Many dealers go to a lot of effort to create video content, but having video content does not mean that you have a successful video marketing strategy.
Is your dealership properly leveraging your video content with an effective strategy? If not, you’ll probably be disappointed in the results. Ensure that your video marketing delivers maximum ROI by following these four steps.
1. Create Content
Inventory videos are the most-viewed videos on a dealership’s website, but it’s also important to create video content that car shoppers are looking for. According to Google, car shoppers search for test-drive videos, video walk-arounds and videos that highlight vehicle features and benefits.
Additionally, create value proposition and customer testimonial videos to build trust and to let consumers know why they should buy from your store.
Content consistency and volume are important to building VSEO value for your website. Dealers should have an established process for creating video content, whether it’s someone internally or an outside vendor.
2. Distribute Across All Channels
One of the biggest problems that dealerships have with videos is getting them seen. This is because they often create a video for a single purpose, instead of broadly distributing it.
In addition to posting videos on your website, distribute your videos to third-party auto shopping sites and across all of your dealership’s social media platforms. Also, use videos in email marketing campaigns and in the lead follow-up process.
Broad distribution is essential, because the more your videos are seen, the more customers will visit your website and the higher your lead conversion rates will be.
3. Collect Viewer Data
Since most digital touch-points do not actually host the video, the video host plays an important role in the success of a video marketing strategy. Ideally, your dealership will host all of your videos on a single hosting platform. This gives your dealership control over your customers’ viewing experience while capturing and storing data from each viewer.
Many dealers use separate hosts for different kinds of videos, such as inventory, test drive and advertising videos. This separation of content makes it difficult to capture all of your customers’ viewing data, which in turn makes controlling the customer experience and utilizing the data next to impossible. This is where most dealerships are missing out on an opportunity that could have one of the biggest impacts on their sales: using their video data.
4. Utilize Data to Create Relevancy
Collecting viewer data allows you to create relevancy, ensuring that the right video is seen by the right customer at the right time in the buying cycle. Every marketing expert knows that relevant content increases sales metrics as well as purchase intent.
With videos, relevancy is defined as choosing which videos to display to individuals, along with sales and marketing messages that can be updated in real-time based on who the viewer is, which digital channel that view is on, geo-location and a number of other factors.
This means that a first-time car buyer on your website may be prompted to watch videos on car buying tips, while a seasoned truck owner is prompted to watch video reviews of the latest pickup models.
To maximize the ROI from your video content, make sure your videos are widely distributed and use a hosting platform that can capture and leverage viewer data. Following these steps will ensure your video marketing strategy is a success.
