10/20/2020
Keys to Creating Effective Car Dealership Landing Pages
Creating a great landing page isn’t complex but if this is your first rodeo, it is helpful to have some pointers so you can get started with a strong foundation!
Great landing pages do 2 things at the same time
- Great landing pages promote a unique offering your dealership wants to promote
- Great landing pages provide value to your customer
While it’s important that your car dealership landing page looks good and is designed well, it’s more important that you are solving a problem for your customer.
Now that we’ve established some high level goals of a landing page, let’s dive in and break it down a bit more.
What is a landing page and why should I care?
The goal of a great car dealership landing page is to increase conversion rates in order to reach your marketing- or business-oriented goals. A landing page can be any page on your website, but it’s easier to track conversions when your landing page is a stand-alone page created for a specific campaign, sale, or product.
Your homepage is usually a brochure of all the offerings on your website and typically requires the customer to make a decision. Your homepage can be found through search, word of mouth, or social media.
The homepage above has a few call to actions (CTAs) that require the customer to make a decision. They need to decide between “Value Your Trade”, “Browse New Vehicles”, or “Search anything”. While the CTAs point to specific things, the customer is left to choose their own adventure, which is great for a homepage.
On the flip side, a landing page typically has a singular focus and a specific entry point from an ad campaign or marketing effort so that you can measure results and determine if it’s successful or not. See below:
The landing page above has a single call to action which prompts the customer for their First Name and Email Address to claim a $1000 trade in value to lower their payment. The value is clear. The customer is guided on what to do and it’s serving the car dealership’s business goal of selling cars as well as acquiring customer information for marketing.
4 benefits of effective car dealership landing pages
Conversions
As mentioned above, having an effective landing page for your car dealership will increase conversions and earn you more sales. If your landing page has enticing CTAs that get viewers to click or learn more, then you are one step closer to making a sale.
SEO Ranking
When your landing pages are enhanced with SEO friendly content, your pages and website will rank higher in Google search results. What this means is that you will get more traffic to your website when people search for car dealerships in your area.
Promote an upcoming promotion, event or sale at your car dealership
When you have an effective landing page that is ranking in searches and reaching a higher volume of traffic, you’ll be able to gain more awareness for upcoming promotions, events, or sales that are occurring at your dealership. An effective landing page makes marketing more effective.
Make the car buying process more efficient
Who doesn’t want a seamless car buying experience? Effective landing pages can streamline the car buying process by easily directing users to the types of vehicles they are interested in, financing options, deals, and more. If your audience can easily navigate through your website from a landing page, they are more likely to make a purchase and feel less overwhelmed.
“There isn’t a one size fits all approach to effective landing pages.”
Unlike cars themselves, there isn’t an owner’s manual that aids in the creation of the perfect car dealer landing page. Each landing page should be as different as the customer’s visiting your site. Each with a different call to action, business goal, customer in mind, as well as a different offering or to address a specific need.
10 common elements that make up highly effective landing pages
1. Enticing Headline
Creating a headline that not only gives viewers a clear picture of what the page is about but is also enticing will keep viewers on your page and interested in reading more. Not to mention, having a heading that is also SEO-friendly will help boost your page in searches.
2. Reinforcing Subhead
A subhead is a great way to expand a little more on what your landing page is about while reinforcing your headline. A good subhead will keep readers interested to read or explore more.
3. Pictures or Graphics
While copy can boost your Google ranking when using keywords and SEO-friendly content, having pictures and graphics on your landing page will provide a visual element that is appealing and keeps the interest of your audience. You are more likely to catch the attention of your audience by showing them images of the cars and specs you are referring to.
4. Clarify the Offering with an Explanation
If you are offering a sale or promotion for your dealership, be sure to explain what that offer includes, excludes, and any other relevant information. If your audience feels as if they can get all the information they need from reading what is on your site, they will be more likely to take part in whatever is being offered.
5. Identify the Customer’s Pain Point
If you can name a potential issue or pain point that a majority of car buyers face, then your audience will feel like you understand their needs and wants. Whether it be mentioning the stress of the car buying process or the hassle hassles customers can face when it comes to securing financing, setting your dealership up to be the potential solver to their problems will keep them on your page and reading more.
6. Solve the Pain Point
Not only is it important to identify a potential problem or pain point, but it is also important to show how your dealership provides the solution. If you are identifying that securing financing for a car purchase can be a hassle. Outline how your sales team can get customers competitive financing rates and make the process less complicated.
7. Method of Contacting Your Dealership
Making it clear all the ways your dealership can be reached will help customers to feel like they can easily get the assistance they need. By being specific on the best ways to contact each department depending on their specific needs will encourage customers to make the call, text, or message that can result in a sale.
8. A Guarantee
Showing your customers that you believe in what you do and will back up what you are offering gives them the extra reassurance they need to know that their business is valued. If you clearly state why and how you stand behind what you sell, they are more likely to believe it too.
9. Single Clear Call to Action
Make it simple. If your landing page’s call to action is to view new or used cars, secure financing, contact the dealership, or learn more about upcoming sales, make the call to action coincide. If you have multiple calls to action on the same landing page, it can be overwhelming and can misdirect your audience. The call to action should follow what the page is about.
6 Tips to Create High Converting Car Dealership Landing Pages
1. Choose the best platform to build your landing page
Many website builders tools exist for you to create your own site if you are in the DIY mood. Each with their own level of difficulty and setup time. You can take a look at Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, etc. and you would be off to a great start.
However, here at Luminary2 we have created SPACE to help your dealership do this faster and better while removing the heavy lifting so you can get back to doing what you do best, selling cars!
No matter how you build your dealership landing pages, you’ll want to have access to analytics so you can measure your results, keep track of page views, time on site and click through rates.
2. Exceed your customer’s expectations
Answer customer’s questions like “What is in this for me?” or “Why should I care?”
The answer to your customer’s question should be the most prominent thing on your page. Like your explanation, your value proposition doesn’t need to stand alone, it can exist amongst other elements on your page, just remember to maintain focus on one objective.
This should not be centered around your dealership, nobody cares about who you are unless you are solving a pain point that they are personally experiencing. Once you have established trust with the customer they will show more interest in your dealership because you are scratching an itch that they have.
Here is a bad example where the dealership’s needs come first:
“Our Car Dealership has over 200 vehicles to choose from.”
Good example where the customer’s needs come first:
“Find the perfect car from our inventory of 200+ vehicles.”
3. Keep it simple
Do not pack the page with information. Options paralysis is real and the more information or design elements you have on the landing page, the more decisions you are forcing your customer to make, this can be overwhelming and unintuitive.
The simpler your landing page design, the easier it is for your customer to navigate and hopefully convert.
This is why it’s important to get to the point quickly and then get out of the way.
4. Reinforce credibility with social proof
Car dealerships can reinforce their credibility with a customer testimonial or by displaying the number of customers that have redeemed the offer you are proposing to them.
People are more likely to purchase something if it has been recommended to them online or in person from someone they know.
That’s why testimonials work, they show you another happy human who already purchased the thing they are looking at!
5. Video as a sales tool
People like seeing people. We trust faces over machines and what better way to get customers to trust your dealership than a video from someone who works there?
Videos can be as simple or complex as you make them. Most viral content online isn’t highly polished and this adds a layer of humanity to the content. So bust out your phone, get in front of the camera and explain why this is valuable to me as your customer.
Sell cars while your actual sales force is asleep or on vacation!
6. Test, test, test your landing pages
Websites are living, breathing organisms that require maintenance much like vehicles needing an inspection or work done. In order to keep your site running and customers happy, it’s good to have insights from under the hood.
This is why it’s important to measure the success of your landing pages. Over time a landing page’s conversion rate might change and analytics will help identify what’s working, what’s not, and how to fix it.
The Secret to Effective Automotive Landing Pages
An effective car dealership landing page is a place where your dealership’s marketing efforts come to fruition! Customers arrive on the digital “lot” and click, buy, or join email lists for future promotions so you can gain revenue!
As always, we are here to help if you get stuck along the way. We believe in you!
