Cinch, Cazoo, carwow — there are now so many effortless ways for people to buy their dream vehicle without even stepping outside of their homes. In just a few clicks and short wait times, customers have their shiny new pride and joy parked outside, but that doesn’t mean local showrooms need to suffer a doomed fate.
It’s now time to get creative with your car dealership marketing ideas if you want your showroom to make an impact, increase sales and build loyalty. Here are some ideas you can try instantly.
1. Attention-Grabbing Billboards for Special Offers
How are you currently advertising your car dealership’s special offers? Posters, flyers and leaflets work to an extent, but you need to think bigger. In terms of physical marketing, it doesn’t get bigger than attention-grabbing billboards.
They’re impossible to miss by the public, whether they’re driving or walking. Design them so they’re instantly recognisable and to take it up a level, print the same designs and use them on banners, posters and flyers to maintain brand consistency.
2. Sponsored Decals
You want to show off a vehicle’s beauty to entice somebody into handing over their cash and driving away with their dream car. But that doesn’t mean the vehicle has to be plain. As you see on some of the most exciting sports cars, you could add decals and use them as a car dealership marketing idea.
Work with a print company that can help you design decals for either your showroom’s branding. Or if you work in partnership with another company and they’ll return the favour somehow, convert them into sponsorship decals to reach a wider audience and earn more in the process.
3. Gift Vouchers
How often do you come across a gift voucher in a car dealership? A lot of the focus tends to go on pre-sale and not as much on aftercare. Whether you advertise your gift vouchers through banners, posters or as part of the handover pack, a gift voucher inspires buyers to come back and buy anything from new tyres to a can of de-icer from you.
4. Car Detailing Campaigns
If there’s one thing that has boomed in the motor industry over the last couple of years, it’s car detailing. Professional valeting has evolved from a simple soak and rinse at a service station’s carwash. The products are better, the costs are higher and the methods are advanced. It’s premium and it’s something your car dealership should take advantage of.
Showcase offers for in-person or mobile car detailing services, which is what buyers are searching for as they want to keep their vehicles in pristine condition. It also reflects your brand in a great light, especially if you advertise this around your showroom. You never know; your promotions might have people coming in with their vehicles just for the car detailing, even if they didn’t buy the car from you.
That’s one way to build loyalty at any stage of the customer journey.
5. Kerbside Appeal
When people are walking or driving past your car dealership, it’s the forecourt that attracts them. If it’s sloppy and unorganised, nobody will give it a second look. Thankfully, there are plenty of car dealership marketing ideas to enhance your dealership’s kerbside appeal.
For starters, level up your forecourt’s game by strategically placing the cars in specific locations, adding LED lighting so it lights up the forecourt and advertises your dealership even when you’re asleep and regularly maintaining it.
In terms of marketing, incorporate events and seasons, whether it’s Christmas, Halloween or anything else that gets people excited. You can even have a new car spotlight and elevate it, so it’s an unmissable vehicle. Whatever you choose, make sure you promote it via print and digital methods to get the word out.
6. Giveaway Graphics
Probably the ultimate marketing and promotional idea — a giveaway. If you want leads and attract interest, giving away car fresheners isn’t going to do the trick. We aren’t saying you need to give away a Tesla every quarter, but giving away a car, new tyres, a driving experience, free MOT or serving for a year — anything along those lines — is a great marketing idea.
If you’re going big and ambitious, you need the promotional materials that match. Unmissable banners, signage, billboards and posters are great to draw attention. Then, to have visitors enter, you can add a display material like a raffle box for people to enter. Win-win.
7. Anniversary Celebrations
Celebrating your car dealership’s anniversary by emailing your loyal customers is, well, a little boring. You can use your anniversary celebrations as an innovative marketing idea by printing graphics to decorate the showroom with unique, stunning promotion ideas.
For instance, you could have your customers send pictures of vehicles they purchased from you and get them involved in the celebrations. You could work with a printer to create window graphics in eye-catching designs to celebrate. User-generated content is a great way to draw interest, especially when they realise they can flex a little as others notice their cars.
8. Custom Backdrops
Custom backdrops might seem like a minor addition, but many businesses are adopting them. With companies offering virtual services, the likes of Currys, Barclays and plenty of dealerships are now utilising custom backdrops because they offer video calls.
With the likes of Cinch and Cazoo being virtual, you can print custom backdrops and adopt virtual consultations to reach customers even if they aren’t physically in your dealership. Plus, your branding on the backdrops is essentially free advertising, even if the person on the other end isn't ready to buy.
9. Pre-loaded Gift Cards
Another excellent car dealership marketing idea is to give out pre-loaded gift cards. By working with a reliable print company, you can create a design to look like a gift card that incorporates your branding but also looks like a gift card they’d buy from any store. Whether it’s for fuel, a cheaper service, MOT or any other product you sell, a branded pre-loaded gift card is a nice touch (and a great marketing initiative).
10. Loyalty Programmes
The first time somebody steps into your car dealership, it’s the beginning of what could turn into a lifetime relationship. Don’t just focus on car dealership marketing ideas that drive buyers but also increase loyalty. In a showroom, that’s relatively easy.
Even if you’ve thought that a loyalty programme would never work, just think about how much upkeep and maintenance a vehicle needs. Your loyalty programme can revolve around offering repairs and other services, so they keep coming back to you.
The options are endless, too. Perhaps the most popular one is the reliable punchcard (both physical and digital) so customers never lose track.
11. Explore the Educational Side
Taking inspiration from what you’d usually find in places like the US, you could tap into a unique market you might have never considered before — education. Working with colleges gives you early and instant access to students looking to start their driving journey and pestering their parents to buy them a car.
You can get in there early. With student fairs and events, you can set up branded booths with plenty of physical marketing products. Brochures, catalogues, lanyards, merchandise — marketing materials that will help you stay front of mind with an eager-to-buy audience.
12. Consistent and Personalised Materials for Multiple Locations
Bigger car dealerships with multiple locations suffer from one similar problem: A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work when it comes to marketing. Some forecourts are bigger. Some have more vehicles; others have a wider audience to target and so on. But even though the same marketing doesn’t work for every location, your branding still needs to be consistent.
If you’re a franchise and have a car dealership in multiple locations, chances are you need a wide range of marketing materials so you can target your specific market effectively and get results. One way to achieve this is by using a service called Web2Print (W2P).
W2P is perfect for car dealerships to create consistent marketing products by using their own templates. That means you can create everything from newsletters, brochures, business cards and a lot more for your marketing efforts. As it’s all online, a W2P platform lets a card dealership like yours order whatever you need, whenever you need it — so you can say goodbye to mountains of stock usually left piling up in the staff room.
So, why is Web2Print perfect for car dealerships?
- Offers brand consistency: Regardless of where your car dealership is located and no matter how much each branch differs, you’ll get consistently branded marketing every time.
- Reduces time: As everything is available onscreen and requires approval, you don’t need to take the focus away from marketing your dealership and selling the vehicles.
- Reduces costs: You don’t need to order in bulk for your dealerships. It’s on-demand, so you’ll never have a wasteful inventory.
- Access from anywhere: Train. Office. Bedroom. Starbucks. You can place an order from wherever you are with no restrictions.
At B&B Press, our Web2print portal offers car dealerships the chance to print various marketing collateral with their own branding. Regardless of the showroom asset you want to create, our bespoke system can make it happen at a fraction of the cost but with quality always in mind.
Download Our Pricing Guide
Your car dealership and marketing goals are unique, so we want to offer you a bespoke print solution with a particular price catered to you. Check out our latest pricing guide to find out what we can do for your showroom and how much it’ll cost.
We’ve designed this pricing guide to help you understand how we price our bespoke, sustainable print solutions. Grab your copy below today to see how our team can help take your car dealership’s marketing material to a new level.
