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Posts Tagged ‘Automotive’

London, Farringdon,  2009 — Major car retailers no longer see a policy of injecting huge amounts of capital into traditional forms of offline advertising as the best means of promotion. Many are are now focused on an interactive web marketing strategy. This year Fords main marketing aim has been to bolstered their online presence, which has seen websites, online ads and social media meshing with their product line and positioning. Other leading automobile companies are following this trend as CMR (competitive media reporting) interactive has noted, listed Toyota, Honda and Ford amongst the top ten spenders in online marketing.

Car companies can use social media applications and blogs to move closer to customers, gain more attention and interest in their services and brand, as well as gaining a better understanding of their customers needs. Car retailers have also seen and noted the importance of an interactive engaging website. In bids to gain and retain customer attention online, motoring companies have become more creative, for example Ford have created and posted on their website a video version of the Ford story. As a result of their online marketing efforts, Ad Age ( adage) reports that the number of qualified buyers who planned to buy a Ford jumped 16% from 2008.

Why Should Auto Retailers Use Online Marketing Rather Than Offline Advertising?

“Over 75% of consumers when searching for the nearest local car retailer start their research online’”– (Jim Rucker- TK productions-chief marketing executive. July 2009)

Car retailers who are market leaders in sales generated via the Internet, share an approach that has revealed some common practices that are critical to a successful Internet strategy. Number one amongst these best practices is taking the time to develop and manage an organic strategy, information regarding how to drive organic traffic can be accessed at: http://www.contextured.com/search-engine-optimization/

Facebook. Twitter. Flickr. These social spaces used to be buzz words. Now they are commonplace – and very heavily used. Facebook and Twitter are estimated to have close to one billion users between them (probably many of the same people using both). That’s over ten percent of the population of the entire world!

It’s no secret that these sites are primarily used for social networking: keeping in touch with friends, reconnecting with long lost relatives, keeping abreast of the latest celebrity smut. However, recent changes – particularity to Facebook – indicate that the tide is changing. Businesses have caught on to the power of social marketing. Facebook states that over sixty million businesses have a registered “Fan Page” – a social space that allows a business to connect to fans and people in their local demographic. Furthermore, Facebook has even developed its own computer language called “FBML” – a variance of HTML that allows designers to write code in order to customize a Facebook Fan Page to suit the needs of a particular business.

Again, the power of Facebook is no secret, but it’s interesting to study which industries have taken to it. Not surprisingly, web-based businesses are the first to leverage the power of social marketing. Media businesses are also quick to make sure they are “Facebooking” and “Twittering”, while traditional businesses – especially sales-based enterprises – are yet to fully utilize the power of social marketing.

Perhaps the largest industry segment that has yet to get on board with social marketing is the automotive industry. Some research has indicated that many dealerships feel they are simply “jumping on a bandwagon” – a bandwagon they feel will eventually ship off, leaving the current trend followers in the same place they were before the social marketing craze began. But it is clearly evident that social marketing is far more than just a trend. Facebook was founded in 2006 and has shown consistent and significant growth over the last four years. It would now appear that those who have not jumped on the bandwagon have only missed out on four years of free publicity.  Read more...