Topic: best practices
Drive more leads with these inventory photo best practices
If you’ve purchased pretty much anything online, you’re well aware of the importance of photos. The quality and quantity of photographs on a listing play a significant role in engaging buyers and, ultimately, converting them. And for a process where over half of buyers start undecided about make (53%) and model (57%), it’s crucial that you (or the photographer you hire!) take numerous high-quality photos for every vehicle on your forecourt. Excellent photographs will capture the attention of more low-funnel buyers, ensuring you don’t miss out on online leads.
So what can you do to improve your existing photos? Take a look at what you currently have displayed on your VDPs and ensure you’ve followed these three best practices.
Tips for identifying and reaching your larger market in 2021
Digital innovation is constantly changing the car business. A dealership can no longer simply post stock to its website and expect that to be enough to bring in buyers. The internet opens up a world of possibilities, and it takes a well-executed, coordinated effort to truly capitalise on its potential and draw attention to everything your dealership has to offer.
The cars on your lot could be matched with potential buyers from much further afield than you might think. With some planning and analysis and using a variety of platforms, your staff can cultivate a strategy for finding and reaching a customer base that extends far beyond your local market.
Back to business: Car sales and service sanitation precautions to take
On the heels of Boris Johnson’s announced plans for reopening Britain, many auto dealers are thinking about what reopening will be like. Since the COVID-19 virus can survive on many types of surfaces, concerns about transmission has set new expectations for car cleanliness. As you get ready to get back to work, your customers expect a different kind of safety protocol for disinfecting cars—whether it’s for test drives or service appointments—and interacting with the public. So it’s important that you clearly communicate the steps you’re taking to keep them safe.
COVID-19: Prioritising the well-being of customers and staff
We hope that you and your dealership employees are staying well during this challenging time.
As developments around COVID-19 continue to evolve, we understand you are working hard to figure out how to deal with it while continuing to safely serve customers and employees. Some of our dealer customers have shared steps they’re taking to keep people safe at their dealerships and do more business digitally. We’ve compiled all of them below to help you navigate the ongoing situation.
Digital marketing attribution for beginners: Part 1
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, marketing attribution modelling is a measure of the tangible impact a piece of publicity or communication has on your company’s bottom line. Very simply, if you’ve paid for something like an advertisement, attribution will tell you the monetary value of that particular initiative.
Put like that, it sounds simple. There are plenty of metrics for keeping tabs on whether or not various forms of publicity are earning their keep, but digital marketing is now so extensive that its best asset—trackability—can be extraordinarily tricky to keep up with. That’s where digital marketing attribution comes in: an easily observable lowdown of what does and doesn’t influence your customers’ decisions.
As with most digital initiatives, attribution models have developed rapidly, becoming more granular and providing superior insight over time, so even dealers well-versed in the technology may want to refresh their understanding. Read on to find out the difference between the now old-fashioned and the latest versions, and what each will do for your business.
3 simple steps for improving your dealership website
Most dealers say their website is their highest converting tool. However, in my role as a CarGurus account manager, I often see a one-size-fits-all approach to dealership websites. They’re missing any personality or wow factor, and they can be difficult to use. Together, these website issues don’t make me want to explore the inventory on the site.
There are plenty of ways to optimise your website for buyers though, whether you maintain your website in house, or you rely on a website host to keep it up to date. Here are three things CarGurus Digital Consultants suggest doing to improve your website.
A car dealer’s guide to videography
Dealers are no doubt aware of the impact a decent set of photos can have on a used car buyer, but film takes things one step further because it’s the next best thing to physically seeing a car in the metal. More and more retailers are using walkaround videos to show off their stock, but as with any form of advertising, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
We explain the dos and don’ts of producing a top-quality used car video that’s guaranteed to catch buyers’ attention.
Five ways to handle out-of-hours leads
Your business hours might be nine to five, but your customers are not. More and more are doing their homework online – used car buyers spend an average of six hours online searching for vehicle and dealership information* – and it’s increasingly likely that their first contact with a dealership will be outside of normal working hours.
Stagnation is a killer for customer leads, so there’s extra pressure on retailers to respond when the physical business is off the clock. Here are five ways to tackle those late night or early morning queries.
A dealer’s guide to car photography
There is no underestimating the value of good-quality car photography. Customers can tell a lot about your dealership from your advertising images, and they’re often the first impression a customer gets of a car.
New models benefit from polished manufacturer stock shots, while used vehicles do not enjoy the same luxury and require a bit more effort. Get it right though, and you immediately showcase the car’s best qualities in plenty of detail, immeasurably boosting your chance of a sale.
However, photography is easy to get wrong–and a lot of businesses do exactly that. A lack of know-how or the scramble to get images online frequently leads to low-grade shots that leave the viewer unclear about what they’re looking at and questioning the dealership’s professionalism. If you want to sell more cars, then you can’t cut corners with photography. If you have the budget for a professional snapper then go for it–but handling your pictures in-house is perfectly doable whether you’re a veteran photographer or a newbie with a smartphone.