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Increasing your online footprint, welcoming shoppers to your dealership homepage, and enhancing vehicle listings are just a few ways dealers can use video footage today.

But just how important is using video as a digital marketing tool to pre-owned dealerships? Shane Hambly, sales director at e-dealer, says, “If you’re not already in the video game, you’re leaving significant dollars on the table.”

Why?

Inventory turn.

Not only is video important as a tool to increase conversation rate of in-stock inventory vehicle detail pages, but it can also act as a way to attract additional traffic from search engines.

If you are frustrated with SEM and SEO efforts, ramping up video use may be a good option.

“By leveraging custom videos and search engines like YouTube, dealers can generate significant dealership video views and often increase the average time spent on inventory pages by over 100 percent,” Hambly said. “What does this do?  According to a recent study by Cobalt, more time and more views on a dealers VDP page can increase inventory turn rate by 44 percent.”

Interestingly, Hambly also stressed that YouTube is, first and foremost, a search engine — though many might not see it as such — and utilizing it can help your status on other sites, as well.

“Leveraging YouTube will also help you leverage Google, since YouTube is, according to Google, one of the most relevant sites out there,” Hambly said.

Also, any content posted on YouTube will show up in searches in a matter of hours.

“Indexed vehicle video’s, are a great way to attract additional traffic to your site, since each one is a valuable, juicy link on the SERPs (search engine results page),” Hambly added.

Inventory Listings & Relationships

On top of providing a more compelling listing, customers “trust” videos, Hambly stressed.

“If, as a dealer, you’re willing to put it out there with custom vehicle video, the trust factor of consumers browsing your site goes up,” he added.

Also, video ramps up the time spent on a website page, and as these metrics rise, so does conversion rates. 

Beyond the statistics, video has the ability to help dealerships become a familiar face to online customers.

“Anything you do to create additional trust on your site, will lead to improved results on the dealership floor,” Hambly said.   If you’re currently converting 4 percent to 5 percent of your traffic including phone calls, 95 percent of your traffic is still thinking.” 

Videos on topics such as finance, reconditioning and other deals and specials may help potential customers get off the fence and into your store.

“As long as it (video content) is positive and related to your customers needs, likely whatever you try, even if it misses the mark, will likely be a good thing from a customer relations standpoint,” Hambly concluded.

 

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