If your dealership has a video marketing strategy, you already know that videos are an effective way to differentiate your dealership from the competition, as well as to increase website visitors, leads and sales.

If you’re ready to fine-tune your video marketing strategy for even better results, take these steps to help boost your video marketing ROI.

1. Distribute Videos Across Multiple Platforms
If you’re investing your time and/or money into engaging video content, don’t limit their usage to a single channel or single marketing campaign.

Use your videos on multiple channels for multiple purposes. Utilize them in email campaigns and display them from widgets on newsletters, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and of course your website home page.

Multi-channel marketing with videos will help you reach and engage new customers, while using multi-video players and widgets will make it easy for you to display the right video content to the right shopper at the right time of the buying cycle.

2. Consider Live Streaming
Mobile video apps are becoming increasingly popular for personal use, and it’s only a matter of time before live streaming video calls will be more widely used in business.

The reason FaceTime, Skype and other video communications apps aren’t widely used by dealers is because they require both parties to be using the same platform, e.g. iOS or Android. Additionally, these apps only enable two-way video calls.

Many people don’t like two-way video calls because they’re either camera shy, they want to protect their privacy or they just don’t feel comfortable on camera. Look for a mobile app that enables one-way live streaming video calls, so the customer can see the dealership employees, but the employees can’t see the customer.

Service advisors can use mobile video apps to show worn parts and demonstrate why repairs are needed. Salespeople can use mobile video apps to follow up with leads or perform live vehicle walkarounds using a mobile device.

Live streaming video calls help create personal connections that lead to better relationships and more sales. You may be a little hesitant to try it now, but it is only a matter of time before live streaming is one of your most utilized communication mediums.

3. Try Virtual Reality Videos
Virtual Reality (VR) is a hot trend. If you ask around, I bet at least one person you know received VR goggles as a holiday gift.

Although fast becoming mainstream, VR videos are still novel enough that dealerships should benefit from being one of the “first to market.” VR vehicle walkaround videos put car shoppers right into the driver’s seat, giving them an immersive experience and creating an immediate emotional response.

Not every automotive video provider currently offers VR video strategies, so make sure to ask around. VR videos are highly liked, talked about and shared on social media, which will greatly expand the reach of your dealership’s brand and increase engagement on your website with an enhanced video experience.

4. Turn Videos into Lead Generators
In dealerships, video emails can be used in email marketing and are highly effective when used in the lead follow-up process. The integration of video marketing platforms with dealership CRMs takes video email marketing capabilities to a whole new level.

Full CRM integration turns your videos into actionable lead generators. When you send out a video email, data can be gathered from the viewer and matched with customer records in your CRM. You’ll know exactly who watched your videos, which videos they watched and what platform they watched them on.

CRM alerts can be set up so your salespeople will be notified in real-time when a prospect is watching a video. What better time to reach out to a car shopper than when they are actively engaged with your brand’s video?

5. Increase Relevancy and Targeting
Behavior-based marketing technology uses web analytics, cookies, browsing histories and IP addresses to create user profiles of individual consumers. With this data, dealers are able to generate highly relevant and targeted video messages.

For example, let’s say a consumer visits a dealership’s website and watches a service department video titled “How to Know if Your Car Needs a New Transmission.” Then the consumer surfs over to a third-party site and watches several new car inventory videos.

Based on this data you may surmise this person is a potential candidate for a trade-in offer. With behavior-based rules in place, your videos on that third-party site will display a banner ad featuring a trade-in special or cash back deal on a vehicle make/model that is similar to the make/model of the video that the customer is viewing. Or you could offer a coupon for your service department.

Banner ads on videos can also be used in geo-targeting and geo-fencing campaigns to display specific offers to consumers who are watching videos on a mobile device near a dealership’s location.

Behavior-based video marketing can greatly expand the digital footprint of dealerships’ existing campaigns while lowering associated costs.

If you’re looking for ways to increase your video marketing ROI, incorporate these steps into your video marketing strategy.

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