Roy Emmerson November 12th, 2019

Features of Promotion and Rollout of the Car Dealership Online

The promotion of a car dealership on the Internet is an extremely demanded task. High competition between car dealers, the need to convey information to the buyer encourages car dealers to pay attention to the Internet segment.

It is through the Internet that most people now receive the most information, learn about promotions, news, and updates. The percentage of online purchases in recent years has grown significantly. This also applies to large purchases, real estate or cars. The introduction of call tracking, maintaining a database of clients and CRM systems, smart advertising based on a correctly built semantic core of the site - all this completely changes the process of online shopping.

New online sales opportunities and process automation

According to mechanic faq, smart systems allow you to track the activity of visitors, from preliminary interest to purchase, send and correct requests, provide address information. Attitude towards purchases has changed, an increasing percentage of sales is shifting to the field of information technology and is being carried out without the participation of traditional trading platforms and sellers.

A significant part of working with a client lends itself to automation. Robots and self-learning intelligent systems are able to maintain a conversation on the website at the level of an average manager, save customer data, make an offer based on customer requests, record a test drive at a convenient time, transfer data to the call center for the manager’s call. Advanced car dealer network management software can also enhance efficiency and boost data-driven customer engagement and sales. Services are an integral part of promoting a car dealership site, making the interface comfortable for the user. We’ll warn you that setting up an interactive interface takes time, semantic analysis, and personal adaptation. It is impossible to connect smart systems in the same way as an intelligent manager. Self-learning systems need to be trained.

Database collection issues

The established rules for selling cars, the existing system of remuneration for managers are becoming an insurmountable obstacle to creating an effective online sales mechanism. To launch sales via the Internet, maintain customers and create a base, you will have to face the required changes in the current system.

Perhaps you should not reduce the seller’s remuneration if the buyer came from the site. Calling, entering data into the system, phased management of the client is also work, although more automated than spontaneous sales in a car dealership. If the seller will be able to hide that the client came from the site, the company will lose a full base and part of the profit.

Technologies significantly increase sales, but only if they are implemented and working. The presence of a database and accurate analytics are a significant part of website promotion and online sales development.

Online payment

Direct sales of cars via the Internet are complicated by the fact that people are not yet ready to part with big amounts of their money online. Most online purchases have a ceiling of around $ 1,000 to $ 5,000. That is, you can pay online CTP or buy a set of winter tires, a car seat, and accessories, but to buy a new car, even based on the information support of the site, you still need a personal presence and direct payments. When buying a car, it often requires a test drive and a personal inspection of equipment. Only the most gullible and inexperienced user will agree to buy transport over the Internet without looking at it in person. Take care of a secure connection and payment security safe conduct.

The specifics of online car sales is different from the sale of clothing or household appliances. Perhaps in the near future, people will be ready to pay for the car on trusted sites completely through the Internet. We recommend that you synchronize your payment through a secure connection with payment security services.

Use available resources to the maximum

So far, the role of automobile sites is to inform, convey advertising information, attract the clients to the dealership, prompting the client to make a call or request a consultation. Through the site, you can successfully promote additional services, such as insurance, warranty, sell components and related products.

The main success factor is the availability of friendly and understandable service. In addition to good service and a user-friendly interface, a stream of visitors is required. To organize it, you need to collect analytics and correctly set up an advertising strategy. The main mistake in setting up promotion is to ignore the information component and the inability to properly organize contextual advertising. Consider the Internet resource as a regular store. By ensuring the maximum flow of customers, even if they just drop in to look at expensive equipment, you will ensure your future sales growth. Convenient car loans made buying a car affordable for almost every family. Don’t stop there, offer a second car to potential clients - for trips out of town and traveling, or vice versa, a small car for the city. Let the site and smart advertising make your sales better.

Promotion of the car dealership includes the following main positions

  • Analytics of the actual content of the site and compliance with search queries.
  • Creating a semantic core based on market analytics. Use of search engines and task managers. The new semantic core should meet the urgent needs of visitors.
  • Based on the semantic core, the information component is added to the landing pages and corresponding requests for contextual advertising.
  • Internal search and analytic modules are being introduced.

The promotion of an auto site should be subject to a single strategy. This is the collection of information, the creation of a single database, attracting visitors and retention on landing pages, creating active forms, encouraging calls and participating in car dealership programs.

Contextual advertising tied to information pages gives the cheapest in terms of real money costs but at the same time the most targeted visitors. Information landing pages were created in order to detain the visitors on the site, interest them in your services, promotions, attract them to calculating the cost of their dream car, and so on.

An additional and important plus of informational articles and news feeds is that they participate in the issuance of search engines. Informational articles determine the site’s place in the regular ranking and attract interested free visitors. For a better understanding, this is like a cross-country location for a regular store. Target visitors will be delivered to the remote dealership by the seller’s transport with all associated costs. They will cost the salon expensive, but the buying activity of interested buyers is way bigger. Ordinary visitors are those who entered the dealership from a busy street and walked around cars, admiringly clicking their tongues. The probability of a quick purchase of such visitors is lower, but with the competent work of the dealership, everything is possible - car loans, installments, a test drive of a dream car and a final purchase. Perhaps not immediately, but after a month or six months. According to analysts, it is exactly six months that it is required for the buyer to fulfill his dream of a car before purchase. It is for this purpose that databases are created that carefully guide the buyer through the decision-making process.

How to get statistics for analytics and for building the right strategy

The problem of lack of statistics is a key one when it is necessary to build any advertising strategy. Promoting a car of a certain brand is much more difficult than, for example, mayonnaise, to which you can accustom the consumer by repeating the name until they’re sick of it. Reviews, technical reviews, reports from the car service and repair shops are needed. Each brand has its own fans, and so Chevrolet advertising will be indifferently ignored by a Nissan fan. The task of advertising is to find the target audience and hit exactly the bull’s eye.

To collect statistics, one trick is recommended. In addition to the usual site statistics and keywords with clicks from various sources, place free services useful for the client on the pages.

Car cost calculation

The more fields/boxes you create with relevant information for the user, the more complete query statistics you will receive. Based on the form, you will get the exact geography of requests, preferred car brands, price preferences of your audience. Do not forget to embed a calculator in the form, which will give the calculation to the user after filling in the fields.

Calculation of the cost of the car, taking existing equipment into account

In addition to statistics and real information about what assets the client has, you get the opportunity to make an attractive offer directly through the site. Taking into account the old technology is a common and useful trick.

Do not repeat the common mistake of most dealerships - after entering the data, a window appears with the text like "our manager will calculate the price and call you back soon, please leave your phone number." The client immediately leaves the site, because he wants to get the price right away. Without talking to the seller. You can make a note that the calculation is indicative, but the user should receive the cost immediately.

Gift price calculation form

Let the client choose the gift that the company offers when buying a car as a discount or promotion. At the same time, you will find out which products should be offered first. And it is quite possible that it won’t be a new rug.

By using the information on requests, you can set up your ads most correctly.

Using advertising to attract customers to the site

The main source of the target audience is advertising. Image advertising arouses common interest; targeted advertising is designed to attract visitors to a particular car dealership. Contextual advertising attracts people who are already in search of targeted queries. Be sure to configure regional advertising settings to get interested buyers in your region. This is especially true of advertising on social networks.

Image advertising

The centralized promotion of a car brand includes an expensive package of image-targeted advertising. Such advertisements are broadcast on TV channels during sports matches and are on all billboards in busy streets. It attracts attention and is designed to arouse initial interest. Impressed by image advertising, a potential buyer will type the name of the car in the browser and view the information on the central site and then, perhaps, go to the dealer’s website in the hope of seeing technical details and reviews. And here a failure awaits the domestic user - car dealerships have no decent information and landing informative pages.

Targeted advertising

Car dealers are interested not only in promoting a particular brand, but also in attracting customers directly to a car dealership to purchase products. This explains the usual bias in drawing up advertising orders. Car dealerships neglect image requests and information pages, giving preference to specific car dealership offers. As a result, they have a weak site that has a flow of visitors almost exclusively from advertising and without landing pages on which users are delayed. Incorrect search queries increase the final cost of each visitor, access from the site and call.

Set up targeted advertising through specialized services, and you will receive a stream of the target audience.

Contextual advertising

Contextual advertising is tied to specific user requests in search engines and gives out advertising content that is as close as possible to the user's interests. To attract and retain a client, you need to create special pages for the main search queries. Ignoring the arrangement of landing pages and an overly aggressive advertising policy of sites is a serious mistake that reduces the effectiveness of contextual advertising to minimum values.

Set up contextual advertising based on regions. You’ll get the general flow of interested visitors simply through the landing and information pages, and useful services. Such as calculating the cost of a car, calculating insurance, calculating the cost of servicing a car online and so on. Bring those buyers to the dealership for whom it is most convenient to reach you.

The most common mistakes of car dealers on the Internet:

  • Lack of accurate and detailed information about each car. It is believed (unfortunately) that there are a lot of cars in the dealership, so it’s not worth describing each of them in detail?
  • The general message of the site and employees focused solely on attracting a potential client to the dealership, where it can be competently “processed” according to established schemes. This discourages visitors who would like to receive detailed information and accurate prices without leaving their home seats.
  • Lack of general advertising strategy to promote brands and specific models.
  • Formal promotion of a car dealership in social networks, simple duplication of information from the main site, lack of live communication, timely updating of information.
  • Inability to really find out if a client came from a site or via an internet call. The dealer does not recognize that the client is received through the site, so as not to lose part of the reward for finding the client. As a result, the owner of the dealership does not have real data to analyze the effectiveness of the site.
  • The lack of “leading” the client all the way from selection and decision making to acquisition. It seems to the site owners that it’s more convenient to take a ready-made client at the decision-making stage and quickly foist expensive products on him, having received the maximum profit.

As a result of promotion mistakes, car dealerships lose customers who go to natural markets and turn to private sellers on classified sites. The advantage of private advertisements is that they indicate the real parameters of the cars, there is the possibility of direct contact and the receipt of complete information upon request, the possibility of bargaining, the interest of the seller towards clients.

Car dealers see the tendency of buyers moving to the private sector, and are trying to solve the problem by posting false ads, supposedly about the sale of a particular car. Usually, attempts are unsuccessful, since the information is not specific, given the repetition of all major mistakes.

Tips for updating the content of the site and its promotion

  • Post specific information on the website. Look at other websites. Each car should have a specific description. The visitor can look at all the information about the model, technical information, remove information on the VIN code of the car, if a used car is offered, and all this without getting up from a chair.
  • Track calls and appeals from the website. Call tracking allows you to create a database and view up-to-date information about client actions on the site right during a call.
  • Maintain a CRM system with complete customer data. The presence of a customer base with information on the list of new promotions and test drives will increase sales immediately and in the long run.
  • Create a newsletter by subscribing through the site and social networks. The promotion of a car dealership in social networks allows you to win a huge audience with minimal cost. Get people interested.
  • Make it possible to transfer clients to your landing page from contextual advertising.
  • Configure related queries and output models with similar parameters. Create an electronic dealer who will praise the customer’s choice, tell him some useful information and offer several other options, remember the customer’s choice and the positions viewed. Let the robots do their job. This will reach a wider audience.

Be attentive to all visitors of the website, including those who drop in "just to look." Be convincing, show your best side, show benefits, amenities, loan programs. Treat curious visitors properly, so that they want to stay and be your client.

Image by aleksandr_samochernyi on Freepik

Roy Emmerson

Roy Emmerson is the co-founder of TechTimes.com, a B2B SaaS platform that helps businesses stay up-to-date on the latest technology trends. With over a decade of experience in the tech industry, Roy is a thought leader in the field and is passionate about helping companies embrace new technologies to improve their operations and drive growth.

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