7 Ideas to Use Digital Marketing in Automotive Industry

In today's automotive industry selling vehicles is more competitive than ever, so dealers need to look for new ideas and strategies to maximize their share in the market. One way to do that is to leverage modern marketing technologies.

Here are seven ideas each dealer must try:

1) Start with a powerful customer relationship management system or electronic engagement platform. Chances are your brand or regional dealer network provides a tool to dealers.

Take advantage of that. It comes with a lot of content from corporate that you can use while you learn to personalize for your market. Chevrolet for instance provides a tool called Digital Traffic Generator from Agency 720.

2) Identify one person at your dealership to be responsible for digital marketing.

3) While one person should lead the effort, train multiple people on how to use your digital marketing tools. Salespeople should look at this as a career builder.

4) Most dealerships start with generic newsletters – one version sent to all prospects – this is a good start but over time, you should use the tool more effectively and begin to segment and personalize those newsletters. It will have a huge impact on results.

5) Make sure your website and emails are mobile ready. Data shows that more than one third of dealer emails are opened on a mobile device.

A Cars.com survey found 43% of car buyers use their mobile devices on the lot to access pricing information, research features and visit a dealer’s website.

Your website and email templates should be based on responsive-design techniques that ensure they are automatically resized to fit any screen, whether it’s a desktop, laptop, tablet or smart phone.

6) Your website is the face of your dealership make sure to make always look fresh. Virtually every customer now visits your website multiple times before they visit in person. Make a good first impression.

7) Leverage live chat. Prospects visiting your website are actively looking for a vehicle. Their interest in buying is as high as a showroom visitor’s.

Our CRM system includes a live chat feature, but you can also buy these tools separately. There generally are two options.

• Outsourcing chat to a service (much like an answering service) that fields chat messages on your behalf.
• Having your staff take shifts monitoring and answering chat messages. This option is much better than the outsourcing chat because most chat sessions involve inventory or pricing questions a third party can’t answer.