So, you are doing business in the automotive industry and putting your efforts into the idea of providing top-rated services. You might have quality goods, a user-friendly website, and an easy ordering form. What about the sales? Well, there might be some due to word-of-mouth reputation. What about organic & paid search, targeting, referral traffic, and the one that comes from socials? For sure, you might be the best in your industry and sell quality goods. However, if you don't use different types of promotions, there is a tiny possibility that your sales will grow. Digital automotive marketing comes on stage here, involving search engine optimization, content & email marketing, chatbots, etc.
In this blog post, we want to share with you vital details about digital marketing for automotive, covering its benefits, strategies, ideas, and marketing channels.
What is Automotive Digital Marketing?
As we have already mentioned, digital marketing for the automotive industry goes far beyond running online advertising campaigns as it supplies you with SEO, content creation, data analysis to improve business effectiveness, etc. Overall, we can define automotive internet marketing as a tool that involves digital marketing strategies and techniques that are aimed to increase sales. Here comes a strong online presence creation, building a user-friendly website, page optimization, and a lot more. So, nowadays, digital marketing in the automotive industry is more about serving people than a promotion that we could see several years ago.
Benefits of Digital Marketing in the Automotive Industry
Well, there is a stereotype that marketing is all about the ability to sell something useless for a high price. Some businesses are even afraid of the marketers' help as they don't want to have such a reputation.
There is no need to worry about that when you cooperate with a team of specialized marketers who aim to make people's life better thanks to the promoted product. Once you have found a team that has the same business vision as you, marketing will bring only the benefits. So, let's see the advantages you get.
Wider audience reach
Businesses go online to reach a wider audience. But how can people find those companies without even knowing about their existence? The situation that they will just type in Google their needs and see your company as the first search result is hardly possible, especially if you don't work on your search engine optimization. Here digital marketing for the automotive industry will be helpful as it works on your website and supplies you with a list of things you need to improve so that once a person is searching for the needed thing, he or she will see your website.
In addition to SEO, automotive search marketing takes targeting into account. That means that specialists assist you with information about audience segments and then design specific activities that will draw people's attention.
Improved website
We should remember that digital automotive marketing specialists consider not only targeting and advertising but the look of the whole website. So if you tell such a need during the consultation, marketers can go deeper into Google Analytics & Google Console and see the behavior of your potential clients. This thing is vital as business owners should know on what pages people spend the most time, the exit rate, clicks, etc.
Marketers will provide you with such website analytical data and share some ideas on website improvement.
Brand awareness
The thing that comes first, talking about any type of marketing is brand awareness. As a result of successful digital marketing strategies, your company becomes more and more popular among those people who are interested in your services. While such a thing as brand awareness is difficult to build, it's an investment in long-term website success and steady growth.
Enhanced loyalty
Depending on business types and needs marketers often encourage owners to provide reviews under each product, no matter how small it is. These shopping experiences are not always excellent, for sure, there might be customers that tell you both pros and cons. However, this only warms up your potential clients as they see that you have true comments.
Digital Marketing Strategies For The Automotive Industry
We at SolidBrain support the idea that it is better not to overthink the idea of something and take actions, no matter how small they are. That's why we want to share with you some automobile digital marketing strategies that you can implement yourself or take the help of the marketing team.
Artificial Intelligence
More and more companies are starting to implement AI in their marketing strategies. It's mostly used to improve user experience through personalized recommendations, chatbots, and instant customer support. The important thing about AI is that it collects customer data, can analyze it, and provide people with items they might also like. For example, talking about automotive online marketing, your potential customer might have ordered a main headlamp for Mercedez-Benz-B-Class, and in a second your website can show other connected spare parts: number plate light, side flasher in the mirror, etc. The AI takes into account even the color. For instance, if the person has ordered a specific detail in white color, AI would consider it and place recommendations in white first.
Search Engine Optimization
On-page, off-page, and technical SEO – all these points are equally important for ranking your page high in Google search.
On-page SEO – the process of optimizing individual pages with relevant keywords, mate tags, quality, and unique content.
Off-page SEO – the process of building backlinks, shares on social media, etc.
Technical SEO – the process of cutting the website loading time and making a user-friendly website.
With effective SEO you can get enough organic traffic and attract visitors without ongoing advertising costs.
Oftentimes, marketers that are involved in automotive digital marketing strategy decide not to pay attention to backlinks building. Off-page SEO can not always be necessary for this business field, however, everything depends on your requirements and details that are usually covered during the consultation.
According to technical SEO, it's crucial for any website as it involves page-loading speed and mobile-friendliness. Nowadays, potential clients aren't likely to wait while the page is loading as they can go to another website that will cover their needs faster. The ideal load time is around two seconds. So, specialists are striving to reach this point.
Email Newsletters
Someone might think that email is an outdated tool for automotive digital marketing strategy. We can't disagree with you here! Emails in the form that we got used to could not be powerful. However, nowadays email marketing campaigns are run in a completely different way. While inboxes can be crowded, effective messaging stands out through personalization and valuable content. A well-crafted email that is written by a professional has a chance of capturing the client's attention due to the value it brings. We at SolidBrain encourage you to write emails not only using the help of your marketing team but combining their knowledge with a person who has experience in the automotive industry. That's how the text will be written not only according to the relevant marketing strategy but will also be useful for the reader due to new information.
Automotive Dealer Digital Marketing Modern Ideas
As now you know some strategies that can help you in digital marketing for the automotive industry, let's come to some ideas that you can implement.
1. Integrate AI-powered chatbots that are always there to answer your customers and provide them with all information they need.
2. Optimize your website for search engines by supplying it with relevant keywords and quality backlinks.
3. Offer virtual tours during which a potential customer could imagine himself sitting in a classy car, touching its steering wheel.
4. Create interactive quizzes that help customers navigate through the website.
5. Use a personalized email campaign where you aren't just promoting the items, but are giving some kind of professional knowledge.
6. Create video content along with static pictures. These videos might include some ideas on how a specific automotive part can be used, easy tool integration, tips, etc.
7. Use geo-targeting to show specific ads for people that are near your shop.
8. Implement auto-fill features for often-used fields like name, address, and payment information.
These were the main automotive marketing trends that we also use. It's important to notice here, that these things have become popular not because they have gone viral, but rather because they help to boost the whole system of automotive digital services.
Automotive Digital Marketing Channels
Last but not least, we want to mention in this post are channels in the automotive industry digital marketing. They include:
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Pay-per-click advertising
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Email marketing
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Video marketing
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Influencer partnership
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Location-based advertising.
