Top Strategies for Car Dealership Marketing in 2025
January 28, 2025 | Last Updated on: January 29, 2025
By Nick Perry
Top Strategies for Car Dealership Marketing in 2025
There’s no shortage of car ads on the airwaves, but that doesn’t mean that dealerships don’t still have their work cut out for them. While any car dealership benefits from national brand marketing, digital marketing is still crucial to attract local customers interested in car buying.
Building awareness and trust for your dealership and highlighting your expertise and special dealer financing will help bring potential buyers through the door. Whether you specialize in used cars or are a car dealer for specific brands, this guide highlights some basic digital marketing strategies you can use to drum up business.
In this article:
- How to advertise your car dealership financing programs.
- Simple, cost-effective digital marketing strategies.
- How to help buyers learn the best way to finance a car and find the right vehicle for them.
What to Know About Car Dealership Marketing
Any car dealer should understand some important statistics about buyer habits before they get to work on digital marketing campaigns. Significantly, 95% of consumers do online research before even going to the dealer, so there’s plenty of opportunity for auto dealers to grab consumer attention online.
Some more important statistics to note:
- Customers trust the dealer where they originally purchased their vehicle or had their vehicle serviced. (Deloitte)
- Shoppers using a branded mobile app are 73% more likely to buy a car from a dealership and book 25% more service appointments than those without an app. (DME Automotive)
- Dealers using marketing automation like email or SMS follow up are twice as likely to see higher marketing ROI (PorchGroupMedia.com)
- More than 60% of car shoppers reported visiting a dealership after watching a video of a car they considered buying. (Google)
- 21% of car shoppers say social media directly impacted their purchase. (AM Online)
Most car sales are done in person at the dealership, but many cars buyers report doing research online beforehand. As such, a good digital marketing strategy is crucial to attracting potential buyers.
Social Media
Many dealerships have social media channels these days. While these channels are great for showcasing available inventory, add-on features to vehicles, trade-in offers, warranty availability, and a lot more valuable information, the primary goal is to get people to come in for a test drive.
Social media channels are about far more than simply pumping out content. It’s vital to provide one-on-one support through social media. Engaging with customer DMs and comments will help build trust and show that you care about more than just your current customers.
Through social media conversations, you can answer preliminary questions about current loan rates, potential refinancing options, Kelley Blue Book values for potential trade-in vehicles, and answer both general questions about car financing and specific questions about the financing options offered by your dealership.
Through social media engagement, you can help potential customers understand dealership financing and put them at ease so that they can still get a car even if they don’t have perfect credit. You probably can’t answer specific questions about monthly payments without running a credit report or seeing what they have in the way of a down payment, but you can get the process started and start thinking about the best car loan for them.
Utilizing social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, X, and even TikTok can help provide a more personal touch to your potential customer base. Plus, you can invest in paid advertisements on all these networks to play up special auto financing offers and other buyer incentives as they arise throughout the year.
Content Marketing
The most common form of content marketing for auto marketers is blogging. Blogging is a great way for a dealership to establish credibility by offering information and advice on dealership financing and the car buying process.
Blogging for Authority
Keeping your blog updated with information about current market trends, service trends, and available offers from your dealership and the national brand will all help to build authority in your local market. By speaking candidly about the financing terms you’re offering and the inventory you have available, and putting faces and names to your sales team, you can build trust before a buyer even sets foot in the dealership.
In addition to establishing a sense of confidence in your brand, the more you create new content, the better your domain will rank and the more opportunity you’ll have to attract local traffic to your web pages. Remember to utilize an SEO strategy that targets relevant keywords for your area.
Blogging for Events
Blogs can also be utilized for broadcasting company-wide events and partnerships, like promotions, a new line of cars, and more. You can even engage with current and future customers in the comments by answering questions or responding to concerns. When other potential customers see someone else’s issues being resolved, it greatly increases their confidence in your business.
This shows a great example of how you treat your customers. Connecting your blog to your other marketing channels, like social media and email marketing, can help retain current customers and attract new ones. Additionally, a blog makes your dealership website more searchable and differentiates it from other competitive dealerships.
National savings events are a great time to play up dealership financing opportunities and express to potential customers that the best interest rates and loan terms may only be available for a limited time.
Steps to Creating a Blog
Creating a blog can be expensive and time-consuming unless a business owner is willing to take on all the hard work themselves. Hiring writers and designers is the most expensive part of content creation, but there are many free Content Management Systems (CMS) on the market. One great example is WordPress, which has a huge user and developer-support base.
Blogs, when properly set up, can generate a large amount of high-quality inbound leads, traffic, and website conversions. Here’s a basic guide to do so:
- Create a blog on your preferred CMS platform.
- Develop a content publishing strategy based on how many pieces of content you want to create each month.
- Use a keyword tool that has a free version, like KWFinder, to identify potential search terms you should include in your content.
- Write and publish content, keeping to a consistent cadence.
- Share your blog on social media channels and in your email newsletter, and give it a prominent place on your website.
- Analyze results and make changes to your content strategy as necessary.
Email Marketing
Email marketing continues to be a great source of both inbound marketing and retaining customer loyalty. To optimize email marketing, it’s important to collect emails across your digital footprint. At a minimum, your website should have a pop-up and email form to collect emails from your site visitors. While future customers research their car needs, it’s important that you collect their email and other basic information in order to capitalize when they’re ready to buy.
A great way to do this is by offering some kind of downloadable content, like “6 Things to Know About Dealership Financing.” Not only does it offer good information about the best way to finance a car and how to get a loan for a car, but it also provides some detail into your dealership’s specific financing and refinance options while also serving as an ad for some of your most popular models.
Importantly, email marketing needs to be automated to both save employees’ time and properly capitalize on buyer interest. Automating outreach after a customer schedules a test drive or visit to the dealer, as a follow-up with dormant customers, and when an existing customer schedules service appointments are all good examples of automation.
Moreover, creating an email newsletter is a great way to let both existing customers and potential ones know about dealership financing resources, events, offers for buyers with bad credit, and much more.
Video Marketing
In today’s visual world, more and more car buyers are going to YouTube or watching videos to learn about cars and car dealership finance before visiting in person. While it’s easy enough to incorporate video into your social media, don’t stop there. Setting up a YouTube channel is one good idea, but it may be even more efficient to include videos on your dealership webpage.
Showcase driving cars around town to supplement ads customers may have already seen. Use video to play up your competitive rates and the lenders you work with to simplify the dealership financing process. Play up your service team’s great reputation and testimonials. People watch even more than they read these days, and your digital marketing should reflect that realization.
Final Thoughts
Car shoppers have changed over the years. Today, there’s more scrutiny and research done before purchasing a car. Many millennials are deferring to leasing before investing in a new car.
Today, it’s increasingly important to create a strong, multi-channel digital marketing strategy that showcases dealership financing options and your dealership’s service record. Cost and service are the two most important factors for the vast majority of buyers and giving customers the opportunity to access that information before they enter your dealership can go a long way.
FAQs about dealership financing
What kinds of marketing channels should a car dealership use?
Some of the best marketing channels for car dealerships include social media, blogs, email marketing, and video marketing on platforms like YouTube.
What should car dealerships include in marketing messaging?
Your marketing messaging should focus on dealership financing opportunities, your dealership’s service record, and advertising any events or partnerships your customers should be aware of.
Should you automate email marketing?
Yes, automating email marketing can save human time and streamline the way you engage with buyers when they’re thinking about making a purchase or scheduling a service appointment.
What are the best social media platforms for car dealerships to use?
Some of the best platforms include Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.
