Want to boost inventory sales at your car dealership? We hear this all of the time from dealers…

Our advice for them is always the same: To boost inventory sales at your car dealership, you’re going to need a strong car dealer marketing strategy.

It’s simple —  an effective digital marketing strategy will help you reach more qualified buyers and sell more vehicles. 

And since Dealers United is stacked with experts in specifically car dealer marketing, we thought we would help by creating a guide that covers some of the key strategies for marketing your car dealership, online.

Craft People-First Content That Delivers Value

First things first – regardless of the platform you are using, focus on delivering quality content to your viewer base. Focus on creating content that would be useful for potential customers even if they didn’t find it through a search engine. 

Provide original insights, data, tips, or analyses beyond just summarizing other sources.

Make it easy for viewers to trust you by citing sources clearly and establishing your dealership’s expertise.

Remember, the goal is to help car buyers make informed decisions, not just gain search traffic. 

We can’t tell you how many different campaigns that we have audited for dealers that resulted in an increase in traffic, but the traffic was not the type meant to convert into car sales. Keep the focus on delivering value – not just increasing traffic.

Optimize Your Dealer Website for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps potential customers find your website when searching for terms related to buying a car in your area. If you aren’t actively optimizing your dealer site for SEO, you are way behind the curve. 

While a comprehensive SEO campaign can be somewhat complex, we went ahead and narrowed down some of the key areas to optimize:

Use Relevant Keywords

Include keywords car buyers may search for, like “Chevy dealers [City]” or “buy used trucks,” naturally throughout your content. Avoid overusing keywords. Craft content for users first. Search engines no longer require someone stuffing a ton of keywords all over your page in order to determine what a page is about. Please do not do this. It will scare your viewers away, and likely not lead to any sales.

Create Useful Meta Data

Optimized metadata, including page titles and meta descriptions, helps car dealerships improve their search engine rankings and click through rates. Compelling title tags that accurately describe the content help search engines understand what each page is about. Meta descriptions that summarize the page in an engaging way can entice more searchers to click on your listing over competitors. This increased clickthrough helps improve your search rankings over time.

Crafting meta titles and descriptions that speak to car buyers’ needs and include relevant keywords can significantly boost traffic from organic search, making metadata optimization a valuable activity for any dealership’s SEO strategy.

Enhance Mobile Experience

Mobile is everything: Today the average person has approximately 40 mobile apps on their phone, and their time is primarily spent on 18 of them – in fact, users spend ~224 minutes/day on these apps…

Users are constantly on mobile, and mobile usage only continues to grow – that’s the truth.

With that being said, ensure your site is mobile-friendly and easy to use on phones.

Update Site Architecture

Make it easy for search engines to crawl and index your site with a sitemap and internal linking between relevant pages. Our SEO specialists at Dealers United can perform a detailed audit of your site and recommend ways to improve SEO.

Get Your SEM Campaigns Up and Running

Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to paid search activities, like Google Ads, along with SEO. Use both SEM and SEO together for maximum impact. 

Paid search that comes from a source like Google quickly drives traffic, while SEO delivers long-term sustainable results. These days, you need both.

Develop your dealership SEM campaigns with relevant ad copy and landing pages for keywords potential car buyers in your area search for. Geo-target ads to reach local customers.

Let Dealers United handle the busywork of managing paid search campaigns while you focus on your dealership. Our SEM strategists stay on top of the latest best practices for driving conversions.

Leverage Social Media Ads

Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube let you display targeted ads to likely car buyers based on location, demographics, interests and more. We’re going to be very honest with you – a majority of car dealers need to advertise on social media platforms, but they neglect doing so. 

We’re in a new age of social media, and you need to capitalize on this movement.

Create ads showcasing current inventory or special offers. Retarget people who have already engaged with your dealership to drive them to convert. Implement remarketing ads across channels.

Social ads complement your overall marketing mix as another way to engage prospective customers. If interested, our team can help you effectively incorporate social ads to sell more cars. This is what we’re known for.

Summary – Gain More Market Share by Using an Effective Marketing Strategy For Your Dealership

This article covers primary digital marketing strategies for car dealerships. We took some tips out of the Dealers United playbook, and gave them directly to you to use…

Remember that no single tactic works alone – you need a strategic combination across channels. 

Not interested in doing all of this yourself? Dealers United offers a full suite of services, including SEO, SEM, and social media advertising, to generate more leads and drive inventory sales.

Schedule time here to let us customize a data-driven marketing plan tailored for your dealership’s specific needs and goals.