When it comes to your dealership, we know you have a lot to say about your award-winning service center, vast inventory of vehicles people will love, and all the great service specials you’re running. Although in advertising, like with most things in life, less is more. But fear not, our marketing and technology experts at Epsilon Individual Automotive are here to help in the form of micro-sites.
These condensed web pages are a great way to let your customers know what’s going on while staying short and to the point. Interested in learning more about these micro-sites and how your dealership can benefit from using them? Keep reading!
What Is A Micro-site?
Let’s face it: Many people don’t have time like they used to. Consumers lives are filled with the essentials like work, school, caretaking, and general survival activities like cooking, eating, and sleeping. With the bulk of the day typically filled to the brim, consumers turn to short-form content as a way to fill those 10 minutes or so between meetings throughout the day.
In recent years, the popularity increase of short-form content platforms through Snapchat, TikTok, and now Quibi are perfect examples at how businesses are adapting to the bite-size attention spans and multi-talking consumers have grown accustomed to. Utilizing micro-sites is a great way for your dealership to stay current with these trends.
Micro-sites are individual web pages or a small group of web pages that live somewhere other than your branded URL or homepage. In other words, it works as a separate entity and URL from your dealership’s website yet is still associated with your dealership.
One great way you can use micro-sites for your dealership is to promote short-term sales, specials, or events. Since micro-sites are best used for short-term campaigns or promotions, letting your viewers know about a seasonal promotion through micro-sites is a great option.
You can also generate leads and collect customer data through micro-sites by offering a free eBook about a particular vehicle in your inventory or how-to guide to purchase a new car. Of course, there are many more advantages to incorporating micro-sites into your automotive marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at some of them!
What Are the Benefits of Marketing Micro-sites?
As you’ve probably guessed, there are many benefits to using micro-sites alongside other automotive marketing techniques. Take a look at some of the advantages:
Audience targeting
General information doesn’t resonate as well with customers as specific details do. Well, micro-sites offer clearly focused information that touches on a particular topic.
Instead of aimlessly browsing your main website, your buyers have a place to dig deeper into niche topics that apply directly to their lifestyles and needs.
For example, if your micro-site just so happens to feature information about a new vehicle or automotive service that falls within the interests of your targeted audience, you’re more likely to convince them to do business with you.
Providing your consumers with information that touches on their pain points helps to position your dealership as a solution to their problems. In the long run, this type of marketing leads to more sales.
Action focused
As we mentioned above, micro-sites are focused on one topic. Thanks to their straightforward natures, micro-sites provide a clear course of action for buyers to follow.
Instead of bombarding them with multiple ways to connect with your dealership, a micro-site gives your customers a call to action that’s easy for them to complete—whether that’s watching a video, scheduling a service appointment, or completing a financing application. The easier it is for your leads to complete the buyer’s journey, the more sales you’ll have.
Versatile messaging
Micro-sites serve as a blank digital slate on which your team can build out unique graphics, messages, and interactive elements. With the versatility offered by micro-sites, you can quickly deploy campaigns with subtle changes and carefully evaluate the results of those changes.
That way, your team can more effectively determine the messaging, offers, graphics, and other details that drive interaction between you and your customers. In addition, micro-sites are the perfect platform from which to roll out A/B testing prior to officially launching a new marketing promotion.
Brand awareness
Consumers are more likely to make a purchase from your business if they’re familiar with your brand. Fortunately, micro-sites are the perfect solution for dealerships that are looking to improve brand awareness amongst their leads. Why? Well, the condensed information contained within a micro-site offers just enough detail for potential leads without causing them to feel overwhelmed.
In just a few words, you can introduce your business and give your readers a way to contact your team. As a result, your consumers will be more likely to remember your dealership when it’s time for them to purchase a new car.
How To Create A Micro-Site
One major benefit of micro-sites is that they’re extremely flexible. Typically, since micro-sites are their own web page, you have almost complete creative freedom over the way your content appears on this site. The layout, color palette, and more can be designed freely from the format of your dealer’s website.
Luckily, creating a micro-site can be completed in five easy steps:
Research: When you’re looking to create a micro-site for your dealership, you’ll want to do some quick research to see what your options are, what type of micro-site will yield the best results, and what your competition is.
Purchase Domain: Since this will act as its own web page, you’ll need a new domain name for your site. You’ll want this to be something catchy for customers to remember, while also considering SEO (search engine optimization) to drive viewers to your new site.
Design: Now comes the fun part of designing your micro-site. Think about the colors and layout of your site, if you want a singular scrolling page, a static page vs. animated page, and more. Don’t worry, we have a great team of design experts who can help you with this!
Create Copy: You don’t want your micro-site to only be colors, do you? Here’s the chance to create engaging copy that’s short and sweet, yet informative enough to get your message across
Publish & Promote: Once everything’s ready, your micro-site will go live! But that’s not where the work ends. You’ll want to promote your site on social media and with direct mail to drive an audience to your site.
As you can see, creating a micro-site is complete in only a few quick steps.
Build Your Micro-Sites Today
Are you ready to build your micro-site today? Great, because our team of experts at Epsilon Individual Automotive are on standby and can’t wait to help. To get started in building your micro-site, simply give us a call or send us an email today!
