When it comes to marketing your business, branding is the buzz word on everybody’s lips. Personal branding, business branding, online brand marketing, and social media branding -- it seems like branding is the only part of marketing anymore.

While it’s not true that branding is all you have to do -- a brand is nothing without substance -- in today’s media saturated environment, branding is vital. Without a solid brand, your business can never thrive. With web accessibility at an all time high, the best place to brand your business is online -- but how can you leverage that for your auto dealership’s success?

Give them a reason to come to your website.

Imagine your ideal potential customer is sitting at home, watching the television when they get home from work. They’re watching their local station and an ad for your dealership pops up. Like every self-respecting advertisement these days, the ad is bookended with a request to visit your website. Have you ever thought about what makes people do this?

Age old marketing wisdom suggests that you have to present the benefits of whatever you’re offering. In this case, you’re not offering cars -- you’re offering your website. What incentive do your potential customers have to go to your site? Unless you give them a good reason, they’re not going to come, and then all of your web development money is wasted. Promise them something good when they get there and you’ll increase the chances that they’ll type you in.

Pay attention to your URL.

Your website’s URL, or domain name, is one of the most important parts of your website -- and it’s the part that only costs a few dollars! Your domain name is critical for two reasons: one, a keyword rich domain name can boost your site’s authority in search engine rankings. Two, people are typing it in and you want them to remember you in association with your website’s name.


Experts are divided on whether it’s more important to have a keyword rich name or a memorable one. Ideally, your domain can accomplish both. Pay attention to what you choose and make sure it’s both easy to remember and easy to spell. If they know what to type, they’re much more likely to type it.

Reward them for showing up.

You’ve done your job beautifully and you have excited potential customers heading over to your shiny new website. What do they do when they get there?

This is one of the most important aspects of creating a web marketing strategy. You need to reward your new visitors for arriving. Provide them with something of value, not just the hours that you’re open and what models you offer. Visit other dealerships’ sites to see what they’re offering, and envision yourself as their customers -- what would you want to see? Give the people what they want and they’ll keep coming back.