Automotive Marketing. Two powerful words that can provide an unlimited number of opportunities to help an automotive business, like yourself, grow, provide brand awareness, and build strong relationships with direct customers in your local markets.
Perhaps you clicked on this article because your business already does a great job at automotive marketing but you’re looking for some inspiration and fresh ideas on how to get your brand out to your local markets, or you’re looking for alternative ways to reach your customers and gain additional sales, profits, and customer loyalty. Either way, we hope that our Top 10 Marketing Ideas for Your Automotive Facility provide some great solutions for you to move your business forward.
With that being said, let’s get started.
1) Create a Website for Your Automotive Business
Your business’ website is the storefront the entire world can see. How does your storefront look? Is it simple to read? Is the message clear and direct? It’s important that your website provides value to a customer, rather than just a page full of information. So, what do you believe your customer would see as value and would make a customer want to go on your website?
Do we ever have some great suggestions for you!
Website Content
Your website should always be customer centric. Readers need to feel valued and important. Connect with them through a unique design and relatable content. Address their fears and problems and ensure them they can rely on you with their vehicle decisions!
Always, always, always include your phone number, e-mail, and address on EACH of your pages to your website and include a form where people can ask questions!
PRO TIP: Don’t forget to focus on the local area when optimizing your website, since your services are heavily influenced by location!
Connection to Blog, YouTube, or Social Media Channels
Some people prefer to read, some to watch and listen. It’s always better to include multiple content options on your website, but whatever you choose, connect your website with your automotive blog, YouTube, or Social Media channels so that you can get those loyal readers to look forward to your next blog, video, or post.
Scheduling Features
With technology being so great nowadays, Scheduling features are a simple way to organize your work, time, but also to make it easier for your customers. They don’t need to waste time, call you, ask when you are available, etc. They can see all this information if you add a scheduling plug-in to your website.
It should consist of the calendar, available times, and be able to schedule a client in a click or two! The best part? Most scheduling features, like Calendy.com can help to provide these services.
Email Generation
Create a sign-up form on your website to collect email addresses from current and potential clients. You can also add them to your email marketing campaigns once you receive authorization from them while they purchase or get their vehicle serviced from you! Make it valuable to them by promising great content and delivering it!
You can later send them a newsletter to keep in touch and nurture the relationship. Let them be first to know when you have a new product, service, event, or anything else they can find important!
2) Publish Blog Posts Relevant to Car Owners
Who better knows your customers than you? What bothers them? Write about specific problems you encounter daily in your automotive facility and tell the world what’s your approach in solving them.
Blogs for automotive facility build trust, credibility, and authority in your automotive business.
Keep in mind that writing blogs is a job of its own, so you either need to invest time to learn how to do it or pay experts to do it for you!
The most important things you need to know about blogs:
- Blogs you publish have to be optimized for Search Engines like Google and Bing (SEO). This will boost your rankings and drive traffic to your automotive website, resulting in brand awareness for your automotive facility and more customers. More info on Ranking High on Google is below, don’t miss out on it!
- As I mentioned previously- your blog content should be highly relevant to your target market. Think about what your customers search on Google related to your business. For example, if you are a collision repair facility, what would your customers like to know?
- Be sure your content is comforting, helpful, and offers a solution. They may want to know how serious the damage is, how long it will take to repair it, and of course, how much it will cost.
By offering an approximate answer to their question, you are one step ahead of your competition who don’t use blogs to market their automotive business.
Need an excellent writer? Auto+ Performance is a small business specializing in automotive marketing, and we have experienced writers who can help you create a blog strategy and execute it! Check out our blogging solutions!
3) Post Valuable Content on Social Media and Engage; Social Media Marketing for Automotive Industry
Social media is there to connect people interested in the same topic. Build your social media presence and present yourself as an expert in the automotive industry.
Raise important questions, engage with other people and businesses who are relevant, and answer questions they may have. Show your business’ personality and thus attract the right customers to visit your automotive facility!
Show; don’t tell
Social Media has taken over, and if you think it doesn’t have a powerful impact on buying decisions – you are terribly wrong. Instagram and Facebook can skyrocket your business by raising your brand awareness to the next level and offering social proof of your expertise without mouth-to-mouth marketing you can’t control. So what can you do?
You can post before and after photos so people can relate and want to visit your facility since they want the same outstanding results. As we all know, a picture tells a thousand words. If you are a collision repair facility, there is no better strategy to use than this one.
People are stressed when their car is damaged in an accident. By seeing a similar thing already had happened to someone else is comforting, but seeing it being repaired and how – it will drive them right to your doorstep.
4) Run Ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google; Automotive Marketing
You can decide to go all organic – or all paid – but at the end of the day, it’s important to get the ball rolling and get your automotive business the recognition it deserves. A mix of both organic traffic and paid ads is the best way to go in my experience, but it’s up to you to decide!
You don’t want to target people who don’t have a car, right? It’s important to implement all the knowledge you’ve collected about your target audience into running Google, Instagram, and Facebook ads.
Automotive advertising on Instagram, Facebook, and Google offers you a wide range of targeting opportunities, but the platforms have diverse possibilities and work differently. Get into the thick of it by reading on and learning the basics of advertising for automotive businesses!
Facebook and Instagram Ads for an Automotive Facility
Facebook and Instagram are the same company, and because of that, advertising is similar. You can run the same ads simultaneously on both. However, there are multiple ways to run ads on these platforms. We’ll focus on these:
- Boost post
- Ads Manager
Boosting posts on Instagram and Facebook is rather simple, and you can do it directly from the apps. You need to have a business or creator account – you can’t run ads from a personal account. It basically offers you the opportunity to boost the reach of existing posts and increase brand awareness.
With its very limited targeting and other options, I wouldn’t recommend pouring a lot of your budget into it. Simply go to a well-performing post of yours, and click boost, set the parameters, and wait for results! Don’t expect wonders, since Ads Manager is where the magic happens.
Ads manager is a sea of opportunities since you can choose the format of your ad, goal, and a wide range of targeting options.
The most common and widely successful formats are:
- Single picture
- Carousel ad
- Story Ad
- Video Ad
It all depends on what you are trying to achieve, and how you plan to grab the attention of your target audience. This takes us to the goals of your ad you want to accomplish.
Goals you can choose from in Facebook Ads Manager are:
- Brand Awareness
- Reach
- Traffic
- Engagement
- Video Views
- Lead Generation
- Messages
- Catalog Sales
- Conversion
- Store traffic
If you use goals such as traffic (to your website), or conversion, it’s important to install Facebook Pixel on your website so it can track the results!
Bear in mind that Facebook and Instagram Ads work based on bidding. So the higher your budget, the better results you’ll get. If you set up your ads great, you’ll get the best results for your budget. While setting up the ad and the budget, always check what kind of results you can approximately expect. Good luck with your automotive social media campaigns!
Google Ads for an Automotive Facility
Google Ads are a great way to increase the visibility of your business and attract more customers!
It works based on keywords people type into Google and if your goal is to get more customers, you should definitely use transactional keywords for Google Ads!
Transactional keywords are words with high buying intent, such as “Collision Repair near me”. Some other ideas for transactional keywords are:
Buy, deal, purchase, discount, cheapest, for sale, coupon, where to buy, etc.
Google Ads charge you based on clicks your Ads generate, so you want to be careful about keywords you choose and your target audience. Every click counts, and you don’t want to waste your hard-earned money, right?
PRO TIP: Use Keyword Planner, which is a free tool by Google that offers you valuable insights about search volume for keywords, the difficulty for ranking organically, and price per click (PPC) for paid ads.
5) Rank High on Google and Other Search Engines
Ranking high on Google is a strategy that takes time. For new websites, it can take up to a year to yield the fruits of your hard work. It can be annoying not to see the results right away, but if you do it right, it’ll turn out to be highly profitable! What strategies can you implement?
- Build a fast and user-friendly website for your automotive facility that resonates with your target market.
- On-page SEO is both technical characteristics of your website, and content you publish, such as blogs, videos, etc.
- While off-page SEO focuses more on other websites that give authority to yours. Such as building a linkbuilding strategy. In order to do that, build great, mutually beneficial relationships with other automotive businesses!Focus on both on-page and off-page SEO.
Don’t get discouraged because of lack of results because great things take time!
6) Get Involved in the Community: Volunteer for Events
Paint a positive picture of your business. Sponsor, take part, and volunteer for events in your local community – because that’s who your customers are. You want people to think of your business and to feel positive emotions when they hear about it.
That’s how you get into the mind of your potential customers, and when they need services you provide, guess where they’ll go? Right to you! So how can you do it?
- Connect with people,
- Sponsor a local sports team,
- Support youth initiatives,
- Network with other business people
- Donate to local charities
When you do these activities, don’t forget to share them on social media, write press releases, add them to the news section on your website, or your YouTube Channel!
7) Automotive Email Marketing
I’ve already mentioned generating email addresses from visitors on your website by creating a sign-up form. But what can you do with all these addresses? That’s where automotive email marketing plays a significant role!
Email marketing is a powerful strategy that yields a high profit for those who do it right!
You can choose from various email marketing software such as Mailchimp, MailerLite, and HubSpot to import your list and send emails to all people on it automatically!
Use it to inform people who signed up on the news important to them, remind them about regular maintenance, share your latest blog, offer a coupon, deal, or tell them about the discount you are offering!
Make it exclusive and worth their while!
8) Partner up With Other Local Businesses
Digital marketing is a great tool that can skyrocket your business, but don’t forget about traditional marketing, too!
Connect with other local businesses, offer them to take your flyers, catalogs, and other print marketing materials, and put them in a visible space in their facility.
Those businesses can be different stores and automotive businesses that are not your direct competition. You want as many people who pass by to get familiar with your business. By building meaningful connections with other local businesses, you’ll get a lot of referrals!
9) Sell Automotive Products on Your Website
Whether it’s cool accessorize, car parts, or maintenance products, it’s always a good idea to test the market and sell some of your products online. Results will amaze you!
It’s important to pay attention to product descriptions, make them appealing for both Search Engines and people who read them! Include all features, even the smallest ones, because small things can make a difference.
However, don’t focus solely on features because benefits sell! Make your product descriptions less salesy, and more about how it can help your customers!
10) Have the Superior Relationships with Your Strategic Partners
While building relationships with customers and potential customers is the key, don’t forget about strategic partners as well. Insurance companies, car dealerships, and fleet companies can be tailwinds for your business.
If you are a collision repair facility, it’s a great approach to have a fleet company as a partner because you need each other. Hence, you can form strong relationships that will make your collision repair facility’s and fleet company’s lives easier.
By forming strategic partnerships and nurturing them, you’ll not only grow your business but also help other automotive businesses thrive.
Conclusion
I feel like all these strategies I’ve told you about create a full circle and can make a real difference to your automotive business if you use them correctly.
Marketing is all about telling the world how you help your customers. There really isn’t much room for growing your automotive business if you don’t use marketing. The more you focus on marketing, the more customers you’ll get and more customers = more business.
Marketing cannot only be done from time to time, it requires daily effort and strategy. Remember not to be afraid to ask for help from experts in implementing these strategies, since it’s hardly likely you’d be able to focus on all these aspects. Especially with all these operational tasks you have on your plate!
