Does Your Dealer Website Need a Blog?

To improve their website’s online presence many dealers try to find additional tools for their SEO, advertising, marketing, and dealer software implementation techniques. Some car merchants consider launching a dealer blog which can be of substantial help for website promotion but hesitate due to not knowing if it’s worth the effort. Thus, before making such a serious and responsible step to blogging, all website owners should ask themselves and answer the following questions:

• What will the dealer blog bring to my business?
• Will the blogging provide me with a competitive advantage?
• What problems may arise with blogging?
• Many dealers don’t take the opportunity to launch a corporate blog. Why?

Autoxloo, for its part, has found some possible answers to these questions and would like to share its views on blogging.

• What will the dealer blog bring to my business? A dealership which blogs on a regular basis, and posts interesting and timely articles will always have an audience and thus, customers. Other bloggers can talk, quote and refer to it in their posts. A distinguishing feature of blogging when compared to mass media is the ability to link to other websites. Media organizations can’t afford to advertise or even mention their rivals. But a corporate blog is not like a personal one where authors can make mistakes. A dealer blog is the face of your dealership and any flaws may have a negative effect on your business. A corporate blog makes your dealership wide open, vulnerable and unprotected because customers can read the articles about your inventory, services, dealership, etc. and make their own conclusions about you. Your competitors may fish out a word from the text and give it quite a different meaning. A blog should be an optional and passive instrument or a service presentation of your dealer business. It can contain any questions that car dealers have to answer every day.
• Will blogging provide me with a competitive advantage? If you compare dealers who do not have a blog to those that do, you will see that the latter have more customers. Why? It’s because dealers who use blogs reveal advantages, such as knowledge of the market (they monitor and publish statistics, surveys, etc.), the dealership’s working efficiency (a customer sees the professional touch there), articles about vehicles and services (they explain why people should buy these cars and be their clients), and reviews or recommendations from existing customers. When people subscribe to your blog, then you’ll see the benefits of blogging. A potential customer may only think about buying a car, but after reading several posts in your dealer blog a person can be 100% sure whether to choose your dealership and its vehicles or not. And naturally a car purchase from a blog owner is more likely in this case. Thus, the involvement of blog users at the early stages of the sales funnel is achieved.
• What problems may arise with blogging? The main problem with blogging is consistency. One person should not work on the corporate blog. It should be a combined effort. The second problem is editing. Each post should be approved by an examiner who will smooth out rough places in the text and edit the content for a target audience. And the third problem is a reader’s’ interest. People should widen their horizons with the blog posts. If customers get interested in your dealership’s activities, why would they unsubscribe from a blog which they like?
• Many dealers don’t take a chance to launch a corporate blog. Why? Almost every second sales people agree that blogging is a good chance for your dealership to stand out from the competition. However, not every dealer is ready to launch a blog because posts take up time which can be spent otherwise. The blog content should be written professionally by devoted writers and copywriters. Besides, it’s not easy to find topics and case studies to involve readers.

So here are some pros and cons of blogging:

Pros:

• Your dealership stands out from the others.
• You attract customers with interesting information. It’s the same as advertising in the mass media.
• You can tell a wide audience why your vehicles are better than others and refer them to your buyers’ recommendations.
• Blogging has a positive effect on the dealership’s reputation. Customers have a feeling that a dealership who constantly communicates with them is more honest.
• A blog helps you get quick feedback on some of the dealership’s actions.
• A blog gives you an opportunity to attract the attention of the mass media because it is convenient to quote a corporate blog.

Cons:

• It is necessary to keep blogging regularly.
• It’s hard to quit once you have started.
• It is vital to find interesting topics.
• A blog is your dealership’s face. Blog posts influence your business’s reputation. If a post is inappropriate your reputation may be damaged.

If you feel that you are ready to launch your dealership blog despite some of the challenges that go with it, follow some simple tips to make your blog effective to its maximum potential:

• Before starting a blog find good writers. It’s essential to have high quality content to satisfy your readers’ needs and to get top SERP positions by keywords.
• Find out whether your target audience reads blogs and surfs the web for target information. If not, there is not much use in blogging. Although you can always interest people and involve them in your business with impressive posts.
• Consider if your SEO campaign will benefit from blogging. A blog shouldn’t be the main SEO tool for your dealer website promotion. It can give you leads and yet push you aside from stronger marketing and SEO techniques.
• Work out a content plan. Your posts shouldn’t be random or focused on your dealership. Make your customers identify themselves with your articles.
• Monitor the statistics of your blog. Track the metrics of views, traffic, comments, shares, time on page, etc.

If you make the decision to start a blog, Autoxloo has prepared a special module for dealer websites which allows you to breathe life into all of your ideas, simply and easily. Contact us for details.