5 Effective SMS Marketing Strategies

5 Effective SMS Marketing Strategies for Car Dealers

Has your car dealership considered taking advantage of text message marketing? If not, you might be overlooking a very powerful lead generation resource. We’re sure you are familiar with SMS message marketing. You may already be using it, especially if you advertise in the local auto buyer magazine. But, are you using it on the showroom floor and online? Do after-hours visitors have the tools they need to easily supply you with their contact information and the specific vehicle they are interested in?

5 SMS Strategies for Car Dealers

SMS has some distinct advantages over traditional lead generation techniques. Perhaps the largest is that it’s an extremely inexpensive lead generation tool. Instead of paying thousands of dollars per month to lead aggregators you can use SMS to collect leads directly from prospects in your service area. Of course, this list is hardly exhaustive. Car dealers throughout the USA are using SMS messaging in a variety of unique and creative ways

Lead Generation

SMS leads come from prospects who are visiting your store, seeing your ads, and engaging with your social media.

How much are you paying for leads? Are those leads hyper-local? Real time? High quality? Valid? If not, SMS can definitely improve your lead generation process. SMS leads are generated from prospects in your immediate area. These are prospects who are visiting your store, seeing your ads, visiting your website, and engaging with your social media presence.

There’s a few ways to go about collecting leads via SMS. The easiest is to set up multiple keywords (e.g. one for each model) and have prospects opt-in to receive more info on that model. Another common method is to set up each vehicle with a keyword (usually the stock number) and collect leads on a per-vehicle basis. This takes a bit more effort to pull off, but your lead becomes very targeted.

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Service Offers and Specials

Your service center is probably offering a continuous stream of offers and specials. There’s also a pretty good chance that the same group of customers are the ones who repeatedly take advantage of those offers. If you want to make sure they are receiving your coupons, look beyond the mailer or the newspaper ad. Way beyond. Have your customers opt in to an SMS distribution list set up specifically to broadcast coupons, offers, specials, and deals straight from your service center. This works particularly well with routine maintenance services such as oil changes and brake inspections because not only does it deliver a coupon, it reminds the customer they need to get the work done.

Promote Events

Don’t wait for prospects to come to you. Place your message right in the palm of their hand.

Hosting an open house, new model launch party, fundraiser, or other event? SMS is the perfect promotional tool. Many of your best customers will be subscribed to your list and those are the same customers who are most likely to attend your event. But, they can’t attend if they don’t know about it and honestly, how often do you think your customers are visiting your website or your social media pages? Don’t wait for them to come to you. Place your message right in the palm of their hand, literally.

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Announce New Stock, Limited Availability, Etc.

Is your manufacturer about to release a highly anticipated new model? You can use SMS to keep interested prospects up-to-date with the latest news about the vehicle. You can also alert them when the vehicle becomes available for test drives, pre-order, purchase, or even invite interested prospects to a launch party. Speaking of, a pre-launch or a launch party is one of the best places to advertise your keyword and short code. A table tent on the dashboard of a hot new model will do wonders to drive signs-ups.

Announce Incentives/Rebates

Consumers want to get the best deal, which means shopping for incentives and rebates.

Incentives and rebates have become so prevalent that it’s pretty much an expected part of the transaction when it comes to buying a new car. Consumers want to get the best deal, which means shopping around for incentives and rebates. You can help them and yourself at the same time by pinging them with updates on new incentives and rebates. Every time your manufacturer releases new incentives data, just send out a text to your rebates list. Lists like this typically have a high churn rate. If the prospect isn’t in the market to buy a new car, there’s no reason to opt-in, right? But, those who are opted in are one step further along in the buying funnel. It’s an opportunity for you as a dealer and an opportunity for the customer.

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