There is a particular talent to meshing a brick-and-mortar business with an online marketing plan. It’s one that many — particularly in the automotive industry — fail to get right. Sure, there are plenty of avenues for advertising special events, but how many of them are effective?
I’m not going to downplay the importance of TV and radio ads (in fact, we can help write the copy for those commercials), but these days, they only make up half of the equation. An online presence and a plan of attack are vital to the success of your business and all your promotional events.
The most important audience to keep informed is, beyond a doubt, your social media following. Today, I’m going to show you how to use a comprehensive content strategy to tap into your social audience(s) and get people in the door. Ready to learn how? Keep reading…
All Content Matters
When I say, “comprehensive content strategy,” it involves everything you’re doing right now and probably more. How many of these do you already have in place?
• A consistent email marketing plan
• A PRWeb-compliant press release
• A well-written, regularly updated blog
• A regularly published newsletter
• Custom video and visuals
For the remainder of this piece, I’m going to go through each of those items in turn and explain why they’re important and how you should be using them. If you want the whole truth, there isn’t room to leave out any of the above items out if you want to succeed on social media.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an important social media strategy for several reasons. It can be produced quickly and is easy to create and publish. It also helps you keep your brand in front of customers and leads. It is also a powerful lead nurturing tool.
When used effectively, email can help rally your social media audience around your event. I will get into how email integrates with other types of content as we go, but it does serve a couple specific purposes on its own.
First, it provides a direct way to market the event. Some of your audience will never engage with you beyond email, so don’t be afraid to give the who, what, where, and when right away in this instance. Second, with a powerful call to action, you can get readers to click through to see more related content. This is your cue to direct them to your social media page(s) where information and excitement about the event are already circulating.
Press Releases
Every event should have its own press release. Use informative, journalistic language, and do not attempt to sell anything beyond attendance of the event. You can sneak some editorial content into a press release, but it must come in the form of direct quotes or be attributed to an outside speaker. I highly recommend getting familiar with PRWeb guidelines, as the format provides a fast track for swift propagation.
You can also link out to related press releases in an email blast. Since it is difficult to get people to follow more than one call to action, link out to the press release in emails, then link to your most important social media page in the press release. Oh, and Facebook is not the “most important” social network for every business. Some of the others can actually be more effective. Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest are stellar networks for promoting car sales, for example.
Blog Content
Another important tool in your marketing strategy leading up to an event is your blog. You can easily begin steering people’s thoughts toward buying a car if you simply put out a lot of content about buying a car close to the date of the event.
Start a few weeks before and tackle subjects like:
• Why Buying a New (or Used) Car Is Your Best Bet
• How to Get the Best Price for a New (or Used) Car
• Understanding the Car-Buying Process
• Blue Book Values: What Do They Mean?
• Why You Should Buy Your Next Car This Spring (or Summer, or Fall …)
All of the above get people thinking about buying. You can even go as far as writing the event details into your CTA: “Like us on Instagram and Twitter and be sure to join us for our spring sales event May 11–13!”
You can promote blog content with email blasts that direct readers to your social networks. From there, use your social posts to link to the actual content on your website. This helps engage your social audience(s) and generate some good off-page SEO.
Newsletters
Newsletters and press releases are closely related in the content arena with the key difference being their respective levels of formality. Newsletters can afford to be a bit warmer and friendlier. You can also do more self-promotion in an email-delivered newsletter than in a press release, which helps nurture leads and build trust by showing your dealership’s human side.
Video and Visuals
Also, in the weeks leading up to the event, producing some candid video content is a great idea. Show the dealership prepping and planning. Build up excitement over time. The excitement can spread like wildfire on social media when it’s backed by the right promotion and attitude. The same promotional strategies discussed above work for video, as does having other custom visual content to compliment them.
You can use the corresponding stills to promote the videos on your social channels. Video can also be incorporated into blog content or be at the center of an email blast. Always make social media a checkpoint for events since that is where people gather. In other instances, it might be safer and easier to bypass social media and direct unique site traffic, but events are not among them. Always go through social channels to promote anything that involves people getting together.
Put It All Together
All of the above creates an effective recipe for successful event promotion. If you still have questions or need help with any auto sales content creation needs, BeezContent has your back. Contact us today to find out how we can help you promote your next event for maximum success.
