These days, buyers have seen everything under the sun when it comes to car advertising. While you shouldn't veer away from "tried-and-true" marketing methods, there are newer tactics that could help off-set your strategies and drive that extra 10% you might be missing.
Drive incremental sales with these 4 "out of the box" auto dealership marketing tactics.
1. Target Ride-Hail Drivers Like Uber & Lyft
One great way to both market your vehicles well, and target a hyper specific prospect is to offer beneficial incentives for Uber and Lyft drivers.
Drivers that can verify employment through these ride hail services can receive a special incentive and discount on their vehicle or for services at your dealership.
Dealers like Toyota Of Plano have been doing this for years now and have reaped the benefits. By offering aggressive prices for Uber drivers, they've been able to ensure tons of drivers buy their cars.
This in turn works as advertisement for Toyota of Plano as well, as those drivers are able to show off their great cars to their customers and talk about how much they love them and the dealership.
2. Offer The "Insane" Incentives
Incentives are like sodas. A few aren't bad, but too many can be bad for you.
While most people know that to be true, some dealers like the Fuccillo Auto Group have all the sodas they want. They often use massive sales incentives, one of which guarantees a cruise for everyone who buys a car during that year. The owner, Billy Fuccillo, actually buys out the cruise ship for those car buyers.
Because of it, the past year actually required two cruise ships. Now, while that may seem like a lot, that's also a massive amount of cars sold, and with the profit gained, it actually outweighs the expenses in the tickets.
Now, this is just one example of benefiting from offering "insane incentives". There are two important things to evaluate with this tactic:
- Weigh the cost of the incentives versus the profit. If you have to sell a million cars to make a profit, it is wise to scale back the discounts. If you profit insanely, but it'll be difficult to even sell 10 cars, you'll likely need to up the incentives to make it valuable for the customers.
- Ensure the people and processes are in place to handle the business you'll garner with these incentives and events. If the plan takes off but you're lacking in staff, you'll limit yourself in the business you can do.
3. Get Creative With Your PPC Strategy
The traditional method of dealership PPC will get you by, but if you truly want to squeeze every last drop out of your ad spend, it's time to get creative!
One method is to experiment with your ad images. Some dealerships often simply take a photo or two of a few models in their inventory and run ads on them.
However, professionally designed and creative images get more clicks - many of which translate to sales.
We highly recommend collaborating with your marketing department or marketing company to ensure the right models are being displayed in creative, new ways.
One dealership, Prime Auto Group in New York, actually flipped a ton of their images, billboards, and ads upside down as a tactic to show dealers that they (much like their images) aren't like other dealers, and they performed very well!
4. Develop Your Own "Customer's Bill of Rights"
Mistrust is one of the biggest things buyers have to overcome when purchasing a new vehicle. Past stigmas and misinformation have hindered that, but showing them you care for their rights as buyers is a fantastic way to go above and beyond.
One group, Galpin Motors, actually have a "Customer Bill Of Rights" as one of the first things you see when you enter their dealership. With 10 rights they guarantee their customers, they often find prospects empowered to seek them out, ask questions, and learn how great of a deal they're getting before they buy.
Final Thoughts
Now, these 4 are great ideas, but they're meant to spur you on to your own creative ideas!
Edifice Automotive has helped dealers for nearly 15 years come up with creative and unique marketing tactics to increase their sales. With our in-house software that can analyze your specific market and pinpoint key areas to focus on, we make increasing your sales easy.
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