3 Ways Digital Marketing for Car Dealerships Can Boost Engagement, Reputation and Sales

Digital marketing for car dealerships is an area seeing huge growth.

Research shows that people spend 59% of their car buying journey online. Which often means potential buyers are now only a Google search away from a purchase. So as technology and the internet continue to revolutionise the automotive industry, dealerships must embrace digital marketing like never before.

How best to navigate the digital age can seem like a challenge. But as a leading tech and apprenticeship training provider, we have been helping car dealerships recruit and train the next the generation of digital marketing apprentices.

By investing your levy funding in a digital marketing apprentice, you can gain the skills to attract new customers, strengthen your brand, and boost your online reputation.

Car dealerships who have hired escalla digital marketing apprentices say…

“Our DM apprentice has increased our use of video advertisements from 59% to over 75% of our total used car stock in only 4 weeks” - Sales Manager Blackburn 

“Since hiring a DM apprentice, we are able to advertise 100% of our used car stock using a still image (up from 68% in just 4 weeks!)” – Sales Manager, Stafford 

Digital marketing in the automotive industry is already having an impact. Our current clients across the Audi Group have reported that escalla digital marketing apprentices have quadrupled their social media engagement across Facebook and Twitter - from 134 engagements per week to around 800.

How are they doing it? With these marketing tips, we’ve summarised how great digital marketing can help your car dealership fly.

3 Ways Digital Marketing for Car Dealerships Can Boost Engagement, Reputation and Sales:

1. Optimise Your Website to Attract and Keep Online Visitors

Potential customers, now more than ever, are researching and making decisions about car purchases before stepping foot in a dealership. So attracting customers at this early stage is vital.

How can you do this? Firstly, a strong search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy will help you stand out amongst the myriad of other car dealerships.

Utilising SEO keywords and image tags increases your chances of featuring on that all-important first page of Google.

Once they land on your website, the next challenge is keeping them there!

The best way to achieve this is an easy to navigate, informative and attractive website. This gives a better user experience for your customers. Making them more likely to stick around and putting the brakes on any browser-hopping to the competitor down the road.

2. Maximise Your Exposure Through Social Media

Competition is fierce in the automotive industry. So if you're asking “how do we sell more cars?” using digital marketing, a proven way of standing out from the crowd is by enhancing your social media presence.

A solid social media strategy helps you in three key ways:

• A. ENGAGE more with current customers
• B. BOOST your online reputation
• C. TARGET a new audience

Social media is also the best way to keep your finger on the industry’s pulse. Discover any important online trends you could be taking part in. Or keep track of what your competitors are up to! The way we buy cars is changing. So if you want to market cars to millennials and the next generation of car owners, it’s important to stay relevant.

What’s more, direct contact with car buyers encourages brand loyalty and is the shortest route to finding out exactly what your customers want.

3. Make Advertising More Effective by Moving it Online

Old-school advertising such as newspaper ads and leafleting might still be beneficial. But digital marketing in the automotive industry is a cost-effective and highly efficient way to maximise your brand’s reach.

Video advertising has become an integral part of the car buying process. It allows you to influence potential customers with vehicle-specific ads, catered to their interests. Customer-focused videos on YouTube and other platforms of test drives and walk-through videos are also becoming more popular than ever.

And don’t forget, digital images are powerful– 64% of people are more influenced by vehicle advertising in digital videos and images – rather than newspapers and magazines. We live in an age of short attention spans and scrollable media. So producing easily digestible and catchy digital advertising is worth capitalising on.

Digital Marketing Apprenticeships with escalla

Without a doubt, digital marketing is the way forward for car dealerships. Beneficial for business owners and customers alike. But if SEO and social media strategy sound overly complicated to you, don’t feel overwhelmed! There’s good news. All these things are possible with highly-trained, enthusiastic and tech-savvy digital marketing apprentices from escalla.

Hopefully these marketing tips have given you an idea of how going digital can work for you. Find out how we can help you grow your car dealership with digital marketing apprentices here.