2018 web trends for the automotive industry

Published in Autojournal in February 2018

5 predictions for the automotive industry

When it comes to digital marketing, it's important to always be on top of things.

With 2017 now behind us I offer my five predictions for 2018 so you can quickly adjust.

1. Search engine marketing is here to stay

Although this type of marketing will soon be over 18 years old, it is still the fastest type of marketing to generate ROI. While fake news on major news websites is on the rise and Facebook is apologizing and promising to fix the social network, Google and its search engine, still offers a flawless experience with a well-functioning advertising model. In addition, because of the measures it has put in place to ensure the quality of ads, user confidence is still high.

Google is adding more and more ad extensions and the Google My Business integration is getting better and better. This means that SEM (Search Engine Marketing) will continue to be one of the main drivers of digital marketing campaigns.

2. Content marketing is losing ground

One of the big trends for digital marketing was to create content to position our brand well organically in search engines or to increase its presence on social networks. While this type of marketing is still useful, its perceived value is significantly decreasing. There is too much content online, consumers are inundated with often irrelevant content. If you are developing your brand strategy, try to create pieces of content that are out of the ordinary. There is no need to produce two blog posts a week that are boring to read. The future is in online brand experiences, give your current and potential customers interactive experiences like online video or canvas on Facebook For example, during the launch of the VW Atlas. The marketing team created a canvas that showed us the new model in an interactive way.

3. Communication between brands and customers is now the norm

Brand image, or could we call it brand experience today, is about the communications between a brand and its customers. The phone used to be the medium of choice, now customers have many ways to communicate with a brand, probably even too many. As a brand you need to control these communication channels, monitor them and make sure users get their questions answered. Here is a short list of the different communication channels to monitor for your brand

• Facebook (Page & Messenger offers you two-way communication methods)

• Google My Business now offers the possibility to communicate in the form of a chat

• Live chat on a website is becoming more and more important. Consumers appreciate this method of communication.

We also notice that consumers prefer to write rather than talk. This trend, which is linked to the great popularity of messaging applications, must be well understood by dealerships and well-deployed tools.

4. Your local positioning is important

As a dealership, the manufacturer does 90% of the work to promote your new vehicles. The "build & price" section on the manufacturers website is by far the most visited and used. This means that the consumer now already knows what model they want. Once they've made their buying decisions, the next step is to find out where they can get the vehicle. Take care of your local positioning, especially "Google My Business". Customers who have made their purchase decision as to the type of vehicle they want usually visit 4-5 dealerships and these people will simply do a local search on a search engine. Make sure you have a presence! It's also important to gear your Google Adwords and other campaigns to this behavior.

5. Your customer service defines your brand

The term customer service is old. It has been around for as long as commerce has existed and even before that. It takes on another dimension with the proliferation of opportunities for consumers to review businesses online. You can invest tens of thousands of dollars in advertising and receive a bad online review with a very bad comment and lose hundreds of potential sales. Your online reputation is at the mercy of online consumers and this trend is only becoming more pronounced. As with point #3, it is important to keep track of your online review scores and associated comments.

In 2018, take a step back and conduct an audit of your dealership and its "online presence." Remember, the Internet is now old. It has reached a certain maturity. This is the best time to evaluate your media mix and properly position your brand for the changes that are coming.