The car dealership industry is highly competitive. Each segment of market is saturated with numerous reputable global brands. Car dealerships under the same brand also compete against each other, often in close proximity.

To help your car dealership to cut through the clutter and outperform, here are seven digital marketing tactics you can use:

1. Use MailChimp and Facebook Advertising Integration

   Integrating MailChimp and Facebook advertising enables you to launch Facebook campaigns to specifically reach your MailChimp subscribers. Use this feature to offer special promotions to an engaged audience and improve brand loyalty. For example, you can offer your MailChimp subscribers special promotional rates such as 0% lease or 0.9% finance. You can also use the MailChimp and Facebook advertising integration feature to exclude your MailChimp subscribers from your marketing campaign so you can reach an untapped market. For example, you can launch a Facebook campaign to reach the Vancouver audience and exclude your MailChimp subscribers from the campaign so you can attract new clients.

2. Segment audiences based on language

   Digital advertising platforms such as Google AdWords and Facebook offer an language option which lets you segment your target audience based on language. For example, if you want to advertise your latest promotion to Chinese audiences, you can select traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese to show your ads to users who read simplified or traditional Chinese.

   Smartt now offer Chinese advertising services. For more details, please visit: http://www.smartt.com/digital-marketing/marketing-to-chinese or contact me at ray.wang@smartt.com.

3. Use ethnic-specific social media networks

   Vancouver and other major North American cities have diverse groups of subcultures. These subcultures use technologies or social networks within their cultural groups. For example, social networks such as WeChat and Weibo are commonly by Chinese consumers. As a dealership, you can leverage these social networks to your advantage by creating accounts on these platforms and advertise your vehicles through those channels.

4. Place search bids on competing brand names

   Bidding on competing brand names is an effective way to generate traffic from potential car buyers who are looking for vehicles in the segment of the car market. For example, a Toyota dealership bidding on competing brand names such as Honda or Hyundai will help the dealership attract shoppers who are searching for affordable, fuel-efficient, family-oriented sedans or SUVs.

5. Remind customers to leave Google Reviews

   Earning Google Reviews is an effective way to improve your ranking on Google Local Search. Receiving high-rating positive Google reviews will boost your local search ranking.

   While you can’t solicit positive reviews from customers because it’s against Google’s best practices, you can remind your customers to leave feedback on Google.

6. Check on-site SEO is optimized

   On-site SEO refers to factors on your website that affects your search ranking. Examples of on-site SEO factors include:

   • H1 - H6 tags: H1 up to H6 tags should be used chronically from top to the bottom of a webpage. For example, a product page for the 2016 Honda Civic should use a H1 tag as the title of the page, H2 tags for main features, and possibly H3 for minor features. This gives the webpage information hierarchy and it’s easier for Google to crawl and understand the context for the page.
   • Robots.txt: use a robots.txt file to give instructions to robots which pages they’re allowed or disallowed to crawl. For example, you should use robots.txt to disallow robots to crawl WordPress subfolders such as /tag/ so pages generated by the subfolders don’t get indexed and affect your search ranking.
     
     If you have any questions about creating an optimized robots.txt file, please let us know and we’d be more than happy to help.
      
   • Alternative text: Alternative text is a HTML attribute that lets you give textual content to images placed on your website. This helps Google understand what the image is about and what the webpage that the image is on entails. For example, if you insert an image of a 2016 CLA 4-Door coupe in a blog post, including the alternative text “2016 CLA 4-Door coupe” helps Google understand that the image is about 2016 CLA 4-Door coupe and the blog that the image is on is related to 2016 CLA 4-Door coupe. This will help the blog post rank for those keywords.
     
     Alternative text can also help you generate organic visits from Google Images. By including alternative text such as 2016 CLA 4-Door coupe for a picture of the coupe, the picture of the coupe can appear on Google Images. If a potential car buyer clicks on the picture in Google Images and then clicks on Visit Site, the prospect will land on your website. (Note: popular content management system (CMS) platforms such as WordPress and Drupal offers features that lets you add alternative text directly in the back-end of your CMS.)
     
     On-site SEO is the lowest hanging fruit for improving your website ranking because you have complete control over managing the factors.

7. Create your own design template for MailChimp newsletters

   Instead of using standard blocks offered in MailChimp to create organized but mundane newsletters, create your own design templates to increase your newsletters’ appeals. Designing your newsletters will help you differentiate your dealership from competitors so you can capture your audience’s and attention and increase their likelihood to purchase a vehicle from you.

   
   (Source: Ads of the World)

   

   (Source: Ads of the World)

   

   (Source: Ads of the World)

   Graphic design tools such as Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator lets you add effects and other visual elements to a stock car photo. 

   The car dealership is extremely competitive and in order to remain ahead of other cars brands and rival dealerships, you have to be creative with your marketing tactics. By using approaches such as excluding your MailChimp newsletters from your Facebook campaigns to reach an untapped audience or segmenting your AdWords campaigns using language, you can reach prospects you’ve engaged with previously or customized your advertising content for a specific subculture. These tactics help you remain versatile in your advertising approaches and outsell your competitors.

   If you have questions about digital marketing for your car dealership, please get in touch with us and we’d more than happy to offer a complimentary consultation.