Inbound Marketing Success, by Using Web, Social, and Email

Website and Social Media Success Story  – Driving Results

For this blog, I thought that it might be nice to review a website and social media success story of ours; one that articulates the importance of having a solid website and utilizing social media. I hope that you can also learn from our successes and apply them to your website and social media strategy.

The Situation

Our client is an automotive dealer and is in a highly competitive and affluent market. Before we started working with them, their site was tired, not performing well from a search standpoint and it was confusing as there were literally two or three website you could navigate to that told part of their story. One was a generic site provided by the Automaker, one for sales and then another for used vehicle sales. There was no cohesive bond between them, it was confusing and it definitely made staking out a web identify and driving search results much harder.

When it comes to purchasing or even exploring vehicle options, most people search the web first. This means that having a strong web presence is key to driving sales.

The Challenge

After speaking with the senior leadership team covering both sales and service, we devised a website and a social media plan that would attract people, inform them, keep them connected and allow them to interact with the dealership easily.

The Solution

We built a custom website specifically for the dealership as well as a content marketing and social media plan to support the site and drive leads or in the automotive business “ups”.

From a website perspective we included:

Call-to-Action Buttons

Including large and easy to see call to action buttons helps the visitor to the website to easily find what they are looking for. These CTA’s can include things like, book a service appointmentnew & used vehicle inventory, book a test drive etc. These have been placed at the top of the page to make it simple and require virtually no navigation.

Integrated into Backend Inventory Systems

In order to pull new and used vehicle inventory information, we integrated into backend systems to provide us with real-time data.

Specials

Covering both new and used vehicles and service specials

From a content marketing perspective we included:

Fresh Weekly Content

This includes information for current and future vehicle owners covering topics like vehicle maintenance, snow tires, trailering, vehicle of the month feature, dealer and auto manufacturers promotions.

Monthly Newsletter

In order to stay in touch with current customers and prospects, we designed a monthly electronic newsletter that amalgamates the best of the weekly content. Our goal with this is to stay top of mind and be seen as providing localized services.

From a social media standpoint:

Sharing Content

We regularly share the organic content we develop as well as share content from respected third parties over the core social media platforms to us. Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ allows us to stay in touch with current customers and prospects.

Use of Feedback

When individuals provide feedback on our social media channels we ensure there is a recognition of the submission and will help to coordinate a response in a timely manner if it is warranted.

Results

The website, content marketing and social media initiatives have been well received generating decent results:

  • Website traffic is over 10,000 pageviews, monthly
  • Since inception, social media followers have grown by over 30%
  • Website inquires for new and used vehicles are over 40 per month and growing
  • Online service bookings are over 50 per month and growing
  • The dealership has been able to reduce paper based advertising by thousands per year
  • Spending on areas like YellowPages has also been able to be decreased by 50 to 80%

If you are in need of website, content marketing and social media assistance for your business or dealership please feel free to contact me. I would be happy to see if we can help. Alternatively, if you are simply looking for a source of excellent sales and marketing information, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter.

Inbound Marketing Success, by Using Web, Social, and Email