at a professional level. Consider these agencies or opening a publishing house within your car dealer marketing strategies and email marketing automotive industry.
Conclusion
Automotive marketing should not be a “side project” but a central one. This area of expertise provides rewards for as long as you’re investing in it. Your goal is to be relevant to the lives of those in your service area. This can only happen when you’re constantly active. Being active requires a budget and straightforward website design automotive industry for your car dealer marketing strategies.
You’ll need to fully understand what you’re putting in versus what you’re getting. The numbers help you adjust accordingly, and for a compelling message everyone can hear. Continue to learn more about your audience, and remember that their views and ideas come first as you find more automotive digital marketing trends.