conversion

Don’t be Generic in Your Video Marketing

Today’s consumers want marketing that is personalized to them. In the past, marketing has always been about broadcasting the same message to everyone. Attempting to catch as many “fish” as possible. That strategy no longer works in today’s modern world of consumer shopping behavior.

To truly capture a customer’s attention and win their business, you must focus on personalization. Many marketers utilize generic, bland, stock imagery, and video to tell their “story.” This practice is so bad that a poet even created lyrics parodying marketing in a video titled, “This is a Generic Brand Video,” .

 

 

Somewhat ironically, this video ended up being supported and promoted by a company that sells stock photos and video. While the video may be a little dated, the message and lessons it implies still hold true today.

Technology has made it possible to personalize every video to every individual customer without having to do a lot more work. In the dealership world, that means that every personal communication, service video, vehicle walkaround, or employee introduction can be tailored and personalized. Sadly, too many dealerships are failing to take advantage of this ability.

It is well-documented how video content is hugely desirable and highly influential to today’s consumers. If you can engage these consumers with relevant content and become a resource, you are a step ahead of the game. Take it to the next level by then personalizing that video content, and you can blow your competition out of the water!

Your customers don’t want to feel as if they are part of the millions. They want to feel as if they are the most important one among the millions. If you can accomplish that, you will earn their business, trust, and loyalty. Watch the video again and be honest… how many commercials have you seen that employ those same generic marketing tactics? This video struck a chord with marketers because it is hilariously accurate. It did, in fact, go on to win awards.

People don’t care about you or what you are trying to sell them if you don’t care about who they are. Use today’s technology to leverage the power of personalization in your video marketing effort. You will find that anyone you are trying to win as a customer will choose to do business with you because you cared about them.

Why Video Titles are so Important

Videos are essential for effective marketing and will continue to rise in importance in the future. They are engaging, and consumers would rather watch a video than click through a bunch of photos. I’ve talked plenty of times about the different types of videos. But for this blog, let’s get off VDPs for the moment. Some of the video content I recommend for dealers are how-to videos, vehicle walkaround videos, and reviews. This is excellent content for a dealership’s website as these videos engage existing customers. But there is another benefit that dealers tend to forget – they also attract prospective buyers and service customers. The trick is that they must be easily discoverable.

According to an article on CEOWorld, matching your video title to a search and optimizing the video description and URL is an excellent way to increase your dealership’s SEO strategy and performance.

Everyone uses a search engine – mostly Google. On a basic level, Google delivers search results by deciding which content is relevant to the search and tends to favor local results first. For example, if a consumer were to search “Chevrolet dealership,” Google won’t serve up results for dealerships across the country, but rather those nearby. The problem is that how-to and video walkaround videos and reviews don’t show up in many consumer searches because dealerships fail to tell Google that their video is relevant.

Think about it. If a consumer is looking for a review of a new model vehicle, what do they typically type into the search bar? Most consumers will type in precisely what they are looking for. If searching for a review of a 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, that is pretty much exactly what they type into the search bar. Or, if they want to know what a radiator flush is, that’s what they type in the search.

It makes sense to ensure that the title of your video mimics the questions a consumer is most likely to type into a search engine. You then show relevance to Google and will show up in searches. If you hit the nail on the head and the title of your video is an exact match for the consumer’s search, you are infinitely more likely to show up high in the organic search results. And not just Google but all search engines. Also, because Google favors local search results, chances are high that local consumers will be served up your video over others.

Video is increasingly favored by search engines, social media platforms, and consumers. Therefore, it’s imperative that your dealerships have an effective and comprehensive video marketing strategy in place.

Create content consumers want to see and be smart with your titles. Consumers will then be served up your dealership website as the answer they are looking for. And that’s a great thing for sales and service.

To Script or Not to Script? That Is the Question

When making videos for your dealership, it can be easy to get so caught up in the “What should I say?” that the video never gets made.

Some video marketing experts advise that scripts are the way to go as the person on camera then knows what to say. But that may not be best for everyone.

The person that is making the video, doing the talking and/or the subject of the video, ultimately is representing the dealership. Of course, everyone wants their videos to be professional. But you should also want them to be genuine (sincere) and engaging to the customer. Have you ever seen a video where the person speaks in a monotone or without emotion because they are reading from a script? It’s not very engaging, is it?

To that point, in this blog, I’d like to cover a couple of best practices that can help when executing different types of videos for your dealership that will more effectively engage your customers.

1. Walkaround videos – Whether for general merchandising or personalized emails, it is essential to be knowledgeable about the vehicle. Managers expect that their salespeople know their product. If your salesperson has to read a window sticker to do a walkaround in person, that certainly is not acceptable.

Well, the same holds true for video walkarounds. Customers get excited about vehicles when the salesperson is excited. If a salesperson can knowledgeably explain to a customer while emotionally engaged why a vehicle is excellent and/or why it’s right for the customer, the customer is much more likely to trust and engage with the salesperson. This is especially important when a customer is still in the “Is this vehicle right for me?” stage. If a salesperson can’t correctly show a car without a script, they should not be showing cars period — much less doing walkaround videos.

2. Personal email videos – The whole purpose of a personal email video is to convince a customer who inquired about the vehicle that your dealership cares about them on an individual level and that they should do business with you. Scripted videos can take the personality out of the equation, come off as dry and uninteresting. Ultimately, they could even be counterproductive to the primary goal – getting the customer to like the salesperson or BDC agent.

While it is OK to train employees on what they should say in general, to engage the customer, employees must be able to take those basic talking points and integrate them into the message using their personality. Just as customers can tell whether an email response is a template or an actual communication from a person, customers can also determine if a video response is genuine or just someone reading from a script.

It is definitely okay to write your thoughts down on paper and organize your thoughts to prepare for your personalized video. But when the camera starts rolling, put the script down, make eye contact with the camera, and let your personality shine.

Ensure that your salespeople and BDC agents are knowledgeable enough to make personal videos for customers without having to read a script. They should display who they are and showcase their own individual skills and personality. Customers will be more engaged, the message will come across as genuine and, ultimately, your dealership will see more success.

3 Tips to Up Your Video Marketing Game

Assuming your dealership has a video marketing strategy in place and that you’re getting good results, you may be ready to take your video marketing to another level.

To quickly review, the fundamental basic blocks of a video marketing strategy include:

  • Content. Start with what you sell…your inventory.  Next sell them on your dealership with value proposition videos, customer testimonial videos, and service “how to” videos.   Also, sell them on your staff with personnel introduction/profile videos.  All of these content videos build trust with the shopper.
  • Exposure. In addition to your website, your videos should be on multiple touchpoints like Cars.com, Autotrader.com, Facebook, and any other distribution points video is accepted to display. Also using video in email marketing and in the lead follow-up process garners great results when compared to traditional e-mail and phone calls.
  • Actionable Data Collection. Where you host your video plays a very important role in the success of a video marketing strategy. Using public hosting platforms like YouTube and Vimeo do not help your SEO nor guarantee to keep your shopper on your site. Your dealership’s video should be hosted on a platform that allows your website to claim the SEO benefits of your video, and also has the ability to collect actionable data from your video viewers so you know who’s watching which video from where and with what.
  • Data Utilization. Use the actionable data to create relevancy, to create or adjust your marketing endeavors so you are able to serve up the right video to the right customer at the right time.

Now that we have reviewed the core elements to a successful video marketing strategy, let’s take a look at kicking it up a notch.

Here are some additional elements to add to your strategy designed to even further increase your engagement, conversions and leads.

Empower Your Customers with Information
Today’s consumers want to be in control of the purchase process. Videos can have a significant impact in that process, with up to 90 percent of people claiming that video plays a role in their purchasing decisions, according to one report.

Although customers want to be in control, they still need information and a trusted resource to guide their decision. Why not become that trusted resource?

When it comes to car shopping, most dealers don’t have a lot of information on their website to help prospective buyers in their research and decision-making process. Why leave that up to the OEMs and third-party sites?

Part of this process involves deciding where to buy. Customers want to buy from a dealership they trust. One of the best ways to gain that trust is to provide the car shopper with information in a transparent way.

If you don’t already have a video showroom on your website, it’s time to add one. Then, create and add the following types of videos:

  • Explain the difference between your brand’s trim levels
  • Explain the difference between your brand and your top two competing brands
  • Explain new features in a newly introduced product/brand
  • Explain the sales process/what to expect at your dealership
  • Explain the F&I process and products

These videos should focus on educating the shopper. Their purpose is to gain customer trust, so the videos should be focused on your customers’ needs and your dealership’s expertise.

Virtual Reality Video
Virtual Reality (VR) is already mainstream. The good news for dealers is that creating VR videos doesn’t require a lot of expensive equipment or time. You can create VR videos in approximately the same amount of time as you can a regular video.

VR videos are highly engaging and will differentiate your brand, at least until the rest of the Jones’s on the block catch up. If you want a captive audience, start by creating and posting a few model review videos on your website in VR first as these will be more relevant longer then an inventory specific video.  To get even more engagement you can then distribute them through email and your social media channels.

Watching a VR video is a completely different experience than watching a regular video; if you haven’t tried it yet, you should! The experience is completely immersive, memorable and emotional.

You don’t have to start doing VR videos for every piece of inventory. Focus on creating a VR video for your new models and make them both educational and fun, if possible. As the customer is sitting in the front seat, guide them through what they’re seeing, touching and feeling.

Consumers can experience VR videos if they own a smartphone and a pair of VR goggles or headsets. All that’s required is downloading an app that can play virtual reality videos.

Live Streaming Video
Today’s consumer demands instant information and transparency during the car-buying process, and live-streaming video calls are a great way to establish a connection, build trust and provide information in an immediate and transparent manner.

Live streaming is another technology that you may want to consider incorporating into your sales process. Allow your shoppers to connect in real-time with your team.  It’s not just Millennials that want their information now…Boomers do too!

Are you ready to take your video marketing game to the next level? Try these three video strategies designed to engage customers and increase conversions and leads.

The Dominance of Video Marketing for Business

As video continues its quick rise it has become the most engaged with and preferred type of content for consumers. Marketers have taken notice and are quickly pivoting their content efforts accordingly. A new study by Magisto reports that video marketing has already eclipsed all other content types and is now a $135 billion industry. To put that into perspective, the report shares that advertisers in 2017 “expect to spend $83 billion on digital ads and $71 billion on TV commercials.” 84 percent of marketers created more video in 2017, with 60 percent of businesses having video marketing that accounts for more than 25 percent of their marketing budget.  

Why is video so dominant as content? According to the study, “Done correctly, video has the scale of television, the precision of digital marketing and the power of authentic story. Businesses are using video to distribute their messages in ways that contribute real value to the attention economy…”  

Consumers prefer video content. Just look at the most popular websites – namely social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Video content dominates consumers’ newsfeeds because that’s the type of content that Facebook sees is most engaged with. But don’t think this is all about social media. Magisto shares that by noon Pacific time every day, 120 billion emails are sent and 35 million photos uploaded to Instagram.  

Consumers are voting by their actions as far as the type of content they prefer — time spent on web pages with video averaged 7 minutes and 21 seconds. While time spent on pages without video was only 2 minutes and 48 seconds, according to a study by Wistia, which analyzed consumer behavior on the top 100 websites.  

Why is time on site important? The longer a consumer spends on your site, the more likely they are to convert. In fact, having video on a web page can increase conversion by up to 80 percent, making online shoppers being almost twice as likely to buy from that business! 

 Video content should not be something you are “considering.” That time has passed. It’s now only a matter of what kinds of video should be produced, and how your dealership should use it with your customers. Engaging consumers is the number one way to increase interest and steer them towards your dealership and away from the competition. Of course, if your competition is using video and you aren’t, chances are they are already taking away sales from you.   

Video marketing is not hard, nor is it expensive, it just needs to get done. It’s no longer whether you should be doing video, it is how much is it costing you NOT to? 

Seven Important Video Marketing Statistics

by Tim James

While statistics may seem boring, they are certainly key when choosing a marketing strategy. They can highlight where you should direct your efforts in order to be the most effective and maximize ROI.

There are a ton of statistics floating out there and thousands of articles which – if you don’t believe me – should be sufficient to convince you that video content and marketing is THE most effective medium to engage consumers – both now and for the foreseeable future.

To illustrate this for you, I assembled seven statistics that caught my eye from this published list of 50 Video Marketing Stats to Help You Create a Winning Social Media Strategy in 2017.

I picked the seven I feel will be of particular interest, without overwhelming you with hundreds of statistics.

  1. “Online videos will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020, according to CISCO.”

    What does that mean for car dealers? Unless you have video content on your website, and all the consumer touchpoints, you may find your dealership falls into that sad 20% of internet traffic that misses eight out of ten car buyers.

  2. “73% of marketers plan on increasing their use of videos, according to Social Media Examiner”

    I’m fairly certain there are some pretty smart people among the 73% of marketers that plan to increase video use. If such a large percentage of marketers chooses to increase their video strategies and budgets, they must be finding video an effective medium that produces revenue.

  3. “55% of people consume video thoroughly – the highest amount of all types of content, according to HubSpot”

    If you’re going to create content to market your dealership and your inventory, why not create the best, most effective type of content that your customers (or potential customers) will actually watch? Makes perfect sense to me and, apparently, video is the content type that consumers want.

  4. “43%of people want to see more video content from marketers in the future, according to HubSpot.”

    Again, if consumers want more video content, the only possible reason is that video is how they want brands and businesses to engage with them. It’s much easier, more engaging and memorable to present your message in a way that engages all the consumer’s senses – and that’s what video does (and probably why consumers want it.)

  5. “4X as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than reading about it. 4 in 5 millennials consider video content when researching a purchase decision and 70% of millennials are likely to watch a company video when shopping online, according to Animoto.”
    I lumped these together because these statistics illustrate that consumers want video content, are watching company-produced video content and are using it to make purchasing decisions. That certainly sounds like something I would be interested in if I were a car dealer trying to attract buyers – especially the anonymous buyers who are shopping your inventory online without your knowledge.
  6. “Companies which use videos in their marketing grow revenue 49% faster year-on-year than those which don’t, according to the Aberdeen Group.”

    I think it’s safe to say that any business – including car dealerships – is interested in revenue growth. If having a video marketing strategy in place can increase revenue by 49%, it should certainly be common-sense to implement one. Of course, it’s not just about USING video, but about using it RIGHT with a strategy in place. And what happens when you have a strategy in place…

  7. “Companies which use video in their marketing enjoy 27% higher CTR and 34% higher web conversion rates than those which don’t, according to the Aberdeen Group.”

    I don’t know about you but the whole POINT of having a website, investing in digital marketing of all types, and merchandising your inventory through third-party sites and all the other touchpoints, is to engage the customer and, ultimately, have them engage you back by contacting you or submitting a lead. If using video will increase click-throughs and conversions at that level, why wouldn’t you want it?

I hope these seven points I chose provide food for thought to help prove the point that any time and effort spent implementing a strategic video marketing strategy will produce ROI. And believe me when I tell you that it’s not as hard or time-consuming as you may think. Chances are you have the essentials to get started right in front of you– heck, you may even be reading this blog article with it – a smartphone.

Video marketing can be easy and take little effort and time. Sure, you can also spend more time and money and produce even more slick videos with sets and expensive equipment, if you should desire. The point is that it shouldn’t be a question of whether you SHOULD be doing video marketing, but rather WHEN are you going to start?

They Watched Your Video. Now What?

by Brian Cox

There’s no doubt that video marketing is exploding in popularity with businesses and consumers. Both Facebook and Twitter are investing heavily in video and, in the case of Facebook, rewarding those who upload their video straight onto its extended reach advertising platform.

The days of reading long text descriptions and features of vehicles on websites are quickly fading. Manufacturers and dealerships are putting more effort and bigger budgets into video marketing. However, no matter how creative, funny, informative or compelling a video is, if it’s missing one simple ingredient, it will not help you sell more of anything – whether that’s a salesperson, the dealership or a car.

What is that simple ingredient? – It’s a call-to-action.

In terms of functionality and conversion, all websites typically contain calls-to-action. Customers that visit a dealership’s website can gather the information they want and, most of the time, there is a call-to-action on the page they’re viewing; be it the home page or a vehicle description page. Many videos, however, have no call-to-action. An online car shopper will visit multiple touchpoints when researching vehicles – Think of all of the sites your videos are on that the consumer could visit. You may control the content and call-to-actions on your own website, but it’s not always the case on every touchpoint.

Many dealers incorporate personalized video e-mail responses and walkarounds and introduce staff on their “About Us” pages. These are all great but, in many cases, they neglect to incorporate the single most important question that a consumer will ask after watching:

What do I do now?

Even if you have a call-to-action on the actual webpage that the consumer is on while watching your video, include a call-to-action within the video itself. It doesn’t have to be long or confusing. It should be simple. Something like:

  1. Call us at XXX-XXX-XXXX or email us today at XXXXXX
  2. Make sure to mention this video to claim your special offer
  3. Make sure to visit our website and get the exclusive Internet pricing only available on our website

If you’re not asking viewers of your video to do SOMETHING at the end of your video, they won’t do ANYTHING and you’ll be missing out on conversions. Guide the consumer through the funnel in relation to the video content they just watched. If the video was a “Why Buy From Me” sent by a salesperson, include their contact information at the end. Another thing that can be very beneficial is to incorporate a call tracking number on your videos.

If it’s a vehicle walkaround video, direct your customers as to what they should do next. Create a video explaining how your dealership assists people with challenged credit then direct them to your online credit application to get started. If you produce service videos, make sure to include an offer, coupon or, at the very least, an invitation to the dealership or to schedule an appointment.

It’s really not a difficult concept. Almost every other form of marketing will have calls-to-action (if they’re any good). So why shouldn’t you also include them in your videos? It’s up to you to tell your customers what you want them to do. If you guide them properly and with relevance, you’ll find that more of them follow the path you’re leading them down and will see more conversions.