The automobile dealership business is known for being intensely competitive with multiple brands and dealerships constantly vying for the attention of potential customers, and to lock them in within their fold. Instagram is especially suited for car dealers who want to leverage the power of social media to increase their brand awareness and engagement with the younger and more affluent user population. Some pro tips for car dealers to get the maximum bang for the buck on Instagram:
Post Regularly and Consistently
For any marketer, especially a car dealer who has to face severe competition all the time, it is important to have an Instagram account that is active with new content being posted regularly. If you fall silent for too many days, your followers are likely to become busy following other businesses, and it can be an uphill task for you to reignite their interest. Even if you have a lot of content to be shared with your followers, you should not dump them all at the same time and become silent for a couple of weeks but instead spread them over a few days so that follower interest can be maintained. You should not mistake the need to post regularly for posting frequently. If you post too frequently, you run the risk of annoying your followers, and they could unfollow you.
You can experiment with your posting to find out the ideal number of times in a day or week you should post on Instagram. While there are numerous studies regarding the best times of the day and best days of the week for posting, ideally, you should establish what works the best for you. Posting at the times when your followers are most active increases the chances of your posts getting noticed. Since most people favor predictability over surprises, you should attempt to maintain a consistent posting schedule- try to post at the same time and on the same days of the week so that followers can align their expectations accordingly. Car dealers starting on Instagram may find the task of getting followers a tough one. They can invest a small sum to buy real Instagram followers from social media marketing agencies specializing in this.
Keep the Content Fresh
One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make is to keep on posting the same kind of content or even the same image with different captions. Instagram users expect to see fresh and new content all the time on their feeds, and if they see the posts being repeated, it puts a question mark on the credibility of the business. Even though as a car dealer who is looking to raise the number of inquiries and drive sales, it is important to note that Instagram is better used as a platform for raising brand awareness and boosting engagement, not selling.
You can focus on engaging followers with content regarding a variety of car ownership aspects, issues, and concerns. Tips on how to extract the best performance from your car, simple DIY maintenance tips, how to choose cars, tires, batteries, etc. as well as information on new car launches, safety, and pollution concerns, car travelogues, etc. are content that car lovers appreciate and will love you for. While the occasional sales post is okay, you should never appear to be pushy. According to Forbes, telling stories that followers can relate to is better than pushing products.
Boost the Level of Engagement
To raise the level of engagement, you can publish interaction posts. These are specially designed to encourage users to respond with likes, comments, and shares. Getting followers to engage with you is not only important from the point of community building but also because inactive followers, will in many cases, stop seeing your posts in their feeds as many social media algorithms now stop displaying them in user feeds. Holding contests, opinion polls, or simply asking them to post their content with a specific hashtag works very well to raise engagement. Another good tactic for encouraging engagement is to respond to queries, complaints, and observations by your followers promptly. It is important to offer genuine responses and not used bot-based responders that put out standardized responses that can turn off followers. The quicker you respond with high-quality answers, the better it is for building your brand credibility and authenticity. It is also important to have a set of guidelines ready on how to answer common questions as your answers should not differ from case to case.
Conclusion
Car dealers need to go all out on social media to promote their dealerships, acquire followers, and engage them to build a loyal community. However, they need to keep in mind that Instagram can only be a part of their overall strategy to build brand awareness and drive sales. To get the most of the Instagram marketing campaigns, they should take the time to plan it out properly and execute it perfectly.
