What do car dealership customers really want?

What do car dealership customers really want? In short: good service. But how does that work?

The first impression counts.

As soon as you enter the car dealership, the smell of new cars gets in your nose and beautiful, shiny cars are standing far and wide, the car dealership customer immediately feels at home. That of the building, but also that of the seller. In this blog post, you will learn how to bring customers to your car dealership through offline and online marketing and how to offer your customers a pleasant service.

Dealing with customers in car dealerships

Neither too little attention for customers, nor too much attention, which is almost intrusive, is helpful. On the other hand, the happy medium is promising. As a good salesperson, you read the potential customer's body language when you enter the car dealership and can deduce from this how you should act. Basically, “If he just looks around a bit, give him a little time, but also show him that you're there and approach him specifically after a while.” When exactly is not decisive. As a guideline, you can take 2-5 minutes. Depending on the store and customer, this may differ. As a result, he doesn't feel surprised but also not let down and can then tell them whether he needs help or would like to look around even further.

In order to find the right car, you need sellers. Not just to clarify the contract. No, salespeople have the task of providing customers with the best possible and professionally competent advice. The focus should be less on the employee's commission and more on customer satisfaction.

Target group

But how does a car dealership, i.e. you, actually get customers? Of course, there are customers who are looking for a car and who walk through the front door more or less by chance. Although walk-in customers don't usually buy a new car, at least that's how you get into conversation with potential customers and are signed up for the next car purchase. Through various marketing methods The probability of walk-in customers can be increased.

Before you think about how and how to place your advertising, you should define your target group. It depends primarily on which cars you offer. If you look at current sports car customers, for example, these are mostly entrepreneurs, self-employed people and very well-earning employees. Cheaper, more functional cars with less performance and less luxury, on the other hand, are purchased almost exclusively by medium-sized employees.

Once the target group has been defined, you can think about the actual advertising.

offline marketing

Car dealership marketing should now belong to the car dealership as sport mode should belong to the car.

Although the Internet is conquering the world and online marketing has many advantages over offline marketing, you must not neglect traditional advertising. Older generations are increasingly responding to offline advertising. Although this is usually more expensive, targeted placement can achieve good results.

Where newspapers are no longer very popular with younger people, newspaper announcements in the regional newspaper can certainly have an effect. Especially among older people with more purchasing power, you will be remembered.

The same applies to billboard advertising. This form of advertising is sometimes referred to as the oldest form of advertising, because even in ancient cities, references to certain services were carved into the ground in order to attract customers. Fortunately, you no longer have to tear up the road, but can easily work with one of the numerous service providers local billboard advertising commission.

When advertising offline, you should limit yourself to a certain radius. It makes no sense to hang up posters in the city 600 km away. Instead, you should have a strong presence locally in your city or village and in neighboring towns. The maximum distance here can be assumed to be a radius of 150 km. People from rural regions travel more distance than those in the city.

What must be considered when it comes to offline marketing?

When choosing offline advertising channels, it is important to define a fixed advertising budget beforehand. Since advertising on television, for example, can be very expensive, see Super Bowl, in which a 30-second commercial on average 5.2 million dollars costs, should this specified budget not be exceeded. It also serves as an overview and target and actual costs do not differ too much at the end of the year, which makes it easier to plan across the company.

Your competition has been doing what you're doing for a long time. The most successful people were all the ones who stood out from the rest. The most successful companies in your industry are those that stand out from the competition in some way. Want more customers? Consciously set yourself apart from other car dealerships and do something different and/or better.

Advertising channels for offline marketing

Everyone talks about offline marketing but many often don't know exactly what it entails. Watching television is similar to watching videos on YouTube. But is it now part of offline marketing or is it part of online marketing? Of course, there are also many clearly attributable offline advertising channels, such as posters. However, if you are not entirely sure or need food for thought, you will find a list below.

• gauging
• Special days such as open days, etc.
• posters
• Flyers/brochures
• radio
• TV
• telephone
• raffles

online marketing

The most important thing for successful online marketing is a good-looking and technically flawless website.

If this doesn't work or looks cheap, customers will react negatively and may stay away from your company. It is important to provide a good overview, not to use too many colors and to describe everything as well as possible and underline it with lots of pictures. In design, the motto is: Less is more.

Take advantage of all options on the Internet. Provide your customers with free Internet from Socialwave and as a result, you will receive additional positive Google reviews. If your customer has just configured their new car with you and can't wait to share this success with their friends on social networks or call their partner via FaceTime, then they are happy about the free WiFi. Google reviews are extremely important and customers really rely on the reviews. If you offer WiFi using Socialwave and give customers positive Google reviews, they will be displayed directly on Google. If a customer wants to submit a negative one, it will first be sent to you and NOT displayed on Google, but sent to you. The marketing package allows you to do even more. For example, you can create fully automated email campaigns and thus communicate news to your customers. In winter, summer tires are changed to winter tires. On summer tires in summer. Use these times to remind customers to change your tires and possibly buy accessories. To be more attractive than the competition, add a discount on top.

Another option is to communicate via facebook. A picture, a description and the post for Facebook is ready. Now you can highlight it with paid advertising to reach even more people. You can also use paid advertising on instagram and google Switch on.

Last but not least, a must in the automotive sector, publishing offers via portals such as Autoscout24 and Mobile.de. Through this, you can easily find customers at the other end of Germany and even abroad.

Satisfy customers in car dealerships via Socialwave WiFi

Waiting times at the car dealership cannot be avoided.

During these short breaks, customers are reluctant to do without mobile Internet. They want to compare prices, retrieve product reviews, or contact friends and family via Messenger. In order to use digital transformation, it is important to understand the mechanisms of digitization and to pursue your own digital strategy. Setting up a customer WiFi network in a car dealership can support this strategy.

WLAN as a marketing tool

Due to the rapid spread of mobile devices, almost every potential car dealership customer has a WLAN-enabled device.

The Internet should not only serve the customer's entertainment purpose, but at the same time take on important marketing functions for the car dealership. The digital transformation gives retailers completely new opportunities to interact with customers. As a result, more information about customers can be collected. By logging in to the company's network, it is possible to collect a variety of important data. This includes e-mail addresses, for example. The findings can then be used by the car dealership for various marketing activities such as newsletters or referral marketing with the help of reviews. In addition, these key figures provide informative facts about workload, which also makes it easier to plan personnel capacities, for example.

Online marketing through hotspot solutions

To simplify and automate online marketing for car dealerships, there are hotspot solutions with marketing features. that Customer WiFi Socialwave can be activated via email or Facebook login. The data generated during login is then used to interact with the end customer.

For example, customers receive an invitation to review them on Google after their visit, which increases the company's reputation. In addition, the position in the Google ranking is increased. Through the Facebook login, your customer advertises for your company free of charge in the form of recommendations. He leaves a predefined status message in the form of a picture of the car dealership on his own bulletin board. This is seen by his friends on Facebook and thus generates reach for the company. In order to still maintain full control over marketing activities, tracking can be used to analyze all clicks and logins over the WLAN. In this way, marketing activities can be optimized week by week. WiFi marketing offers car dealerships the opportunity to use a new sales channel that focuses on customers.

conclusion

Marketing is a very important area for a car dealership. It can be based on traditional advertising and recently successful platforms such as Instagram can also be used for further marketing. Get your bearings from the competition, but also jump in at the deep end and try something completely new.

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