Top Marketing Strategies for Car Dealerships

The success of a car dealership is generally placed on sales. Dealerships are a dime a dozen and present in nearly ever shopping center plaza. Car salespeople are expected to sell and maintain healthy profit margins. However, without prospective customers wandering through the front door, the process of selling becomes long, costly, and resource intensive. Help your sales staff spend less time bringing people in the door and more time helping them with the top marketing strategies for car dealerships.

Top Marketing Strategies for Car Dealerships: Social Media

• Facebook – On a platform where millions still spend time scrolling each day, having a presence on Facebook is a must. Furthermore, there’s a gold mine of opportunity in targeting your ideal prospects. You can narrow down prospects to geographic areas near your dealership, by vehicle type, gender, consumer interests, and more! Plant the seeds of curiosity online and reap the reward of in person visits.
• Twitter – Research discovered that in 2013, Twitter drove $716 million in car sales. Twitter can be used both as a social and ad targeting platform. Keyword targeting allows your team to find ripe opportunities to send direct messages, target ads and directly connect with customer to bring them into the show room.
• Instagram – If you want to target the younger audience, you will find them on Instagram. Don’t be afraid to get creative, such as allowing users to picture themselves with the vehicles on a road trip or heading to mountains. You may find a higher reception from a younger audience.

Creative Tactics:

• Billboards – While these roadside banners may seem like a thing of the past, don’t forget that the main billboard audience is people driving in their cars. Once you’re in front of your audience, make it easier for them to remember and find you later. Add a vanity number to your billboard for an easy way for customers to remember your number. Follow that up with geofencing. This new technology allows you to make a digital fence around your billboard and serve up ads to those who drive by. There are plenty of creative ways to use billboard ads!
• Storytelling – Your customers chose you for a reason. Get to know that reason and share it! People want to hear from satisfied customers why they can trust your brand. While reviews build over time, telling your current customers’ stories through social media, your website, or other media outlets help form a bond with prospective customers and your brand.

Bringing in the foot traffic to your car dealership may not seem easy and can take up a lot of time from your sales people. Get creative with your marketing tactics so that your team can spend more time helping customers and less time finding them!