29 Jun Online Marketing Tips
Online marketing is a minefield for any business, especially when it comes to very niche businesses such as classic sports cars and car insurance. So we’ve put together some online marketing tips to help anyone who’s looking to greatly improve their efforts in this area.
Social Media
Ensuring your brand has a presence on social media is of paramount importance in 2018, if you have different brands under the same umbrella or you have multiple dealerships, it’s wise to have a different account for each brand and area that the dealership is based in.
Social media accounts can be heavily localised now and utilising geo tagging (placing a clickable geographical tag on a post or image) enables your posts to show up in local searches which gives your online content a greater reach. If you have a head office in Oxford but also have a dealership in Truro, you would be wise to ensure someone in the Truro dealership is maintaining the social media updates with local news and geo tags specific to that location.
Once you get started on social media marketing it’s advisable not to stop, because in order to have a real impact, a wider reach and engage your audience, you have to post consistently and constantly driving your brand story, latest news, helpful tips and funny (industry related) stuff, everyone loves some funny stuff! In order to drive engagement, you have to first engage.
By posting on the key social media networks relevant to your business market and niche, you also create those all important organic link backs to your website, products and services.
Businesses that post up one day and then leave it 5 weeks before posting another are seriously missing out on a lot more brand exposure and your competitors are likely taking some of your business if they’ve got a consistent and purposeful social media marketing plan in place.
Most platforms allow for automated posts and scheduling these days so it’s even easier to ensure you’re getting your message out across the social network.
Customer Response
If you have a website or an online presence of any sort, you are open to customer comment or communication via these channels. On many online platforms it’s not possible to edit or take down comments which is rather scary if you receive a not so happy one, but your response and how rapidly you deal with that comment or complaint (heaven forbid!) is your saving grace. Ensuring you have someone focused on answering your customers online is of paramount importance and they need to ensure they’re in a position to problem solve and answer all queries in the tone of your brand and with authority and respect.
When a customer sees online that someone has had an issue but that it was swiftly and respectfully resolved, it can instill a greater feeling of trust in the brand and drive customers to you.
Send Out a Survey
Surveys are a fantastic way to tailor your marketing efforts to what your customer wants, especially when it comes to niche markets such as car manufacturing, car sales and car insurance. When you find out what your customers like, dislike, want and need, you are able to really target your online marketing efforts to those very specific requirements and that’s a powerful thing.
Utilise open questions to ensure you get as much detail from your client as possible and ideally make the survey anonymous because you’re more likely to receive frank answers that way.
You can then use the answers to help drive your marketing efforts for your brand, your dealership and to come up with new products and services which your client base has already told you they want!
Does it get any more targeted and brilliant than that?
Another bonus of this is for you to discover where improvements can be made across all areas of your business and customer delivery, helping ensure you provide the very best in what you do.
Online Networking
Facebook and Instagram now have Live options, they also enable you to hold polls to gauge opinion and interact in multiple ways with your audience. Utilise these tools to hold a live online event where you have an expert available to talk to your followers about your latest product/service and how it can benefit them, allow them to ask questions and interact in a way they might not ordinarily be able to do in person.
This a great way to reach out to more existing clients but also potential clients who may follow your brand, be interested in your product or service but aren’t yet a buyer. If you can engage them in this way you have a greater chance of converting them from follower to customer.
If you don’t already have some of these elements in your online marketing strategy then give them a try, see what converts and focus your efforts on those whilst also keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s coming up next, because when it comes to the world of digital marketing, nothing stays the same for very long!
If you have any questions regarding online marketing please get in touch and if you do give any of these tips a try, we’d love to hear from you regards the impact they have on your business.