Boost Your Car Dealership Success With These 5 Online Brand Strategies
Find out everything you wanted to know about car dealership branding and learn how you can elevate your own brand using the power of the internet, smart design practices, and modern technology.
Automobiles, whether new or used, are an item of luxury for buyers. The branding of your dealership should reflect this fact and project a sense of quality, dependability, and trustworthiness if you want your sales figures to stay consistently high.
In this article, we’ll talk about five best practices you can start implementing immediately to elevate your brand and impress your buyers so that your company is the first one they think of when they’re ready to buy.
Let’s start by explaining how a strong online presence can do wonders for brand awareness, the beginning of a buyer’s journey with you.
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1. Boost your online presence |
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2. Build relationships using social media |
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3. Maintain a visual identity |
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4. Improve your customer experience |
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5. Ensure your products are top of the line |
5 Online Brand Strategies For Your Car Dealership
Boost your online presence
Buying a car is no small purchase. That’s why most buyers like to take their time and do a bit of research into the dealership before they decide to do business with someone.
According to recent studies, a lot of that research will be done on the internet, as 76% of consumers say they will search for a company website before visiting their physical location.
So if you want to raise awareness about your brand and show potential customers you can be trusted, you need to have a solid online presence and do some active digital marketing.
A good starting point is having a modern, information-rich website your customers can visit to do things like:
- Find out more about your company.
- Check out your offer of vehicles.
- Learn about your terms and conditions.
- Find contact information so they can get in touch.
Your website can contain features such as a handy search bar for visitors to easily find the makes and models they’re interested in and a chat option so they can quickly get answers to their questions.
eCarsTrade search functionality
Your website will often be the buyer's first interaction with your brand, so it’s a smart move to invest into quality web design to make a good first impression that will stick.
And while you’re at it, you can also create a Google Business Profile for your dealership. This free service lets you manage a digital storefront for your business, collect reviews from your customers, and become discoverable on Google’s services such as Maps.
Make your own Google Business page
This profile contains your dealership’s exact location, business hours, website, and contact information, as well as a wealth of other data customers need when researching a local business.
Most importantly, customers can leave their reviews on your profile and tell others what kind of experience they had with you, which can help you build a good reputation and show new buyers that you can be trusted.
Check out more of our Google Reviews
So, as you can see, a lot of modern-day brand-building is done online. Your prospective buyer will expect to see your website and read a couple of reviews before deciding to get in touch about their purchase. Provide them with these resources and you should see better sales as a result.
Build relationships using social media
Speaking of online resources, you should also know that social media plays a large part in promoting your car dealership’s brand and shaping the customer’s decision to buy from you.
In fact, research into customer behavior shows that 71% of car buyers are influenced by social media during the purchasing process.
But with so many social sites around these days, how do you even decide where to build your audience?
Well, the same research concluded that consumers in the market for a new or used car are the most active on the following networks:
- YouTube (41%)
- Facebook (37%)
- Instagram (21%)
- Twitter (13%)
That means the best way to engage your prospective buyers is to have a multi-channel approach and post quality content on at least a couple, if not all, of these social media sites.
Now, you must be wondering what kind of content you should post.
That’s actually the fun part of social media. You can feel free to share all kinds of news about your company, exciting offers for your buyers, and even your expert advice as an experienced automotive professional.
For example, you can feature your best vehicles and tell your audience a bit about them to spark their interest and motivate them to get in touch.
Feature new cars you sell through your dealership
Or you could introduce your team members to show buyers that your dealership is run by passionate, capable professionals who can meet their needs and take good care of them, should they decide to work with you.
Follow us on our eCarsTrade instagram
Finally, you can use social media to promote your other online resources, such as your blog, to pull the buyer deeper into your brand’s story and assert yourself as an expert in the field, someone who holds all the answers they’ll need.
Social media is your chance to tell the story of your brand and build lasting relationships with buyers who will appreciate the insight into your company and the offers and advice you send their way. Update your profiles regularly with engaging content and watch your customer base grow.
Maintain a visual identity
When the term “brand” is mentioned, people’s minds usually go straight to the visual aspects of branding.
So if you want to elevate your brand and stick out in your buyers’ minds, your first step should be to develop and maintain a visual identity.
That sounds a bit abstract, doesn’t it?
Let’s enumerate some elements that might make up your visual identity to clarify. These may include:
- A color palette
- A logo
- Typography
- Photos and imagery
Each of these aspects plays a part in making your brand recognizable and broadcasting to your buyers that you offer a high-quality, dependable service.
Take your brand colors, for example. Did you know that using a specific color palette can make your brand 80% more recognizable?
That may seem like a bold statement, but you actually already know this to be true. For instance, take a look at the color palettes of some famous brands below.
We bet you can recognize a couple of them by color only:
Now, developing a visual identity can be quite a challenging task, one that requires time and a lot of expertise. So, for best results, it’s a good idea to hire a designer to do this job for you.
A good place to find one could be one of the popular freelancer platforms where various types of experts offer their skills to businesses all over the world.
Fiverr is one of these platforms. You just need to create an account and search for a designer that fits your needs.
Find more visual identity inspiration on Fiverr
A good designer can advise you on what direction your visual identity should take, create all the necessary materials (the elements we talked about above), and even develop brand guidelines so that you and your team can confidently apply your visual identity in your day-to-day.
Once these materials are created, it’s important to maintain your visual identity in all of your branding and communication with prospective buyers.
By this we mean that your logo, brand colors, and typography should be a part of all of your marketing materials, such as your company merchandise, online and printed ads, pamphlets, and, of course, your social media accounts.
eCarsTrade uses red as a staple of our visual identity
Remember, the more you push your visual identity forward, the more recognizable your brand will be. After being exposed to your visuals, when buyers are ready to buy, your dealership will be the first brand they think of.
Improve your customer experience
Now that you’ve hooked your customer with your engaging content and compelling visual identity, it’s time to show them why you’re a top player in your industry by providing them with an excellent customer experience, the most dynamic and engaging aspect of your brand.
This is important for your sales process because, according to Zendesk’s latest CX Trends Report, “70% of consumers spend more with companies that offer fluid, personalized, and seamless customer experiences.”
But what does that mean in the context of the automotive industry?
Essentially, it means you should make improvements to the parts of the sales process your buyers are finding challenging, tedious, or inefficient.
Luckily, modern technology could hold some solutions.
For example, complex sales processes involving endless contracts and forms can benefit from automation software with auto-populate features and auto-sign options so that clients don’t have to fill out, print, sign, scan, and send documents over and over again.
Use automation software to simplify your paper
Automation software can shave a lot of time off the formal aspect of buying a car and keep the customer engaged and excited throughout the sales process.
Speaking of speeding up processes, a major trend in car sales today is contactless delivery - the process wherein buyers are free to browse the seller's interactive database of cars (including photo galleries and videos), evaluate their options, come to informed decisions, and make payments without ever visiting a dealership because the whole process happens online.
Being able to do research in their own time and from the comfort of their own home, without any pressure from a salesperson has made this the preferred method for buyers in both the B2B and B2C space. Therefore, it might be worth the effort to explore which parts of your customer experience can be transferred online.
The sales process isn’t just about moving products anymore, it’s about providing memorable experiences for your customers. See what you can do to improve the experience buyers have with you, and you’re sure to see them again when they’re in the market for another vehicle.
Ensure your products are top of the line
Buyers won’t associate quality and dependability with your brand if the cars you sell aren’t in top condition at the point of purchase.
Therefore, our last tip for elevating your brand is to focus on sourcing the best possible vehicles for your buyers and maintaining them in good shape while they’re in your possession.
The first part of this equation, sourcing, depends on your partnerships with car suppliers. This is something of a non-issue if you’re buying new cars, but if you’re working with used vehicles, it can be difficult to assess the state of the vehicle until it’s too late.
That’s why you should always work with sellers who can guarantee a high standard of quality for every vehicle in their offer.
For instance, at here at eCarsTrade, buyers benefit from a multi-layered quality assurance.
All our cars are ex-leased cars, which means they come with a complete service history and mileage is absolutely guaranteed.
In addition to that, all cars are also inspected by independent experts to ascertain their state, and purchases don’t go forward without their full report.
As long as you source your cars from dependable sources like eCarsTrade, you won’t have a problem with unhappy customers and your business will enjoy a good reputation.
But that’s not the end of the story. If you operate a lot for your cars, you’ll also need to stay on top of maintenance as long as those cars are in your possession.
Experienced automotive experts like Ben Christensen recommend partnering up with a good mechanic for repairs and checkups, as well as having a dedicated member of staff do regular checks to catch minor damage early so you can fix those up and increase your profit margins!
Make sure you either disclose all damages through detailed photos and descriptions or fix them up to increase the resale value of the car. Check out our guide to taking great photos for your car business as well as how to fix minor damages guide.
Either way, devoting enough attention to good procurement and maintenance practices will do wonders for your br
Great online branding of your car dealership means great sales
In conclusion, it’s quite clear why branding is so important for your sales process. The elements and characteristics of your brand tell a story that resonates with your buyers and ultimately convinces them that they can trust you, again and again, whenever they’re in the market for a car.
In this article, we’ve provided you with five tips on elevating your brand to boost your sales. Some of them depend on new technology, while others require you to partner up with top experts and service providers.
Sourcing top-notch cars for your dealership plays a big part here, and eCarsTrade has you covered on that front. Have a look at our selection of used cars and rest easy knowing you’re securing the best vehicles for your own clientele.
