No matter if you’re a small or large dealership, marketing is essential to ensure the success and longevity of your automotive business. With so many different forms of marketing, how are you supposed to decide which marketing strategy is right for you? Thankfully, that’s where our team of experts come into play.
At Aspen Automotive, we’ve been helping dealerships like yours organize and run effective marketing campaigns for over 30 years. Now, we want to pass our knowledge onto you. That’s why we’ve put together this marketing guide for automotive dealerships. Ready to learn more? Keep reading!
What is Automotive Marketing?
Marketing is a way of informing the public about your dealership, services, or products. Some of the popular types of marketing include direct mail marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing.
Marketing and advertising can sometimes get mixed up, since they’re often considered to be the same.
While it’s true that the two coincide, advertising is only a small portion of what marketing is. In terms of cars, advertising is the wheel and marketing is the entire car. It’s an aspect of your dealership’s marketing strategy, but not the entire thing.
Marketing includes research, organization, planning, and analytics that make up your advertisements.
Benefits of Marketing for Small to Large Automotive Dealerships
Regardless if your car dealership is large or small, you can greatly benefit from a marketing campaign. Some of these benefits include:
- Increases dealership’s visibility
- Improves brand awareness
- Helps build credibility
When you market your business, especially across multiple platforms, you’re working to improve your brand awareness. This can include information like the cars that are in your inventory, special financing programs you offer, service specials, and more. That way, individuals you’re trying to reach will have a better idea of the services your dealership provides and be more likely to be converted into a sale.
Ways You Can Market
When it comes time to build your marketing plan, there are several different ways you can market your small to large automotive dealership. You’ll want to use a combination of traditional marketing—like direct mail—and digital marketing strategies through social media and email.
You can run seasonal or holiday marketing promotions, loyalty programs, or use your created demographic list to target current and future car shoppers with a loan or finance promotion. You can even merge your traditional and digital marketing strategies, thanks to the availability of interactive direct mailers.
When you send information to your clients, you can add a QR code that they can scan using their smartphone. Upon scanning this, they’ll be redirected to a website where they can learn more information about the promotion you’re currently running, redeem a coupon, or learn whatever information you want them to know about.
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Which strategy should I use if I want to… |
Direct Mail |
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Social Media |
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Have the least competition? |
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Own the contact list? |
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Spend little to no money |
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Build better brand awareness and loyalty? |
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Increase website traffic flow? |
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While each marketing strategy shines in its own way, combining these different platforms to create an omnichannel marketing campaign could be the most effective. That way, you gain these listed benefits and much more.
Creating an omnichannel campaign could help ensure the highest reach for your campaign, which could increase your return on investment (ROI).
The biggest thing with creating an omnichannel campaign is to not duplicate the same message and design across all three channels. Instead, fine-tune adjustments based on the platform, the demographics for each platform, and how the message is best portrayed.
How Aspen Automotive Can Help
When ready to launch a marketing campaign for your small to large automotive dealership, the marketing gurus at Aspen Automotive are here to help. With decades of experience, our team can help create the specific plan that matches your campaign goals.
Some of the specific services offered by our team include:
- Data solutions
- Design
- Production
Let’s take a closer look at how these benefits help you.
Data Solutions
While saturation marketing—sending the same type of campaign to everyone in a certain area—can be effective, the best type of mailer is one that’s specific and personalized. The last thing you want to do is to target the wrong people.
Taking advantage of our data solutions can help ensure your marketing materials are in the hands of the right people.
Our team can follow the trail of digital breadcrumbs to better understand the lifestyle of your shoppers. From this, you can target specific individuals based on demographics, such as:
- Income
- Age
- Marital status
- Family size
- Occupation
- And much more
You can even target based on credit scores, which could be particularly helpful for your dealership. Let individuals know they’ve been pre-approved for a car loan based on their credit score to drive sales toward a particular model.
Design
Having your marketing materials end up in front of the right person is only half the battle when creating a marketing campaign for your small to large auto dealership. The other half is having a campaign that’s visually appealing.
Whether you’re creating a physical or digital marketing strategy, our award-winning design team is here to help you completely customize your campaign. We’ll factor in overall layout to maximize readability while also factoring color psychology and how that can indirectly alter the overall mood of your campaign.
Production
If you’re running a direct mail campaign, our in-house production team is here to see your mailer through to the end. Here, not only can our team print your mailers, but we can also fold, insert, seal, and stamp them to get them post-office ready.
One thing you’re sure to love about our production studio is that we can complete most jobs within 72 hours of design approvals. That means your mailer will likely be in the hands of the right people sooner than if you went elsewhere for your printing needs.
Which Marketing Strategy Matches Your Needs?
All three mentioned marketing strategies—direct mail, email, and social media—have their advantages. How are you to decide which marketing strategy best matches your specific needs? Here’s a quick breakdown of when is the best time to use direct mail vs. email vs. social media.
Get Started with Marketing Your Small or Large Automotive Dealership Today
Are you looking to grow your dealership, whether small or large, by creating a completely customized marketing plan? If so, let our team at Aspen Automotive be the ones to do the heavy lifting for you. Having already worked with over 10,000 dealerships of all sizes, we can’t wait to help you too.
Ready to get started? All you have to do is give us a call or send us an email to get started today!
