Drive Up Sales for Your Auto Dealership Through Content Marketing
The auto dealer industry has never been more cutthroat, which is why it is absolutely critical for local dealerships to set themselves apart from their competition. In the past, this used to be a relatively easy thing to achieve. Running several newspaper ads, handing out promo flyers, and driving other traditional marketing methods were surefire ways to get people to visit your dealership and buy a car. Today? Not so much.
Digital marketing efforts such as content marketing are now the name of the game for car dealerships looking to stand out, increase customer base, and improve sales. Thanks to the growth of the Internet and technology, people are spending more time online with each passing year. Just how important is digital marketing today? Here are a few ways how the Internet has changed consumer behavior and dealerships:
Consumers spend 59% of their car shopping time online, and only 21% at a dealership
63% of customers use their phones to conduct online research while at a dealer’s lot
Digital marketing brings in a profit of roughly $2,500 per sale for car dealerships
What your competitors are doing about this
Indeed, more and more car dealerships are starting to understand the importance of digital marketing—but what exactly are your competitors doing? For the most part, this means channeling a more significant portion of their ad spend towards digital. Specifically, many dealership owners are planning to allocate 60% of their marketing budgets towards digital ads within the next two years.
While digital ads are effective, they alone aren’t enough. Ad fatigue is a real issue that consumers face. After all, no one enjoys being constantly bombarded by hardsell ads. In fact, 25% of consumers in the U.S. use ad blockers, and experts anticipate this number to steadily grow in the next few years. It doesn’t take a genius to decipher what this number tells you: there exists a marketing gap that auto dealerships need to fill.
Where content marketing fits in the picture
Ad fatigue stems from an overload of the “buy, buy, buy!” nature of dealership advertisements. That said, content marketing helps address this issue by changing dealerships’ approach to marketing.
Content marketing is all about being informative and building goodwill with consumers. The content you post on your website, blog, and social media are meant to inform, teach, and answer many of the questions that consumers have about your industry. Accomplishing this helps position your dealership as a top-of-mind brand and a business that genuinely cares about helping clients.
The end goal, of course, is to make it easier for potential customers to go straight to you when they decide to buy a new car or go in for a service. As auto dealers, blog topics like the ones below can help achieve this game plan:
First-Time Buyer’s Guide to Purchasing a New Car
How to Spot Issues with Brakes, Tires, etc.
Tips to Prevent Car Breakdowns
Aside from building consumer trust, content marketing also helps boost your website’s search engine results ranking. Google and other search engines love new content, especially when it’s pumped out on a regular basis. With a higher ranking, your website becomes one of the first sites that car buyers visit during online research. It also provides you with content to share on your social media platforms. In short, content marketing pretty much feeds the entire digital marketing cycle.
Unfortunately, not all dealerships have the time and resources to produce new content on a regular basis. In such cases, working together with a trusted content marketing agency is ideal. Experienced professionals can easily provide you with high-quality content that perfectly reflects your brand and engages potential clients.