Is your car dealership still not on the video marketing bandwagon? If so, perhaps these statistics will change your mind.
A study by the Aberdeen Group noted that video marketers generate 66% more qualified leads per year.
In their 2019 findings, Social Media Today reported that including a video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80%.
Rendrfx also found that 80% of users recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days.
For car dealerships, video marketing in 2020 isn’t an optional marketing tool. It’s a necessity. From elevating your brand perception to improving sales, video marketing is the answer.
Convincing Reasons to Use Video Marketing
If those statistics weren’t convincing enough, we’ve got three powerful reasons why your car dealership needs to engage in video marketing in 2020.
Video Marketing Leads to Consumer Trust through Transparency
All automotive industry professionals understand the importance of consumer trust. If your potential customers cannot trust you, your sales team, and/or your marketing efforts, you’ll never close the sale.
Videos can easily communicate your brand’s message and provide future customers with an inside look at your entire operation. Plus, when you share your expansive industry knowledge through video, more and more customers will begin to trust your dealership with their business.
Wyzowl found that where both video and text are available on the same page, 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service. This means that while customers are actively searching for information online, your dealership has the unique opportunity to provide that content through a captivating and educational video.
The more transparent and educational your videos are, the more trusting relationships you’ll build with customers.
Video Marketing Offers Exceptional SEO Benefits
While videos are an excellent way to interact with customers, they also offer car dealerships the ability to rank higher on search engines such as Google and Bing.
Did you know that YouTube is considered the second largest search engine? And, the average user spends 88% more time on websites that include videos?
Video marketing satisfies all the requirements for quality, high-ranking online content by:
- Providing educational content that answers a searcher’s query or question.
- Keeping users on a website longer, driving up the average time on site.
- Increasing your average website traffic per month through various video distribution channels and backlinks.
- Using relevant keywords in the video metadata including title, description, additional copy, etc.
- Generating social signals through every share and interaction on social media.
If you’re trying to climb the search rankings, do so through video marketing!
Videos are Social Media Gold
For car dealerships attempting to grow their social media following or better engage with followers, video is the way to go.
Video is one of the most popular forms of social media content, garnering incredible statistics such as:
- Social media posts with video have 48% more views.
- 65% of people use YouTube to help them solve a problem.
- 62% of people said they were more interested in a product after seeing it in a Facebook Story.
- Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image content combined.
There’s no better type of content to invest in when attempting to leverage social media marketing to its fullest potential!
9 Tips for Using Video Marketing at Your Car Dealership
It’s not hard to see how valuable video marketing can be for your dealership in 2020. However, it’s also all too easy to use this tool incorrectly.
Instead of investing hundreds or thousands of dollars and producing videos that flop, put our nine video marketing tips into action.
1. Hire Professional Videographers
While our smartphones have the latest and greatest mobile cameras money can buy, they do not suffice for putting together professional-level videos for your business. Instead of handing your phone to the sales team and saying “Go for it,” take time to research expert videographers in your area.
These professionals understand what it takes to develop a video that meets and exceeds your goals, demonstrates your vision, and captivates your customers.
When looking for a video team, review their website, portfolio, and credentials. You want to ensure that your investment results in a high-quality video that highlights the best aspects of your dealership. It may be cheaper to hire your cousin’s neighbor’s friend to film a video, but will their work represent your dealership accordingly?
Since 73% of customers have bought a product after watching a video, make sure you hire the pros to film it right the first time.
2. Know What Your Audience Wants in a Video
Have you ever gone to the movies, only to be disappointed by the film? By not understanding what your audience wants from your video content and brand, you’ll leave potential customers feeling this way, too!
When organizing each video, think about what the audience wants out of the content. For instance, if you’re filming a dealership tour for customers, ask yourself the following:
- What do customers want to know about our dealership?
- What areas of the facility are customers interested in?
- What would customers want us to talk about?
- What questions do customers have about our company that I can answer in this video?
Always keep customer concerns at the forefront of your mind when planning out each video.
3. Stay on Brand
Assuming you’ve spent time developing and fine-tuning your brand image locally, customers will have a certain expectation of what they’ll see in your videos. Any deviation away from this brand reputation and you’ll confuse the audience!
If your brand is known as being friendly and customer-centric, but your video seems self-centered and a touch arrogant, this will deter potential customers from reaching out or visiting your dealership.
Never stray away from your brand’s personality and voice. Instead, use it to champion your videos to new heights by capitalizing on the brand reputation you already have.
4. Showcase More than Your Inventory
While your automotive inventory is the focus of your dealership, there’s more to the car-buying process than the vehicle itself. Customers want to know more about your team, your policies, your values, and how you can help them long after the sale is finalized.
Use video marketing to showcase your sales team, your service department, and so much more.
Creating and distributing videos is a fantastic way to share educational information with your current and future customers. For example, you can help your service team answer easy maintenance questions through an informative Q&A series. Or, show customers how to use certain features of their vehicles with a step-by-step video with one of your sales representatives.
Instead of quickly filming a walk-through of every new car that rolls onto your lot, use video marketing to educate and develop a relationship with future customers.
5. Always Have a Call-to-Action (CTA)
Every video you produce needs to entice customers to take a specific action.
Whether you want customers to come in for a test drive, contact your sales team, or share the video online, they need to be prompted to do so. Otherwise, they’ll watch your video and that’s that. No further quantitative action will happen as a result of you producing such a high-quality video.
Remember to include a CTA in every video you produce!
6. Leverage Long-Form and Short-Form Video Content
We don’t have the attention span to watch several 5-minute videos in a row and neither do your customers. Instead, capture their full attention with short-form videos under one or two minutes long.
These videos are perfect for quick and easy social media content that engages your audience. Examples of great short-form content can include:
- Answering customer-submitted questions.
- Explaining a function or part of a car.
- Showcasing a new vehicle, promotion, or offering at your dealership.
Get creative with your short-form content and create captivating videos your customers love to interact with!
Of course, long-form videos are important as well. These videos help to educate consumers on a myriad of topics and help improve your SEO rankings and goals. Think about what long-form videos your dealership can create for your audience.
7. Define the Goals for Each Video
Every video you produce must have a goal in mind, otherwise, it ends up being chaos!
Define this goal before production even begins and ensure every team member knows and understands it. You want this goal to be evident throughout every aspect of your video.
For example, let’s say your goal is to define what a spark plug does in a short, informational video from your service team. If you don’t communicate this goal with your team, the video may end up being structured as a hard-sell for your service center when instead the goal was focused on educating consumers for the soft-sell.
8. Plan Everything in Advance
Now that we all have supercomputers in our pockets in the form of smartphones, we can film a video in seconds. Yet, this video approach leads to unorganized content with no direction for the team or the audience in mind.
For each video you produce, take ample time to plan out every aspect of the process, including:
- Storyboarding the video from start to finish.
- Defining the goal of the video.
- Organizing the logistics of the video shoot (arrival times, equipment needed, personnel required, etc.).
- Understanding where the video fits within a larger content marketing campaign or strategy.
The more organized you are, the quicker and more productive the shoot will be!
9. Track Each Video
After you’ve published your videos for the world to see, track every aspect of the video’s performance online.
Review metrics such as:
- The average length of time people watch the video
- The number of social interactions earned
- Customer actions taken after watching the video
- Where the video is being shared online
- Customer comments
Use the data you receive to inform your decisions on the next videos you produce.
Have a Video Marketing Team on Your Side
When you’re ready to launch your video marketing initiatives, you need a team of expert digital and video marketers working for you. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.
