How Online Marketing Will Help You Sell More Cars

Pankaj Patel, CEO, Carazoo.com

Online Marketing is rapidly growing in India, especially in the Automobile Industry. The reasons are not difficult to understand given the following facts:

▪	More than 66% of New Car Buyers first visit the internet before they even step into a car showroom.
▪	Google India reported that auto related searches jumped by 87% with nearly 25 million searches conducted per month.
▪	Cell phone and Internet usage is increasing day by day. Once the 3G services commence, many of these cell phones would have fast Internet access. Due to this, even Tier 2 and 3 towns would be able to access Internet easily.
▪	The phenomenal success of social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut, YouTube and Twitter have made them great channels for online marketing.
▪	Automobile manufacturers in India have increased their overall media spend on internet from 1-2% to nearly 10%.

 
Online Marketing has various components: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Marketing (SMM), email marketing, mobile marketing, etc. A correct combination of these components can bring great success to your dealerships.

First of all, get a website, if you don't have one. Please remember that a website is not a brochure or a visiting card! It is a business tool to be used to generate more business, which in your case is to Sell More Cars! Your website should be attractive, easy to use and offer to visitors all the information they might need. If you can offer them a "virtual touch and feel" of cars, that would be even better.

Then go for Online Marketing of your website. Although, success can be gauged by various parameters, for business people, what is important is "bottomline". Since website by itself can't sell cars, it can do the next best thing - get more leads/inquiries, which if aggressively followed-up, will definitely result in higher conversion of leads to actual car sales.

The Goal of Online Marketing is to drive quality traffic to your website, sustain it, generate more leads, leading to eventual conversion while simultaneously driving down cost of conversion. It also helps in long term dealership brand building and acts as the "General Manager" of your website.

The advantages of Online Marketing are:

1.	Very cost effective (more than any other medium such as newspapers, radio, TV, hoardings, etc.).
2.	Easy to measure and monitor (can easily track the effectiveness of the efforts put in Online Marketing).
3.	Easily calculate the Return on your Investment (ROI).
4.	Get quick results.

 
Ideally, car dealerships should put aside around 10% of their monthly advertising spend for Online Marketing of their websites and try it out for 3 months to ascertain the effectiveness. This way, without spending extra rupee, you can determine how relevant and successful it is for you.

If done properly, Online Marketing will help dealerships sell more cars. In fact, in my experience with car dealerships in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, every single dealership experienced drastic increase in website visitors and leads month after month. Some of them have become case studies.

Note: For further information on how Online Marketing can HELP YOU SELL MORE CARS, Pankaj Patel can be contacted at: pankaj@carazoo.com