How Will Digital Marketing for Auto Dealers Change by 2022?

The automotive industry has seen a lot of changes since the turn of the century. Here what Digital Marketing Agency Christchurch experts advice that the internet has transformed how people buy cars, and digital marketing is now essential to any successful dealership's strategy. This article will explore how digital marketing for auto dealerships is going to be a tough nut to crack in 2022 & beyond in light of the latest changes in Google.

What's changed in automotive marketing?

Google has introduced a mobile-first indexing system. The new Google algorithm favours mobile-friendly sites and local businesses, which means that if your website isn't optimized for mobile, you will start to see your page ranking drop in search results.

Google has updated its algorithm to favour secure sites over non-secure ones. That’s is where Digital Marketing Agency Christchurch experts here to help with a secure site uses encryption technology to protect user data from hackers when they enter sensitive information on the site, like credit card information or passwords.

Google's mobile-first indexing & local search

Mobile-first indexing is a Google algorithm update that prioritises mobile-friendly websites in search results. It uses mobile usability as a ranking factor for desktop searches, which means that if your website isn't optimised for mobile devices, you might not rank as well in SERPs.

Using local search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics for your auto dealership business can help you rank higher in local SERP results and increase traffic to your dealership website from local consumers who are looking for nearby businesses like yours. 

Local SEO allows car dealerships to target more specific geographic areas within their service area and compete against competitors that are closer than they are geographically to their customers.

How to get the best results from Google's latest changes?

So, how do you get the best results from Google's latest changes? Here are the requirements for a successful dealership digital marketing strategy:

Define your dealership's business goals. Your goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). They should be specific and measurable so that you can evaluate them throughout the year. And they should be achievable but challenging enough to keep you on your toes!

Build out a 6–12-month strategic plan with monthly goals based off of those business objectives. Focus on what you want to achieve in terms of revenue generation, customer acquisition/retention rates etc., rather than just focusing on rankings or getting more traffic to your site – this is important because ranking well in search engines like Google is only one part of an overall digital strategy!

Step 1. Define your dealership's business goals

Identify what success looks like for you and your company. Consider the following:

What is the ultimate goal of digital marketing, sales and lead generation? Is it to drive traffic to a website? Is it to convert that traffic into leads? Or is it something else entirely?

If you have multiple goals, do they align with each other or are they competing for attention in the form of resources and effort from your team members who will be executing them (i.e., if we want both more web traffic *and* more leads, how will we know if our efforts are working)?

Are there any metrics that would help us measure progress toward achieving these objectives (i.e., do we already have established websites where visitors can subscribe to receive emails)? If not, what kind(s) of analytics tools would help us track these things once implemented onto an existing site or new one built out specifically for this purpose—or even better yet: both!

Step 2. Analyse the auto dealership market

This can be done by analysing the market, understanding your customers and business goals, understanding your industry and competitors. You will not only have a clearer idea of what to do but also where to focus your digital marketing efforts in the future.

Know Your Competitors: As mentioned earlier, every business has competitors who are trying to do something similar or better than you. That makes it all the more important for you to know everything about them so that you can come up with strategies that will help you stand out from them in the best possible way.

Understand Your Industry: If you want to make an impact on the digital marketing world for auto dealerships then it is very important for you understand their requirements as well as their limitations before coming up with any ideas related thereto..

Step 3. Create a buyer persona for your auto dealership

Once you know what your customers want and how they want to buy, it's time to bring that information into your marketing strategy. The first step is defining the buyer persona.

Create a buyer persona for your auto dealership

A buyer persona is a fictional character that represents a group of people with similar characteristics and who have similar needs and wants. A well-defined buyer persona will help you create content focused on the prospect's specific needs. 

It will also allow you to tailor other aspects of your marketing strategy, such as messaging or call-to-action buttons on landing pages. You can use one or multiple versions of each buyer persona depending on what stages of the buying cycle they are in at any given time (e.g., researching vs shopping).

Step 4. Design an effective automotive marketing strategy

This is the step where you'll define what you want to achieve and how you're going to get there. Your goal should be specific and measurable but also ambitious enough that it makes you excited about the next few months of work. 

It's important to figure out how much time and money you can dedicate before starting on your strategy. Here Digital Marketing Agency Christchurch experts recommend setting tangible fitness goals in 3–6 months that would be considered "successes" based on your business goals.

Once you've defined your problem and set a target for success, it's time to brainstorm ideas for solving it. You can do this alone or with someone else; either way, keep in mind that this is just the beginning of a long journey!

Conclusion

While the changes in Google's mobile-first indexing & local search have made it more challenging for dealers to get their messages across, they are by no means insurmountable. The key is to understand what your dealership needs from a digital marketing strategy and develop one accordingly.