Even though customers flock to car dealerships to view and select their preferred cars, part of the purchasing process has now shifted online. Customers begin their car purchase process online then go from there. As such, dealerships and car rentals need to be diligent with their online presence.

Fortunately, you can establish a solid online presence to capture leads and nurture them until they’re ready to visit the physical shop with the right strategies. Here are five practical tips for lead generation for car dealers and car rental firms.

1. Upgrade Your Website

Your old, slow, crowded website won’t cut it in the competitive online world. Your website should look credible and trustworthy, feel interactive and provide valuable information while remaining functional and predictable. Consider the following when designing a site for vehicle purchase or car rental lead generation.

●  Create a fast, responsive website available on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.

●  Create a great user experience through clean designs. Use plenty of white space, simple typefaces, deep shadows on icons, limited and consistent color palettes, and limited choices on each space to help visitors focus.

●  Make navigation as easy as possible. Group products into easily identifiable categories and use navigation bars and buttons.

●  Add all relevant contact details and contact forms on each page so that customers don’t have to go back to your contact page to reach you.

●  Show your dealership’s location by syncing it with Google Maps. You should mention your location and attach specific phone numbers and emails to those locations.

●  Add your opening hours to contact details. 

●  Use clear, professional, high-definition photos from different angles that display all important parts of the vehicle.

●  Improve your site’s interactivity by adding calculators for payment plans. A calculator may include sections such as vehicle price, interest rate, payment period, and down payment. For a car rental, the calculator may include sections like pickup date, return date, type of car, insurance level, and extras.

●  Besides offering appointments, have buttons for book a service, book a test drive, and get quotes. If possible, have these options available on each page.

●  Use chatbots and live chats to help visitors find and access information quickly.

2. Offer Valuable Content In Exchange for Contacts

Lead generation aims to collect contacts, then use the contacts to reach out and convert leads into paying customers. However, people won’t just offer their contact information. You need to give them value in exchange for their contact details.

For a dealership, the valuable information may include details about vehicles available for sale, including their price, model, transmission, fuel type, engine capacity, and carrying capacity. You can also share tips for selecting vehicles based on specific needs and recommend fuel-efficient cars for prospects concerned about fuel spending and sustainability.

Create content that shares definitive answers to prospects’ questions. Where it’s impossible to provide a definitive answer, show the prospect some of the factors and processes involve before deciding, and invite them to your dealership for further discussion.

Use your content to solve problems. For example, if a client cannot find time to visit your physical location and view a car, offer virtual tours. You can also create video content where your dealers dive into all necessary details about cars. Informative videos have high engagement, and encourage prospects to share the content with their audiences on social media, further marketing your business.

3. Optimize Landing Pages

You may fail to achieve your car rental firm lead generation targets due to poorly designed landing pages. A landing page displays your value proposition and encourages leads to sign up. Here are six elements to consider for an optimized landing page:

●  Have a clear, actionable headline that addresses the landing page's purpose.

●  Use social proof such as trust budges from manufacturers, certificates, and customer reviews to show that you are a trustworthy car dealership or rental business.                                                                                    

●  Use one CTA based on the function of the landing page. However, you can also use different buttons at the bottom or top of the page to direct customers to other desired landing pages. For example, Enquire Now, Book Now, View Cars, or Book Test Drive.

●  Optimize your landing page copy for SEO. For example, if you sell vehicles in New Jersey, include the keywords New Jersey Car Dealership in your headline, URL, meta description, image alt text, and content body.

●  Use exit pop-ups to capture visitors that want to leave the page. You can also ask for the visitor’s email and encourage them to leave a query before clicking the exit button to leave your site.

4. Run an Effective PPC Campaign

Drive traffic to your website and social media pages by running Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and Twitter ads. Make sure each ad is clear, concise, and delivers value. Use quality images, clear and actionable copy, and keywords. Remember to use brand colors, logos, and accurate contact details.

In addition, if you add a link to a landing page, make sure it’s optimized. Don’t lose leads to poorly-designed landing pages that don’t offer valuable information or burden visitors with navigation challenges.

5. Manage Lead Data

Tracking multiple leads on the internet can quickly turn into a nightmare without the right structures and tools. Fortunately, automation reduces your workload and helps you track leads through different points of interaction with your business.

For example, Responser helps you automate contact forms and capture any information leads provide on your site, including those that abandon forms. With Responser, you can identify when leads abandon contact forms and find ways to optimize forms for completion. For example, you can add a progress bar or progress circle.

With automatic lead qualification, your team can choose when to recapture a lead or abandon them to avoid wasting resources. Furthermore, you can filter your leads based on location and channels to identify which strategies yield the highest ROI for your business and where you should adjust tactics. More importantly, you can make data-based decisions and track the impact of each lead strategy.

With these five tips, you can improve your car dealership and rental firm lead generation.

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