Instagram, where a picture can lead to a thousand words and likes. In terms of your car dealership, your Instagram profile can be an invaluable tool to promote your message, brand, and inventory. When done properly, you can grow a huge organic following.
However, it’s more involved than opening Instagram on your phone and posting a picture with a slick caption. Having a strategy that helps you grow your brand, your reach, your leads, and your awareness, can help you better position your car dealership against your competitors.
What to Include in Your Instagram Account
Your Profile
If you already have an account, that’s tremendous. If you don’t have one yet, you’ll want to set up a business profile to get started. In your profile, include your dealership’s location(s), what you specialize in, your phone number, a link to your website, and a hashtag your business will use each time you share a post. The link you include in your profile should be a designated page so you can track how many visitors are coming to your website via Instagram and make sure your resources and time are turning into leads.
The Content
Once your profile is optimized, you’ll need to start posting content. Don’t just share pictures of your building and your cars. That’s what everyone else does. You need something that will get a user to stop scrolling to look at what you shared.
Create a strategy and determine how you can position your brand better than your competitors. This should include unique photos of your cars, video descriptions of your vehicles, spotlight employees, and highlight your dealership and how it’s better than your competitors. Be unique!
Hashtaging
Hashtags can be an extremely powerful tool to help you grow your following. They can also be overutilized and drive people away. Your hashtag strategy should include research and a few very broad tags along with some very specific ones. While you can have up to 30 hashtags, it’s recommended to use less than 15 to not detract users from your actual content. To get some ideas about your hashtags, use Google Keyword Planner. This will share relatable keywords that people use when searching for a specific topic.
The hashtags you use shouldn’t only be about the content itself, include the hashtag your dealership decided upon. This way when people share pictures of the new vehicle they purchased from you, they can tag you in their post. This will boost your recognition and also the following associated with your dealership’s hashtag.
In addition to your hashtags, you can tag certain brands, people, manufacturers, in your post and work with them to cross-promote your brands. Working with manufacturers to promote products in your post can lead to them sharing your posts which can lead to more views.
For example, if you share a picture of a new Chevy Camaro, you might want to include #chevy, #camaro, #chevycamaro, #thecolor, #speed, #sportscar, #yourdealershipsname, @camarao, @camarolover, @goodyear.
Instagram Stories
Instagram stories are a great feature that allows you to share content that lives on your account for up to 24 hours. You could share pictures of who purchased a vehicle that day, how beautiful the weather is at your location, fun activities your dealership has. Stories can be shared by accounts who are tagged in it and you can also include hashtags in your post. This is a great way to create easy, consistent content to show users you’re fun, creative, and consistent.
Paid Instagram Ads
If you want to use paid Instagram ads, you’ll need to go through Facebook Ads Manager. Instagram has over 1 billion users and is one of the most effective ways to showcase your brand if you have a limited marketing budget. You can target specific types of users, market to users in a specific location, increase overall awareness of your dealership, and utilize hashtags to increase exposure for users who are interested in purchasing a car.
Similar to Facebook ads, Instagram ads have different types of advertising options to effectively utilize a small budget.
Boost Your Car Dealership’s Instagram Profile
Creating an Instagram account is relatively easy. Where many brands struggle is creating an effective profile with consistent content. Many creators find themselves falling into content fatigue where they want to post anything and everything and eventually reshare content that didn’t perform well initially.
Market Doctors is a premier digital marketing agency for car dealerships and our goal is to help you increase your brand’s awareness, market share, customer acquisition, and increase leads.
Ready to take your Instagram account to the next level? We’ll help you get kick-started today!
Recent Comments