Building trust with your customers is an aspect of automotive marketing that every dealer needs to focus on. When your customers have a strong level of trust in your staff and your services, marketing is much more effective. It is easier to grow loyalty, attract new customers, make sales, and bring in repeat business.
Building trust is a process, and it involves a lot of communication between your staff and your customers. Learning to effectively manage all this communication is essential for success. An automated dealer communication solution enables you to manage all your communication from a single central location. It also makes everyday communication efficient and personalized for each customer, helping to build trust and increase loyalty.
First and Foremost, Protect Customer Information
Customers want their important personal information kept safe and secure. It goes without saying that you should never rent or sell any customer contact information to advertisers or third party companies. A breach of trust that serious will destroy established relationships with customers and damage your reputation, making it more difficult to attract new customers.
However, protecting customer information goes beyond simply not misusing it. You also need to ensure that you are accessing it in a way that is safe and beneficial for customers. Selecting a dealer communication solution with solid security measures in place is important.
If you have many different staff members who work on customer communication, set up subaccounts, also known as multi-user accounts, in your dealer communication solution. Subaccounts allow different staff members to work on communication campaigns with varying levels of permissions. The main account holder sets the permissions for each user. This gives you complete control over which staff members can access customer data and complete certain actions.
You also need a dealer communication solution which will only access the specific fields of information that it requires in order to send personally relevant messages. The solution can be set up to access whatever fields you specify, so that customers get messages that are targeted for their individual needs.
Ensure that You Have Customer Permission to Send Messages
Sending your customers messages that they don’t want to receive is a great way to quickly erode trust. Whether you’re sending out emails, text messages, or voicemails, always get explicit customer permission first.
A sign-up form on your website, social media pages, or in your dealership is a simple yet effective way to get permission to send messages. Once a customer signs up to receive messages, you can focus on sending them messages that will be relevant for their needs. If a customer asks you to stop sending messages or unsubscribes, remove them from your communication list as soon as possible. Good sending practices contribute to higher customer satisfaction rates and build trust in your dealership.
Communicate with Customers Based on Their Personal Needs
Personalized customer service and care has been shown to increase customer trust and encourage repeat business. When a customer receives excellent customer care, they will return to that dealership for business even if it is more expensive or farther away than another dealership.
An automated dealer communication solution enables you to connect personally with each of your customers. You already have all the relevant information for each customer. An automated solution pulls this information in order to send personally relevant messages to each customer.
Personal customer care lets your customers know that you are focused on their needs and interests. Using automation, it is simple and quick to create ongoing personalized campaigns for each of your customers. Messages are sent to customers reminding them of their upcoming appointments, notifying them that their car is due for maintenance, offering them a special promotion on their birthday or informing them if their vehicle is recalled.
Sending out regular customer surveys allows you to learn even more about what your customers need. You can use this information to further personalize messages. Being able to send individually targeted messages to each customer automatically is a process that was once only a dream of dealers. With an automated dealer communication solution, this type of targeted communication is possible and effective. You don’t have to add time to your workday, yet you still reach every customer in a personal way that was not possible just a few years ago.
Share Your Knowledge and Customer Success Stories to Attract New Business
To attract new customers consistently, you have to build up a great reputation. Online automotive marketing on social media is a surprisingly effective way to bring in new business. Many potential customers visit dealership websites and social media pages before they visit the actual dealership. If you have active social media pages with excellent content, visitors will immediately engage with your dealership.
An automated dealer communication solution manages your social media pages for you so you don’t have to spend the time to do it manually. Post content that is interesting to your visitors and also content that shows your knowledge. You want to balance educational content with fun interactive content for best results.
Educational content includes buying guides, customer reviews (excellent for building trust), vehicle maintenance suggestions, white papers, articles and so on. Posting educational content tells visitors that you have solid automotive knowledge and builds trust and confidence in your dealership. Customers will feel safe making a purchase or taking their vehicles to your for maintenance because you really know what you’re doing.
Fun, interesting content includes contests, promotions, videos and pictures, customer success stories, coupons and so on. This type of content gets customers directly involved with your dealership. This content is also highly likely to be shared on social media, which increases the amount of people who will view your message.
With an automated dealer communication solution, you can easily schedule content which will post over time. Automated social media management keeps your pages up to date and keeps visitors coming back. Great content builds trust in your services and makes visitors likely to convert into customers.
Trust Never Goes Out of Style
Some automotive marketing strategies come and go with time. As new trends pop up, dealers try to jump on the bandwagon and appear current to their customers. Building trust through communication is a strategy that will never get old. No matter what methods you use to communicate now and in the future, your customers will always appreciate personalized communication.
If you strive to meet customers’ needs and listen to their concerns, trust will come naturally. Sharing your knowledge on social media and sending messages that appeal to each customer’s personal needs all feed into creating trust. Building customer trust and loyalty ensures that your dealership continues to succeed and attract new customers.
