The percentage of customers who spend their time on the internet has increased in high numbers. It has been seen that as of January 2021, there are 4.66 billion customers who are using the internet; this is 59.5 % of the global population. Also, among these people, 92.6 % of the people are accessing the internet via mobile devices.
Here are a few reasons why there is a necessity for the automobile sector to shift its focus from offline to online marketing:
- People these days are not likely to pay attention to billboards while buying a car. Automobiles are a sector where consumers do not invest very regularly. Instead, they prefer to invest in this only when convenient based on their financial condition.
Hence, offline marketing via billboards, newspapers, and magazines might not serve the utility. Consumers might be viewing those advertisements when they are not yet ready to buy the car, even when they are on sale.
- Consumers are not aware regularly whether cars of their choice would be available in the inventory with a dealer or not. People invest a lot of time selecting the model of the vehicle and its color, and that might not be available in their nearest possible dealer. Other dealers via digital marketing can easily reach out to such customers to boost their sales.
- Offline marketing campaigns are usually widespread and target a broader audience. This results in lesser conversions as the advertisement might reach people who are unwilling to buy a car.
Using digital marketing campaigns, dealers can target a niche category of people and track the entire journey of people interested in buying a car; this would start from making the person aware of the models available for conversion, where they are buying a car
Why Digital Marketing is Important For Car Dealerships?
Here are some of the top reasons why the automobile industry should consider digital marketing.
- It will give the dealers a platform with a higher reach to showcase their discounts, sales, and launch events. This is a great way to engage with potential customers in a greater area without any extra expense, as they might look forward to purchasing the car.
- The digital marketing campaigns will help the dealer increase consumer awareness and engagement and track the journey of their potential customers at every touchpoint.
Tracking such key metrics will help them know where they went wrong and lost a customer, hence improvising on the same. Whereas, for people who have already reached the last stage, conversion, dealers can retain them as loyal customers by providing additional services (like servicing, car wash, damage repair, etc.) and keeping them updated about future discounts and events.
- Explore innovative ways of marketing to have the edge over other dealers. It might include influencer marketing, viral marketing, and email marketing. Tie-ups with influencers have a convincing effect, especially on millennials, as they are most likely to wish to have the same car as the influencers.
Companies have started using viral marketing, which helps them think out of the box and stand out to gain special attention from their customers. Viral marketing can be used in the case of car dealers when they want to showcase their USP and convince their potential customers to buy from them.
Email marketing is one of the effective ways which will never go out of date. Once you have the data of potential customers, which you might have got by tracking users who have been looking out to buy cars on social media or by ones who visit the websites, you can send these users direct emails to let them know about your outlet. This sets up a highly targeted audience planning to buy cars and interested in offers and discounts.
- Car dealers might not have a significant online presence, which results in people not knowing about them. A town or a city might have multiple car dealers, but people might know only a few of them. Digital marketing will help small dealers present themselves to a larger audience and let potential customers know they might have what they are looking for in-store.
Building an online presence can start with setting up a website for your store and using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to the fullest and social media marketing to direct traffic to your website. When users search for cars on Google, the websites of the local car dealers will then be shown to them using their location. If your website is at the top in the organic search, that will help boost your awareness and sales. Moreover, you can also use inorganic marketing to generate sponsored Ads.
It is high time that the focus should now be shifted to building a digital presence and effectively using different digital marketing to increase the revenue of your car dealership. There are ample ways companies have already started leveraging digital marketing to boost their revenue, given the number of people who now spend their time making their purchase decisions digitally. Therefore, automobile dealers are now investing in digital marketing. Professional and experienced digital marketing service providers will be able to formulate the right marketing strategy for you. This will allow you to benefit from all wonders digital marketing can do for your business.
