Do you ever feel like your dealership or business is stuck in a content-related rut? Maybe you’re running out of ideas for things to post on Facebook, or you’ve used the same images or captions on Instagram to engage with your customer base? With so many things to click, comments to scroll through and images to like, things are sure to eventually feel a little mundane and repetitive in this current age of the internet. As a director of communications, I see this as a common problem for many businesses.

Refresh Your Brand
Our company recently celebrated our 30-year anniversary. This is a huge milestone for us, so we decided to give our branding a complete refresh. We updated our logo, revamped our entire website and partnered with a creative agency to redesign some of our outdated content. After we refreshed our brand, I started to notice a steady increase in customer engagement both online and within our internal system through our employees.

When you make an effort to refresh your brand, you are telling your customers that you are still deeply invested in the future of your company and the direction it is going. Refreshing your brand could include things such as getting new business cards for your employees, changing the font or colors for your signage, offering phone estimates in languages besides English, or even ordering from a new local vendor in your area instead of the one your dealership has been using previously. Find what works best for your dealership, and be willing to try something you may not have considered before. Refreshing your brand should be an organic growth, and one that will undoubtedly require some trial and error.

Strengthen Your Online Presence
Have you ever discovered a company or a brand that you really liked, and wanted to learn more about…only to search for them online and not be able to find them anywhere? Or perhaps you found a Facebook page, only to see they haven’t posted on it in five years? As a consumer, this can be a disheartening thing to see because it conveys the message that this company is not actively promoting their message, products or services to potential new customers.

If you have a Facebook page for your dealership, consider how many times per week you post updates. Once? Twice? Consider doubling the frequency in which you post, and how you use the content to engage with your customers. Do you offer any kind of giveaways or coupon codes? If not, it might be worth trying to see the kind of engagement you receive from people that follow your page online. Using Facebook or Google analytics (or however you track your social media numbers) you can compare calendar weeks to see which of your posts were able to reach the highest amount of people. The same can be used with your company website, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Increasing customer engagement is one of the best ways to help your service team, F&I department and your fixed operations. When you take the initiative to refresh your brand and strengthen your online presence, you help ensure your dealership’s longevity and brand awareness within the automotive industry.