When we talk about dealership marketing, it's important to never let a good promotion go to waste. In other words, make sure your dealership makes the most out of your promotion or big event on every marketing channel available. Effective saturation across print, media, and (for today's purposes) online channels can accomplish the promotion's intended goal: drive sales.
Let's first look at what your dealership is doing (and hopefully doing right.) When a new promotion comes around, you likely rely on direct mail saturation, credit mailers, eblasts, and credit score incentives to get customers to come by. That's a great start, but are you truly doing all you can on the online front? Here are just a few ideas for getting the word out:
A specialized landing page. Normally when customers visit your home page, they see, well, your basic homepage. But during the promotion, this "landing" page can be changed to highlight the new promotion or big event. So instead of seeing the standard page, visitors will see, for example, "Come to Stockton Chevy and Get Supplier Pricing on 2014 Trucks!"
Paid advertising like AdWords. AdWords is an online advertising platform provided by Google. It will target the ad to a specific type of user based on predefined keywords. They'll type in, say, "SUV on sale Concord, CA" and a targeted ad will pop up. Better yet, you only pay Google if the user clicks the ad. For more information, click here.
Customize your social media pages. Right now your dealership has a standard "banner" image. Mix it up by creating and posting a banner that highlights your new promotion or event. The same can be said for Twitter, which is especially conducive to auto promotions as it only allows short, bite-sized messages.
Blogging. Post a blog about the new promotion and blast it across your social media networks. Better yet, supplement the blog with any photos or testimonials of satisfied customers.
Ask for shares. You may have some trusted friends and business partners who'd be happy to share your promotion on their social networks. Don't be afraid to ask. Similarly, ask customers to talk about their experiences even if it doesn't have a direct impact on the promotion. For example, Chevy has "Truck Month" promotions. You can ask Facebook followers to "tell the world, in 150 words, why you love your truck" in honor of Truck Month.
Make a video. Yup, you read that right. The technology is affordable, so anyone can do it — even you. Make a video highlighting your promotion and blast it across your social networks.
In almost of all these cases, make sure the final destination of the viewer is your customized landing page. Once there, you can also encourage visitors to enter their email address to stay up to date on new promotions, thereby generating new leads.
Looking for other tips for generating leads? Download our Auto Lead Generation ebook.
