The last time you purchased a used car, did you get up, walk out the door, drive to the dealership and make a purchasing decision? While we wish it could be that easy, and for some, it is, most of us spend hours, days, and weeks trying to figure out which vehicle to buy. This is a big decision, and it takes research and analysis to get the job done. Your dealership can help customers find the right vehicle with amazing content that drives them to your dealership website.
What is Content?
We hear the term “Content is King,” and some of us might wonder what it means. Are the ads you see online part of the content? Are social media posts content that helps drive sales? Are news articles about a subject matter part of the sales content? What about videos, are they considered content as well? The simple answer to all of these is “yes;” they are all various forms of content.
Which Content Should Your Dealership Use?
This is a bit of a complicated question to answer. Today, you might find more leads coming from social media, while tomorrow, those same leads could appear from your blog pages. Some customers might see your videos on YouTube and click on your ads, while others might engage your team directly through your website, which they arrived at after reading an article about one of the models you have in stock. The goal is to bring all of these customers to your dealership to select the right used cars to drive, but you have to offer various content to do this.
Car Dealers Have Tons of Built-In Content to Share
Look around at the cars you have for sale; each one of those vehicles can become a sea of content for your dealership. You could drive one of the cars to lunch at a local diner and take a few photos with the car along the way. These could quickly turn into an Instagram post about how smooth the ride is and what you had for lunch. Another idea is to take some short, engaging videos that you’ll post to TikTok to grab the attention of your local audience. The way you present the vehicles you have for sale will make a huge difference in the online traffic you garner.
Is it Important to Do What Everyone Else Does?
Another complicated question that comes with both a “yes” and a “no.” Yes, you need to list your vehicles, their features, the pricing, and how customers can reach your dealership to ask about the vehicle. This is extremely important information and helps to make your content more complete. You should list your inventory on Facebook Marketplace and any social media site that allows you to have an inventory listing. Once you’ve got your inventory listed, get creative with the content. You don’t need to go so far out of the box that you no longer see it, but you should try and do something that will make your dealership and that vehicle stand out.
Do You Offer Online Used Car Shopping?
If your location has online used car shopping, you should mention this many times in your content. This is a huge benefit to your customers who can sit at home and do all of their shopping from the comforts of home. Are you offering virtual tours and test drives along with the online shopping experience? If so, make sure you mention this as well. You want to help your shoppers enjoy the experience of buying a car, and today, that means keeping them comfortably on the couch.
How Do You Know What Type of Content Works for Your Dealership?
Your marketing team can set goals to offer traffic expectations, and show you what you should consider an effective content strategy. If you’re preparing for an advertising campaign and you want to know which ads work best, create more than one. This is called A/Be testing, and it’s a great way to learn more about your audience and what works with them. Create a pair of ads with some key differences and see which one translates into more traffic and more used car sales for your dealership.
Videos Can be Huge for Driving Traffic
Many people only buy vehicles every few years, but they need to maintain these cars between purchases. If you have a service department as part of your dealership, a selection of “how-to” videos can be helpful. These videos give your customers some advice and keep your dealership name in front of them, which reminds them to bring their cars to your service department for scheduled maintenance.
Videos are great for marketing and are used more often than any other form of marketing today. Even when a written article is present, a supporting video is often provided. Use this to your advantage by creating excellent video content to help sell the used cars you have on your lot. Your videos can include:
- Vehicle tours>/li>
- Test drives
- A day in the life of your dealership
- Events you host each year
How Does Your Content Convert to Sales?
Whether you start with a blog post and build out to ads, social media links, and supportive videos, or you start with one of the other items and build from there, your content is interrelated and must work together. What is the customer journey through your marketing web? Do customers go from the blog post to a vehicle information page and then to a contact page? When they click on an ad, what page are they taken to on your website? You want to know your customer’s journey to ensure your content path makes sense.
Build up your content and let it work for your dealership to help your team sell more used cars, bring in customers to the service department, and put your location at the front of mind when a shopper needs their next vehicle. Your content can work great for you, but you have to be the curator of its quality, path, and message.
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