Video isn’t exactly the next big thing, we’re not going to try to pretend that we invented the idea of marketing your dealership using video. But we think it’s fair to say that not all automotive video marketing is created equal. There is a lot of poor video content out there that isn’t doing anyone any favors. So we figured we’d gather together some of the best tactics we’ve seen and heard about and share them. Dealers know that the car business is all about standing out. These automotive video marketing tactics will help you do that.
Useful Video Content = SEO Gold
When people think of SEO-boosting-content, they normally think of blog posts first, but ignoring the SEO potential in automotive video marketing is a good way to miss out on attracting the attention of car shoppers. Here’s the logic: Car shoppers love useful information. Every car shopper these days is first and foremost a researcher. Providing car shoppers with information is a great way to attract them to your dealership. Providing car shoppers with information in the quick, helpful, and digestible form of a brief video is the perfect way to combine the research they want with a medium they enjoy. Google is aware of the benefits of video and has begun to rank videos as the first option for many queries. This can be particularly useful for dealers concerned with local SEO.
Creating helpful and informative videos that are local specific may help boost your rankings within your area.
Interested in SEO? Love SEO? Terrified to read about SEO because you don’t really get it and don’t want to suffer through page after page of ‘SEO explained’ articles? Check out our easy-to-follow SEO crash course.
Curate Your Cars
There’s no point pretending we don’t have a theme going with our automotive video marketing. Customers want information. Good dealers give shoppers that information.
One of the best ways to do that is to curate the cars on your lot with walk-through videos.
A good walk-through video should be a quick yet polished overview of the vehicle with a focus on the features that make the car interesting and a professional (or at least, professional-sounding) voiceover. If you have a phone that can shoot video, a steady hand, and a pleasant voice (or colleagues who have any of those), you can create videos easily for each new type of car that arrives on your lot. You can add these videos to your Youtube channel, tweet them, post them on Facebook (Ex: “Delivery Day at Dodson’s Datsuns! Explore our new inventory with our walk-through videos.”) You can also add these videos to your VDPs. Oh, by the way, including a walkthrough video on VDP increases engagement 600% over static VDPs. Maybe we should have said that first.
Bring Automotive Video Marketing to Your Service Department
Service departments tend to get a little neglected in marketing, but automotive video marketing is a great opportunity to get your service some attention. Videos about DIY vehicle maintenance, advice on common maintenance warning signs, seasonal changes to make, etc. are great ways to drive customers into the service department. The champions of the service department know the questions they hear on a daily basis and have probably memorized the answers. By making videos answering those questions, and more, you can capitalize on the opportunity to build credibility and trustworthiness.
Create Staff Profiles
Ever noticed one salesperson totally nail a sale that another salesperson would have lost immediately? Not all car shoppers like the same shopping experience. Dealers have known that since people started selling things with wheels. Automotive video marketing can help here as well. Staff profile videos can help prospective customers feel more connected to your dealership as well as providing them with a snapshot of differing options for sales experiences. These videos further humanize your sales team and make them more approachable and likeable in the eyes of car shoppers.
Mobile Video Opportunities
We’ve made the point before that mobile is important, so we won’t go on about that too much more here. But really, mobile is important, especially as a platform for automotive video marketing. Video is particularly well suited to mobile. People are three times more likely to watch a video on mobile than they are on desktop, and there are plenty of ways to use that to a dealership’s advantage. First of all, your website should be optimized for mobile – hopefully with a mobile first design. Secondly, video content should be specifically tailored for video-friendly mobile platforms, like Facebook and Instagram. Short, some say 45 seconds for Facebook and just 15 seconds for Instagram, yet helpful videos are a great way to reach an audience who are interested in buying a car but haven’t yet embarked the deep research part of their journey. A good start is providing them with a short video about something in the dealership world that interests them (“Leasing vs. Buying a Car Explained in 21 Seconds” for example). From there, they can be directed to your website or Youtube page if they want to see more videos or check out what your dealership has to offer.
When it comes to content that attracts car shoppers, remember that video is a great way to capture the interest of the visual car shopper. It’s helpful to have a mixture of content, but video can tell a story in greater depth than text alone. Using these great ideas, your dealership can position itself as an industry leader using automotive video marketing.