Want to learn about some new marketing strategies for your car dealership for 2024? We would love to tell you about some new trends and tried and true methods that will help improve your presence on the internet and beyond.
1. Over The Top – Or OTT Advertising
While some of your customers have cable, many more people are relying on streaming to watch their favorite shows and movies on demand. Over-the-top advertising allows ads about your dealership to find specific audiences on specific shows.
While OTT is not especially great for customers who want to buy right now, it is very effective at ensuring that people in your area, or even a little outside of it, know your dealership’s name so you are at the top of their minds when they are shopping. Consider OTT effective at branding!
The one small challenge some dealerships face is also easily overcome. You’ll need some kind of video content to make OTT advertising worth your while, but you can work with an ad agency for that!
2. Pay Per Click Advertising On Google And Bing
Who owns market share for advertising? The answer is actually pretty obvious. Google still leads the way by an extreme majority. We suggest using a couple of new Google features called Vehicle Listing Ads and Performance Max to show your vehicles to the right audience via the display network and traditional search. Both are cost-effective and can be tuned to specific audiences.
We can’t call Bing up and coming because they have been around for a while. We will say that Bing tends to be cheaper per conversion and per click with a different audience from Google, which also tends to be a little older and have more disposable income. It’s definitely worth putting at least a few hundred dollars per month into Bing.
3. Reputation Management
This isn’t truly an advertising method in the traditional sense, but reputation management can help maintain your other advertising by making you look better online. Have you ever seen an ad for a company and a service you were interested in but looked them up and discovered they have less than stellar reviews? We have!
Reputation management helps respond to people who leave negative reviews. This simple method can be quite helpful as customers know that if they have a problem, there is someone out there listening and reacting. In order to make this truly effective, you should also be willing to actually make internal improvements, of course!
4. Go Outside Your Zone
If you can, try to leave your marketing area a little. Why? People are willing to drive a distance for the right car. To be honest, millennials and Generation Z have little brand loyalty and more often seek the best experience and deal over a specific place, even if that means driving a few more miles.
Using Google Ads, SEO, and your third-party listing companies, you can often target outside of your traditional radius. This is especially helpful if you have some vehicles that might sell better in a different city or you have a serious advantage over another dealer that you want to advertise.
5. Using SEO To Your Benefit
SEO literally stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO can apply to the structure of your website as well as to making content for your site for the purpose of driving traffic. The best way to start with SEO is often having pages written (with videos!) about specific things people ask about the cars you are selling. For example, compare the vehicles you have to those of a competitor on the new end.
SEO does take some time to build up. Overall, it’s a very effective long-term strategy for many dealers.
Conclusion
We’ve scratched the surface of new ideas for digital marketing for your car dealership. We suggest considering your dealership, what you sell, and your audience when making decisions that will drive sales at your store.
