Are you a car dealer & would like to know how to increase sales?

#1. Website

You should have a website where people can find you and 

#2. Popular Directories

You should be in the main directories, like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Localist or Gopher.

There might be a lot other ones out there. Please just make a search on Google for: “directories nz” or similar. Being present online is vital if you want to be found in the world wide web.

Building a website is an easy step to take. If you do not have any online marketing or web development expertise, just hire somebody. Nowadays building a small or medium sized webpage will not involve too high costs. Getting your company in directories is also not a “BIG” science. Often you can just give those “directory sites” a phone call and they will help you through the way.

#3. Natural Search

Next step that you could consider is to rank for certain keywords in the search engine. For example if somebody makes a search for “new cars” or “used cars nz” it might be valuable for you to be found on Google. People who are searching for a car dealer, might find you there and give you a phone call or visit you at your car yard. Of course, for many car dealers the problem starts exactly here. How do you rank well in the search engine and which efforts do you have to put in to rank, let’s say on Google’s first page? If you are a car dealer and don’t have any knowledge about ranking well in Google (also referred to as: search engine optimisation or SEO) you will have a tough time figuring out how to do it. In the meanwhile you probably could have sold 20 cars.

Why?

Because SEO is an own science and if you are trying to rank on Google’s first page you will have quite a few competitors who are trying to do the same. So, either you leave it and try to promote your business in another way or you take a reasonable amount of budget into your hands and ask a digital marketing company for help. In general, if you are offering a good service and doing a great job as a car dealer, being honest and trustworthy then on the long go you will attract more and more customers to your business without being present in a search engine also, but this will take a while and you will miss-out reaching a lot of people.

#4. Paid Search

If you are in a directory you will at least be present online a tiny bit. If you are trying to rank for certain keywords in Google’s Search Engine and rank at a prominent position, it is likely you will have lots of customers showing up at your business. Another effective way to promote your business is through Google paid advertising (also named:  Search engine marketing or SEM). But setting up an ad on Google might not be too easy as well. To make it a bit more clear. An ad will be set up in an own interface, named Google AdWords, you have to create a gmail account for that first, you can do that here: https://accounts.google.com, or if you have an account already you can log into your AdWords Account here: https://adwords.google.co.nz/um/StartNewLogin and set up a campaign there. As mentioned, it is not that easy to make it right.

As we have carried out a report for the New Zealand market where we show how car dealers are ranking in New Zealand, we have written this post here. We have also included a consumer survey asking Kiwis what they perceive as important when hiring a car or where they typically search for a new car. If you are interested just read more on our website or download the full report for free. We would be happy to assist you, if you are just curious and want to know where your company is ranking, also fine.

You can find our report + consumer survey here or if you would like to receive some additional information about SEM,SEO in our blog. We hope the above hints helped you too.