Selling cars, trucks, RVs, boats, and more can be a very profitable business, but in many locations across the country, it’s a very crowded industry. Fortunately, if you perfect your marketing strategies, you can help to ensure your success – even as a brand-new dealership. Below are some tips to help you enhance your marketing campaigns with high-quality videos. 

How Important is Video Marketing?

Experts predicted that video would take up roughly 80% of video traffic in 2019, and they were absolutely right. Video is by far one of the most popular ways to consume information, and this is especially true for consumers who are interested in making a relatively large purchase, including a car or truck. Video auto tours are incredibly popular, and in 2018, studies found viewers retain 95% of a message when they see it in a video as opposed to 10% of a message read in text format. Better still, companies utilizing video experience 49% faster revenue growth than those companies that do not use video. 

Ways to Incorporate Video into Your Marketing Strategy

There are numerous tips for incorporating video into your marketing strategy as an auto, boat, or RV dealer. They include (but are not limited to):

• Video Tours – Posting video tours of your top sellers or your current sale vehicles is a great way to improve website traffic, encourage social media engagement, and ultimately boost your sales. Your video should be thorough, short, and in high definition for the best results. 
• Personal Video Tours – Personalized video tours are designed for specific customers who are interested in particular products, but who haven’t yet pulled the trigger on the sale. After gathering information about a customer’s preferences and needs, you can personalize video tours for that customer. This shows your dedication to providing the very best service. 
• Virtual Test Drives – You might also consider mounting a GoPro on the dash and taking your customers for a virtual test drive, especially if you’re selling speedboats or sports cars known for their incredible power. These videos can get people excited about taking their own test drives, which will bring more people to your dealership.  
• Meet the Team – Another fun option for video marketing involves getting your sales and service team involved. Consumers appreciate this personal flair, and they generally tend to trust companies when they feel like they’ve gotten to know the people working there. 
• Day in the Life – Finally, consider putting together a montage video of your sales and/or service teams in action over the course of several days. Show them interacting with real customers with smiles on their faces, shaking hands with new buyers, or handing over the keys to a freshly-repaired car. These things bring a sense of realism to your ads, and they often spark customers to take the next step in the buying process. 

Where to Utilize Video Marketing

Now that you understand the importance of video marketing and a few different ways to start utilizing it, you should also determine where to post your videos for the biggest impact. There are three main options. 

• Your Website – Putting videos on your website is a great way to increase traffic overall. Research shows an average organic traffic increase of 157% when utilizing videos on your site. 
• Social Media – Facebook and Instagram are both excellent places to reach your audience with video. Just make sure that you encourage engagement by asking questions, running contests, or even asking for opinions. The more people engage, the more people Facebook or Instagram will deliver your message to. 
• YouTube – YouTube is a Google subsidiary, and it behaves very much like a search engine. Posting quality videos on YouTube with SEO-optimized descriptions and the right tags can drive incredible viewership. You can post a variety of videos, including video tours of vehicles, virtual test drives, and more. 

As you can see, video marketing is a key player in your success. As long as you are creating the right kinds of videos for your customers, and as long as they are short, informative, and of high quality, they can undoubtedly help your business grow a great deal – even in an overcrowded industry.