Local Marketing Strategies For Automotive Businesses To Boost Sales

Are you ready to rev up your automotive business's sales? Let's dive into some local marketing strategies that will have customers racing towards your dealership.

Getting started

First things first, you need to make sure you have a solid online presence. This means having a professional-looking website that is both easy to navigate and provides all the information that potential customers might be looking for. Put yourself in their shoes, and look at your existing website and think about how you could make it better. Simply put: would you click on that?

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Claiming (and using) your local listings

It’s a fantastic idea to make sure your website is mobile-friendly, as more and more people are using their smartphones to search for businesses — over 60% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices — meaning that your customers are on the go (and hopefully on the go towards your storefront)!

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Additionally, it's important to have a presence on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, and other online portals that might be popular in your locale. Anywhere where your customers might navigate to learn more about you, you want to be there first and you’ll want to be active, so that you can be a part of the conversation and help sway their decision. Use these platforms to showcase your inventory, post special promotions, and engage with customers.

Why local marketing for automotive businesses matters

When it comes to local marketing, it's all about making sure that your business is visible to customers who are searching for the products and services you offer in your local area. This can be achieved by optimising your website for local keywords, building local citations. It also helps massively to get positive reviews from happy customers.

Local SEO must-haves

One of the most important things you can do to improve your local marketing efforts is to make sure that your website is properly optimised for local keywords — in short, local SEO! If you own a car dealership in Swansea, you absolutely want to make sure you have the word ‘Swansea’ in either your page title, your H1 headlines, or - ideally - both.

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This means including your city and county info (or if you’re in the US, the state name) in your page titles, meta descriptions, and other on-page elements. It also means ensuring that your business is listed in all major local business directories, such as Google Business, Bing Places, Yelp, andApple’s new directory. By doing this, you'll make it easy for search engines to understand that your business is local and relevant to users in your area.

Another important aspect of local SEO is building local citations. These are online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (known as NAP) on other websites. These citations help search engines understand that your business is reputable and legitimate, which can boost your visibility in search results. Some popular citation sources include YellowPages, Super pages, and City search.

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But it's not just about appearing on search engines, you also want your business to be found on map services like Google Maps. For that, you need to make sure that your business is listed correctly and has all the correct information such as your hours of operation, services, and any promotions you are running. Also, you can boost your visibility on map services by encouraging customers to leave reviews of your business. Positive reviews can give your business a higher rating and make it more likely to show up at the top of search results.

Blogs still matter

Another way to boost your online visibility is to create a blog section on your website. Don’t worry — even though the word “blog” isn’t the coolest or sexiest words these days, it’s still a great idea to maintain one so that people can know more about you on a day-to-day level. Use your blog to post articles about your industry, and share them on your social media. This can help you establish your self as a thought leader in your industry, and also give you more content to share on social media, which can in turn drive more traffic to your website.

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Hit your target(s)!

One of the best ways to connect with potential customers through car dealership marketing is with targeted advertising. How you tackle this is up to you — it can range from direct-mailing your potential customers by neighbourhood with simple flyers in through to the exciting and wild world of guerrilla advertising. Some of the most effective ways you can reach your customers is through email marketing andeven targeted ads on social media. By using demographic information, such as age, location, and interests, you can ensure that your ads are reaching the people most likely to be interested in your products.

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Good reviews drive good business

It bears repeating: be sure to harness the power of online reviews. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, even your company Facebook page. It all adds up! 93% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. Positive reviews can be incredibly powerful in attracting new customers, so make sure you respond to reviews, both positive and negative, in a timely manner. Find out more in our guide for automotive businesses here.

Don’t underestimate the power of old-school viral marketing — word-of-mouth advertising. Encourage your satisfied customers to spread the word about your business to their friends and family. Consider offering referral incentives to customers who bring in new business.

Finally, don't forget about the importance of great customer service. Make sure your salespeople are knowledgeable about your products and that your service department is top-notch. Encourage customers to come back for regular maintenance and be sure to follow up with them after their visit to ensure they had a positive experience.

You’re all set!

By using a combination of these local marketing strategies for automotive businesses, you can put your automotive business in the driver's seat when it comes to boosting sales. So don't wait, start revving up your marketing engine today!

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