Why Digital Marketing for Car Sales is the Best Strategy

Let’s face it, the buyer’s journey for purchasing a car can be a lengthy one. It is an important decision and customers need time to do their research, compare options and even take a few different models out for a test drive. 

So, what can you do as a dealership to attract new customers to your lot and increase your opportunity for sales? Well, that’s where digital marketing for car sales comes in! 

Digital marketing has the ability to generate qualified leads and nurture them until they are ready to complete a desired action. As these people are already on the buyer’s journey, if your dealership helps guide them along, it increases your chances of making a sale. 

Continue reading to learn about the importance of incorporating a digital marketing strategy to drive car sales for your dealership.

Digital Marketing for Car Sales Can…

Increase Traffic to Your Website 

Your website is one of the first places a person will interact with your dealership. Before even deciding to purchase a vehicle, people will use your website as an online catalog to discover different models, compare prices and features and learn how to contact your dealership. As the foundation of a successful digital marketing strategy, your website must offer a user-friendly experience for visitors. By making sure that your site loads quickly, has working features and is designed to make it simple to navigate, you increase the chances of visitors staying on your website to shop for vehicles. 

If you want to widen your website’s reach, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vital. It’s just as important as your website’s design because it’s what enables your website to gain visibility on search engines. Without incorporating SEO best practices on your website, you may not appear on the first page — or any page — of Google organically. This can make it more difficult for your business to compete with other dealerships in the industry. When you invest in SEO, it also helps you rank for specific keywords that your prospective customers are searching for, thus increasing the chances of customer conversions on site. 

Target a Specific Audience

In order to ensure that your marketing efforts, digital or not, are effective, you must first stop to think about who your target audience is. Once you know more about their demographics, behaviors and interests, you can craft a message that resonates with them. 

Luckily for marketers, there are many tools that help gather valuable insights on your target audience, such as Google Analytics and even Google Ads. Later on, this information can be used to specify exactly who you are going to target and help your team make informed decisions.

The process depends on what information you already have and what type of digital marketing campaign you are conducting. It is important to have various campaigns, some more general and some more specific. This way, you ensure you are attracting leads from all levels of the marketing funnel. General campaigns increase awareness and attract top-of-the-funnel leads, while more specific campaigns target potential customers who are further along in the buying process.

One of the most successful forms of digital marketing for car sales is Paid Search Advertising. If you’re not familiar with this area of marketing, it is essentially paying to show your advertisement on a search engine. This strategy lends itself particularly well to targeting specific audiences. With Google Ads, you can target people based on location, language, type of device they are using, and most importantly, the specific keywords they are searching for. These can even include makes and models of the exact cars you sell! 

Lower Marketing Costs

Traditional marketing methods for car sales are expensive! From time purchased on TV or radio to printed materials, a dealership can quickly use up their marketing budget without having a real understanding of who their message is reaching. 

Digital marketing for car sales can lower your costs substantially for a few reasons. First, using organic methods to increase brand awareness and traffic to your site can cost virtually nothing. Social media campaigns are an easy way to connect with your audience and nurture them. It also helps to build a community and drive organic traffic to your website. Be sure to have a business page for your dealership set up to ensure professionalism and as always, stay true to your brand. 

When using a Paid Search strategy, you have complete control of your budget and exactly how much of it you spend. By using specific targeting strategies, the money you do spend will be reaching the exact people you want to see your ads. It is crucial to audit your campaigns on a consistent basis to keep track of your ad spend. This is also applicable to advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook.

Automate the Process

Once you start generating new leads, digital marketing for car sales is able to simplify the communication process with these new prospects. If you have obtained a contact’s information through a form on your site, you can create curated email lists. Then, simply use them to send promotional emails through automated workflows. These targeted email campaigns are also a great way to segment your leads based on what part of the marketing funnel they are in, ensuring the appropriate message is sent at the right time in their buyer’s journey.

Our Proprietary Automotive Program

At Pinckney Marketing, we pride ourselves in our expertise in digital marketing for car sales. With over nine years of experience working with automotive dealerships, we have perfected a cohesive auto marketing strategy to guarantee our client’s success.

The process starts with our team of marketing experts determining the appropriate audience for the specific dealership. We then target these demographics in order to start generating quality leads. Once we start bringing in these new leads, our proprietary process creates a smooth transition for handing them off from our marketing team to your dealership’s sales team. All you have to do is close the deal!

The Pinckney Automotive Program includes:

• Revenue attribution
• Real-time lead qualification
• Custom creative
• Streamlined lead input in ADF XML format
• Co-op submissions
• Dynamic ad campaigns
• And so much more.

If you want to learn more about how Pinckney Marketing can help your automotive dealership succeed, click the button below.

The post The Importance of Digital Marketing for Car Sales appeared first on Pinckney Marketing.