Car Dealers Embrace Online Video - Automotive Online Video Marketing Trends

[Stew Pedasso]

Scott and Jay, let's look at the question first: Does Online Video Marketing Drive Sales?

Driving sales to me means bringing a shopper in the dealership that's ready to buy.

Could a dealership promo video do this alone?
Absolutely not.

Could a vehicle video do this alone?
Yes... about as much as an online single photo, price, and description could of that same vehicle.

So I'm agreeing with you both, maybe you didn't pick up on the sarcastic nature of my original post

I'm not against videos promoting the dealership. That's a VERY important component to a shoppers overall decision. I just don't believe it can drive sales by itself tho, you still need the right inventory and the right interest from the shopper.

We could argue this point for NEW cars, because vehicle inventories are the same among franchises, but USED inventories are a much different scenario.
The shopper will first need to be interested in a used vehicle online and a vehicle video could help, but won't drive sales.

 

[Pete Latsoudis]

Stew. I agree. There are benefits and think it is a matter of not letting expectations exceed the limitations of what online video can do.

It looks as all here are experienced enough to know but for any new people who now are in a managerial position to make spending decisions, I posted the "snake oil" excerpt below.

Stew-It's like hearing myself, "the wild west with dealership video right now!

I don't mean this in a bad way about online video and all the vendors who offer the service. Just the one's that over promise what it can do.

It just reminds me of that covered wagon that rolls through that dusty town while heading west back when.

Wikipedia-"The snake oil peddler became a stock character in Western movies: a traveling "doctor" with dubious credentials, selling some medicine (such as snake oil) with boisterous marketing hype, often supported by pseudo-scientific evidence, typically bogus. To enhance sales, an accomplice in the crowd (a "shill") would often "attest" the value of the product in an effort to provoke buying enthusiasm. The "doctor" would prudently leave town before his customers realized that they had been cheated. This practice is also called "grifting" and its practitioners "grifters"."

Hope this relays as intended, having a bit a humor in it when read.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

The whole Internet is in its "Wild West" phase. 20 to 50 years from now we'll look back missing it or laughing at it.

 

[Stew Pedasso]

Nice snake oil relation there Pete!
I don't have the problem of video vendors callin and promising the moon, I gotta hunt them down to hear their babble! Best I've heard so far is free video for the website.

Alex, as far as video goes in the wild west phase... 20 to 50 years is too long bro, I'll be dead. Let's shoot for 5-10

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

We can start laughing now if you want

 

[philipzelinger]

Advertising, video or otherwise, still requires someone to see it for it to have any impact. Of course, where they see it, how often and what the relevancy of the message is to the audience is also part of advertising 101 but all of the above apply to video so it should be evaluated the same way as other conventionaland online marketing messages.

All content can be relevant dependending on where you want to approach your customers in the "buying funnel" or cycle. Viral marketing of a video can create a "buzz" and brand awareness that will survive and develop top of the mind awareness for when a customer needs a vehicle. Videos posted for "informational" or branding purposes on a website add valuable content and improve the transparency of the site for people further down the buying funnel since they have already found or searched for your site and the added "personality" that a video can give to a message is a gteat differentiator from sites with similar information that might be less "entertaining" and personal.

All of these applications of video are important, but the "ad guy" in me still likes to know that the video will be seen as far down the buying funnel as possible and it should include a "call to action" with a trackable and accountable R.O.I. since today's limited advertising budgets have unfortunatley forced auto dealers to focus on today deals so they can survive to worry about tomorrow's.

For this reason, I prefer videos that are placed with embedded long tail and short tail search words and meta tags pushed to the search engines with regionally targeted exposure and integrated schema layers with actionable messages that allow a viewer to "drill down" to linked micro sites, lead forms or other conversion tools that create a call to action that can be attributed to the video so the dealer will invest in another one. The applicable phrases are vSEO and conversion and they trump the other valued applications of video, in my opinion, only because in today's tough economy we must sell something today if we expect to survive to sell one tomorrow and the more exposure we can develop to supplement the SEO of our main site the better.

 

[Dan Schneider]

This was a fantastic article followed up with posts delivered by some very inciteful, intelligent people. (I'm not used to reading intelligent conversations on blog post online!)

Online video is of course the way of the future. What is it, really, but TV online? Did TV get very big and have any impact on the world?

Here's my question, though, and it encompasses the internet marketing requirements that dealers have no choice but to participate in in 2009: Can't there be a better way to drive potential in-the-market car buyers to a specific site, versus relying on the Autotrader.coms and Cars.coms of the world basically ensaring every person who's on the internet?

It seems to me that using television to drive people to specific websites--and I don't mean national branding ads for Cars.com or eBay Motors--would produce a far more pure unique lead. Local TV programming or advertising on TV designed to drive car buyers to a single website...am I way off on this?

 

[prakash]

Great thread,According to a study released by the Kelsey Group in Q1 2008, 33% of car dealers surveyed currently take advantage of online video on their own websites. In the same study, 59% of dealers surveyed indicated that they they plan to use video on their own websites within the next 12 months.I appriciate it.Thanks
Automotive Advertising

 

[prakash]

Great thread,According to a study released by the Kelsey Group in Q1 2008, 33% of car dealers surveyed currently take advantage of online video on their own websites. In the same study, 59% of dealers surveyed indicated that they they plan to use video on their own websites within the next 12 months.I appriciate it.Thanks

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