How Auto Dealerships Need To Market Themselves In 2020

Selling cars isn’t difficult. People have a need or want, and they will come to your dealership to take a look at what you have available. They already have some idea of what they want but their goal is to test-drive a few options and see what they like and don’t like about these vehicles and what kind of deal they can get. Do they want to buy or lease? Do they want new or used? Are they trading in something or are they ready to just come in and buy whatever you have, regardless of the deal because they are not interested in spending days or weeks on this decision?

Within the car selling business you’ve done it all and seen it all. However, marketing for the auto industry is completely different and a lot of dealerships are doing it wrong. In fact, the average dealership is wasting over $10,000 a year in marketing because they stick with methods that do not offer any form of tracking or targeting. However, when you show up on a Saturday morning and see a lot full of potential customers you think that it worked great, so why bother changing it now?

Because, you are falling behind the competition. Those other dealerships have already made significant changes to their marketing strategies for 2020 and they are going to see far better results than you will. What type of marketing are they doing?

• Email Marketing: There is no better and more cost-effective way for auto dealerships to reach potential clients than with email marketing. This option allows you to target a specific audience and deliver your ad right to their email box. Because the majority of consumers check their email via their phone this takes care of mobile marketing for you and it also allows you to reach them directly in their inbox, increasing your chances of brand and promotion retention.
• Programmatic: These ads are great because they allow you to reach consumers on sites, they are visiting including streaming sites where retention is proven to be much higher than traditional television.
• Social Media: You can now combine email and social media by sending consumers ads via their email address that’s linked to their Facebook account. How great is that? Reaching the same consumer on their email and Facebook page gives you a major advantage over the competition.
• Search ‘N Deploy: This cost-effective service allows you to display offers to people who are actively searching the web for information and deals on cars. If someone looks for a Chevy car, you can actually send them ads within the same day for what you have in stock.

Here are the issues with current marketing strategies; you cannot target or track efforts via television, newspapers, radio or print materials. How many people really saw your commercial on channel 8 at 7 pm? That’s the issue and if you want to take your marketing to the next step in 2020 then it’s time to get serious about how you are doing it and how you are reaching consumers.