Posts Tagged ‘automotive advertising’
The auto dealer industry is extremely competitive, making it difficult to stand out.
However, a powerful website is one investment that will differentiate your car dealership from all your competitors.
Over the years, we’ve worked with a number of car dealerships and have found that 5 key elements make all the difference.
1. Remarkable Design
As they say, it’s all in the details.
Leaving dirty cars on your lot sends the wrong message to potential customers.
It’s the same with websites. A mediocre website will literally scare customers away.
Many of your competitors have mediocre websites. You don’t have to.
We’ve been developing car dealership websites for years and have a staff of industry leading designers. We know exactly what it takes to make your website stand out.
Take a look at the website we recently built for Palm Springs Motors.
Now compare it to the competition.
Which car dealership do you think customers flock to?
2. Your Inventory, Online
The way people buy cars has completely changed.
The first stop in a car buyer’s journey used to be the car dealership.
Now, every customer starts his search online. They’ll first research the cars they are considering, and then search for dealerships in the area.
If your inventory is not accessible through your website, you are losing sales. Many customers won’t even contact a car dealership if they can’t see what cars they have on the lot.
We’ve developed amazing systems that allow you to easily upload information and images of your inventory.
And best of all, it’s search engine optimized so you attract the RIGHT customer looking for the EXACT car you have.
3. Mobile Friendly
Another shift in consumer purchasing behavior is mobile computing.
Many customers now do much of their car purchasing research from a smartphone or tablet, such as an iPad.
Therefore, it is imperative that your website be mobile friendly.
Many websites are not mobile friendly. They are difficult, if not impossible to navigate by touch screen.
If a potential customer visits a car dealership’s website from their phone and can’t navigate, they will lose that customer.
Don’t let the same thing happen to you.
4. Easy Contact
How easy is it for your customer to contact you?
When a customer is ready to purchase from you, they’ll want to contact you at that moment.
But if it’s difficult from them to find your phone number or email address on your website, you may lose that customer.
When we deal with car dealerships, we make it imperative that any customer can quickly and easily contact you from any page on the website, without any hesitation.
5. Map & Directions
Lastly, you want to make it easy for your customer to find you.
Simply including your address may not be enough. Many customers now want to be able to SEE where your car dealership is located.
That’s why it’s important to include a map with your location.
On the car dealership websites we build, we always include an interactive map that allows customers to get directions from their location.
Do you want to stand out from your competition and increase your sales?
Then it’s time to make an investment in your car dealership and improve your website.
Image Credit: 
Some rights reserved by cjalallian
There’s a relatively new retail automotive TV campaign making it’s viral way around the country. It’s a puppet badger acting as a sleezy car salesman. Granted, most of the spots are very funny. But why? Watch the clip below and then ask yourself why it makes you chuckle. Possibly because you’ve experienced it? Is that smart marketing?
I’ve never understood this strategy. According to sales reports, neither have most consumers. I think this is just one great example of incomplete thinking in the marketing process. Could a funny industry-degrading ad get attention? You bet. Could it win creative awards? Of course (that’s just a question of money). But does it really change the opinion of the consumer when the “alternative” solution is presented? RARELY.
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Photo by Jordan Small
I had the most fascinating meeting yesterday. It was with four men in the auto industry. One of them, an existing client, is more savvy than the other three. The other three were what I would have considered typical dinosaurs in the business. I know this because I had met with the same three men a year earlier. At the time I shared our agency’s belief that traditional advertising was becoming more and more ineffective, and that the poor quality of creative messages being delivered by most of the auto industry were only making things worse.
I made suggestions to move them toward more trust-based communications with car buyers, and noted that putting a little respect back into the selling process wouldn’t be a bad idea either. But my message fell on deaf ears. It was obvious to them that I didn’t know what I was talking about. They said this economic crisis was just causing a temporary hiccup in the automotive world. Things would get better, as they always did.
That was a year ago.
Fast forward 12 months, one humongous recession, a national Cash for Clunkers campaign, and a few million less car sales. I was invited back to “re-address” the situation. This time they listened, better yet, embraced what they heard. With God as my witness, I said the exact same things I had before. The only difference was a little more focus on TRUST. I referred to Chris Brogan and Julien Smith‘s book, Trust Agents, and walked them through how changes in media, marketing and creative will only succeed in today’s world if they have this foundation of truth, transparency and trust. They ate it up.
What’s the takeaway here? Some dinosaurs can evolve without becoming extinct. Make TRUST the goal of every marketing program and you might speed up the evolution process.
Obviously car dealers are hurting in ways never seen before. But how many of them have taken the time to figure out what the consumer wants to hear? Something that will make those who can still afford to buy in this economy get off their couch, or at last pick up the phone.
One of our clients, a dealer in a relatively small, isolated market, was struggling to find a message for this past 4th of July weekend that would make people not only get off the couch, but buy a Ford. And we needed them to buy on a holiday weekend that is notoriously slow for retail sales in their market.
Ford offered up a 4th of July weekend special, extending their 0% financing for 60 months to 0% financing for 72 months on some of the stronger selling Ford products. But that’s all. Other than this incentive change, there was nothing else unique to offer. Not to mention that our client’s inventory was not in great shape. In past years they would have had close to a thousand vehicles in stock. This year, it was less than two hundred.
Between the dealership management and my agency, we were struggling. The 0% for 72 months was enticing, but it didn’t seem strong enough. That is, until we ran the numbers and realized that this 60 vs. 72 month difference in financing equated to about $100 a month less in payments on a $30,000 purchase.
So we skipped the typical industry standard of merchandising particular vehicles as examples and just told the customer what they needed to know. That is, if they use the 0% for 72 month payment plan and buy a $30,000 Ford over the next four days they would save about one hundred dollars a month in payments. And they had four days to save. Period. It was short, sweet and to the point.
What was so gutsy about this? Well for one thing, no one else was doing it. And that usually kills any idea in the retail auto industry. Not to mention that most car dealers don’t want to promote a $30,000 vehicle price as their price-leader in marketing efforts. Unless they’re a Mercedes or BMW dealer, there are usually products they can advertise for much less. But, at the end of the day, $30,000 really is the average selling price of a Ford vehicle. So we went for it.
And guess what happened?
They had their best weekend in over a year. On a weekend notorious for being bad. We made no changes to the marketing budget from previous sales event weekends that had proven dismal. And we’ve only just begun some online social media tactics with this particular client, so we were tied to the inconsistent and declining success of TV, radio and newspaper. Everything was working against us, but the message overpowered the media.
The conclusion is the consumer heard something fresh and honest. It spoke to them respectfully and intelligently. It gave them the simple truth. And they knew it. We respected their intelligence. They respected our message. Everybody won. All it took was the simple truth.
