Most PPC campaigns will need a series of videos and ads in order to nurture users through the digital sales funnel towards conversion, and the more high-stakes the purchase, the more campaigns are typically needed.

The automotive industry is a perfect example of this. If you want to buy a car, you’re not just going to see a single ad and start calling your local dealerships, even if it might feel like that’s the case once you’re finally ready to pick up the phone.

Instead, you’ve likely seen a series of campaigns over a long period of time that have slowly gained your trust and interested in a specific car make, model, or dealer. Then, after all of that, you finally see an ad that pushes you just over the edge and you head in for a test drive.

Because auto purchase sales involve so many touchpoints and can require more complex funnels, you’ll need multiple types of video content in order to best scale your dealership and effectively bring in new customers. In this post, we’ll take a look at the four types of car sales videos that you need to scale effectively.

Why Video?

When it comes to selling cars (or really just about anything), video is going to be your best friend. It can capture everything from the gleam of a fresh coat of paint to the excitement as that SUV flies around a corner with expert precision. It also makes it easy to add in your dealership’s brand voice and convey an enormous amount of information in a short, condensed time.

Video gives you the opportunity to run retargeting ads based on interest and watch time on Facebook, even if the users didn’t actually click or engage with the ad in any other way; just retarget users who watched at least half of your video and show them another, and keep that funnel moving.

Video also scales well, hopefully, right alongside your business. This is made easier with pre-made, customizable video templates that allow you to insert images, videos, and text to create a gorgeous, high-converting final product quickly. It’s the best way to scale a video ad campaign.

1. USP Branded Videos

Every dealership has something that makes them unique and immediately makes them appealing to their customer base. Maybe your Subaru dealership offers the best deals in the country, or warranties at the best price. Or maybe you just want to focus in on the advanced safety features or eco-friendliness of your newest car models, which are the very best in the industry.

Think about why your customers will want to purchase the specific cars that you’re selling. What’s the unique selling proposition (USP) that either the car makes and models have or that your specific dealership can offer? Is it price, value, safety, reliability, resale value? Create branded videos that focus on your dealership’s USP and use them to attract users early on in the funnel.

2. Car Model Breakdown Videos

Once users have expressed interest in your dealership, using videos showing breakdowns of different specific car models. You can use these both in ad campaigns and on your organic channels as well as embedding them on your site.

These videos should focus on specific car models one at a time, going over all of its features and what makes it great. Even if you make several videos that have overlapping information (like collision prevention features, or more airbags in more places), you can still mention them in each one; if you don’t, users might think that only one of the models has those capabilities since they weren’t mentioned again.

These should be short, ideally 30 seconds or less but no longer than a minute and thirty seconds in most cases. If you want to, you can even go really short to focus on a single feature and get your point across quickly, like this example:

3. Local Dealership Videos

You need to be aggressive about marketing the makes and models of the cars that your dealership sells; customers won’t buy based on a name brand of the dealership alone if they’re not crazy about the car.

That being said, it’s absolutely essential for dealerships to promote themselves, too; if you aren’t explaining why you’re the best fit to help your customers, they absolutely will go elsewhere. My boyfriend was willing to drive up from Florida to Georgia to work with a dealership that met his needs when he bought his car, even though another was literally five minutes from his work, and that’s not uncommon.

Make sure that you’ve got videos talking about your specific dealership, including any great deals that you’re having, or policies you have to make your customers happy. Go big making yourself look great; this is the time for the hard sell.

4. Video Tutorials

Once the customer has purchased it doesn’t mean that you should stop all video campaigns towards them. Instead, offer up re-engagement video campaigns designed to be useful and keep your audience interacting with you.

Create videos showing them how to pair their phone with the car’s bluetooth, and how to access information on tire pressure or when you need an oil change. Your clients will find a lot of value in this, which is always an important part of relationship building. It can also appeal to users considering purchasing the vehicles, and who can see how easy it is to use these advanced features.

Conclusion

A scalable video campaign series that allows you to quickly generate new video content for every new audience, sale, event, and car model is the way to go for automotive dealerships. Everything changes year over year, without fail, so it’s essential to create a campaign that’s agile and adaptable instead of going all-in on a single video that could be completely irrelevant in twelve months time.