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How to Build Your Automotive Social Media Digital Marketing Strategy

by
Alex Suprun
December 5, 2022

Automotive marketing is challenging as it is a competitive industry. Before choosing one, car buyers usually have a lot to search, including model information and pricing from various dealerships. In this scenario, it is essential to have a solid social media presence to make your automotive.

In this blog post, we'll discuss in detail how you can build a marketing strategy to make your auto dealership thrive in the fierce competition.

How to Build Your Strategy for Automotive Social Media Marketing

A planned  strategy can help you achieve your goal of driving sales to your dealership. It enables you to plan everything in a detailed manner to know whether you are successful or failing. Here are some steps you can follow to build a stellar social media marketing strategy for your auto dealership.

Choose Goals that Align with Business Objectives

Establishing goals and objectives is the first step to creating a social media strategy for your business. Without any goals, you do not have any way to measure success. Your social media goals should be SMART-specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Learn More About Your Audience

When building your social media strategy, conduct a competitive analysis to get to know your audience. Once you have these details, it will be easier to devise a plan and implement it on social media.

When you are analyzing social media, use the following -

  • Age
  • Location
  • Interests
  • Income group
  • Job Title
  • Average

Social media analytics can give you loads of valuable information about where your target audience lives and what forms of social media they are interested in. These interests can refine your strategy, giving you the best engagement rates while boosting conversions.

Get to Know Your Car Competition On Social Media

There are a lot of auto dealerships on social media using the platforms to their max potential. In this case, when you start with your strategy, a competitive analysis. The analysis will allow you to understand your competitors, their weaknesses, and what works in the industry. For instance, if a competitor is more active on Facebook but posts less on Instagram, you can always make the most of this lack by being active on both platforms. By looking at what your competition is doing, you can also gauge their other marketing strategies, including influencer marketing, and the traction such media marketing tactics bring them. You may also come across new trends or specific content that bring in the most engagement, that could help you as well.

Perform a Social Media Audit

If you are already familiar with social media marketing and your platforms and have some engagement but have yet to get there, ask yourself the following questions -

Who is engaging with your accounts?

What has been working well and what has not?

Which networks do your target audience use?

Where does your social media stand when compared to competitors?

Once you have this information, it will be easy to understand what you need to improve and build your automotive social media strategy. The audit should give you a definite idea of the ultimate goal of your social media account.

Use this Social Media Marketing Tactic: Choose Your Social Media Channels Wisely

Once you have the basic groundwork of your strategy, you will have to decide if you are on the right social media platforms. Here are some tips -

  • Instagram has the most millennials who do their central car buying by looking at social dealerships accounts on these platforms. In this case, you must have visually appealing reels and pictures ready to entice this category of people.
  • Facebook, on the other hand, has fewer millennials but is frequented by most car buyers.
  • While Twitter may not be a good social platform for posting too much content, most car dealerships use it as a customer support medium to reduce email and call volumes.
  • YouTube is also a great medium to showcase your business, as it has many car buyers looking for review videos about a particular car.

All these platforms also offer various advertising options, which can be chosen to get more leads according to your strategy. To know more about advertising on social media, you can hire a digital marketing solutions provider who can help you with the right kinds of ads for your automotive business to get the required leads.

Use Forums to Hear What Your Customers Are Saying

Consumers often discuss their problems on forums and platforms like Quora and Reddit. Check these forums to know a dealership's customers' wants and needs. If you already have active social media accounts, you can create posts asking followers what they want from you. Use all this information to deliver what your customers want.

Create an Automotive Social Media Marketing Calendar to be Regular

Once you have everything else in place, from the strategy to the content, the next goal should be to be consistent and post at regular intervals. To achieve this, you can use a social media content calendar to help you set your schedule. It is also necessary to decide the posting frequency, which can be as follows:

  • Instagram: 3-7 times per week
  • Twitter: 1-5 times per day
  • Facebook: 1-2 per day
  • LinkedIn: 1-5 times a day

Create Social Media Content That is Attractive and Enticing

Make sure that your content is a mirror of your brand and its values. It must comprise 80 percent value-driven content and 20 percent brand promotion. It can be overwhelming to come up with creative content all the time. Here are a few dealerships social media post ideas for car dealerships if you need more ideas -

i) Introduce Your Team

Introducing your team is a great way to establish credibility. Everyone should look professional, approachable, and friendly. Make sure your team is smiling. You can also do interviews with your team members and post one weekly interview.

ii) Glossary Posts

Think about different features of your cars, parts, and special accessories that your audience might find unique. For instance, you can feature the tech entertainment features of a new car.

iii) Thank Your Customers

You can also use your social media to thank your customers. This will help strengthen your relationship with your customers.

iv) Ask Trivia

You can increase engagement by posting trivia questions that customers can answer. The questions can be related to automotive.

  • Questions About New Launches
  • Questions About New Launches
  • Best Cars or Car of the Year.

Include Value-Based Automotive Posts

You can use your social media channels to give valuable information to your customers on many auto-related topics. For example, signs it's time to change your car battery or a step-by-step video tutorial on changing a tire.

Use Data to Improve

Once your social media strategy is up and running, check how your followers respond. Analyze which posts get the most traffic and the days you get the most engagement. Use polls to see what more your followers want to see. Analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you track social media strategies and tell you which strategies work and which don't. It makes future planning better.

Wrapping Up

To sum it up, there are many ways you can use social media to generate traffic and drive sales to your automotive website. A solid content strategy with various post ideas going out regularly is the recipe for social media success. However, if you want help kick starting your social media strategy for your car dealer marketing, we will be happy to help! Reach out to us so that we can get your business started on an effective and engaging strategy that will eventually drive sales.

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