7 of the Most Brilliant Car Dealership Marketing Ideas We’ve Ever Seen
It seems like every article about dealership marketing ideas have the same vague and boring lists. Email marketing. Responsive websites. Social media. These are all well and good, but they aren’t fresh ideas, they’re the standard (or what should be the standard). We’ve gotten sick of observing page after page of the same old, so we put together seven absolutely brilliant and different home-run car dealership marketing ideas. Not every dealership can accomplish all these ideas, but any dealership can be inspired by them.
Turning The Car Business Upside Down
In a time when people are getting more and more turned off by the pushy-salesman tactics of many car dealerships, what better way to attract customers than by proclaiming, in the most demonstrable way possible, that your business is different. Prime Auto Group did this by literally turning their ads upside down. On billboards across freeways and all the way to their website, they’re advertising that Prime isn’t like other dealerships. At Prime, you can leave behind everything you normally expect from a traditional dealership sales process. Clever, ordinary, and so much more powerful than just telling “we’re different,” this is a dealership marketing idea that blows the standard boring billboard out of the water.
Customer Rights at a Dealership Level
All dealerships care about their customers, at least on paper, but Galpin takes customer practice to a entire fresh level. Customer centricity is what has distinguished Galpin for decades, and what resumes to drive their massive success. Galpin has a Customer Bill of Rights, with rights like “Honest information when you request it, without evasiveness,” and “Be invited to buy without feeling pressured.” Beyond this powerful central set of rights, Galpin goes the extra mile to make being at the dealership a pleasant practice. They have a full-service Starbucks and a restaurant. Sure, not every dealership can afford such luxuries, but it’s a testament to Galpin’s dedication to the customer that they invest intensely in customer practice.
Getting Creative for Creative Types
The most successful dealerships are those that know their communities and their customers. Sewell is one of those dealerships. Sewell knew that Mini’s target audience are known for being creative, and figured a fine way to reach them would be to go right to the art. In a truly inspired display of car dealership marketing, they got a Mini into the opening of a pop-culture art exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. They dressed the little car for the occasion, wrapping it in a fantastic graphic celebrating artist Roy Lichtenstein’s style.
Virtual Reality for Real Sales
How do you get people far away to care about your dealership? You bring your dealership to them. Thompsons’ enlightened dealership marketing uses technology to achieve what it would normally take about a hundred semis to do. Thompsons sends Google Cardboards to target audiences in large population centers far from their dealership. With the cardboards is an easily-scanned QR code that links right to a movie that introduces the dealership, their culture, the showroom, and a few of the most popular featured cars. Prospects can practice the dealership from the convenience of their own home, and even if they aren’t looking for a car at that exact moment, it’s assured to be memorable.
Coax Customers You’re Worth The Drive
How do you get people far away to care about your dealership? No, that’s not déjà vu. We embarked the last paragraph with that question too. That’s because it’s an significant question, a problem lots of dealers fight with. Instead of taking the dealership to customers, like Thompson, Woody’s proves that they’re worth the drive. On their website, they have a map of the surrounding area, with drive times and reviews from customers who have personally made that drive. It’s a wonderfully ordinary yet inspired way to persuade customers that making the drive is worth it in savings and service.
Going All Out For Your Customers
When it comes to subtlety, Billy Fuccillo is not your man. But he doesn’t need to be. Already famous for his commercials, which everyone observes (if only to unravel the mystery of the blonde woman featured in most commercials), Fuccillo goes in for grand gestures and spontaneous give-aways. Among Fuccillo’s fattest marketing tactics is the ‘Cruise With Huge’ sales event – in which everyone who bought a car during the sales event is invited on a 5-day cruise – which Fuccillo buys out every year. This year, the event was so fat, there are two cruise trips. This dealership marketing strategy’s power lays in its numerous benefits. Very first, it incentivizes customers to buy or lease during the sales event. 2nd, it mitigates the cost of the car, because you get a free 5-day cruise thrown in. And third, the cruise serves as a truly nice ‘thank you’ to Fuccillo’s customers. You indeed can’t hammer marketing that opens up the entire way through the buying process.
Getting a Boost From Uber
How do you buy word-of-mouth? Well, you can’t. Not truly. But you can make sure your name is on a lot of lips. Toyota of Plano realized that Uber patrons might well be in the market for a car, or soon to inject it. A shiny fresh car rolling up with a Toyota of Plano license border is good advertising. Even better advertising, is the conversation the Uber driver and patron might have about the car, and by extension, the dealership. By suggesting awesome deals to Uber drivers, Toyota of Plano builds a word of mouth empire that more than pays for itself in referrals.
Conclusion
Everyone wants to stand out, but most people just do their work and hope inspiration will strike, they’ll yell ‘eureka,’ and within six months they’ll be on top of the world. That’s not how it works. Regardless of how brilliant all these ideas are, we can assure that most of them were created through a combination of creative thinking, open-mindedness, and hard work. But that’s the rough news. The good news is that when you come up with your awesome idea, you can tell us and we’ll add you to the top of this list.