I normally don’t read a printed newspaper unless I’m traveling on the road and pickup a free copy at the United Club or at a hotel. I prefer to read my news online. I visit CNN.com, FoxNews.com, CNBC.com, or Yahoo.com to see what is happening around the globe. Regardless of which online news service you visit, have you noticed how many stories are exclusively video links on the home page?
Take a look at the FoxNews.com homepage below. I have added orange stars where a video story is displayed on their open page. There are 21 video stories on the home page for this day!
Video Wasn’t Added By Accident
Websites like FoxNews.com generate revenue from advertising. News websites are keenly aware of their visitor metrics and user feedback. Videos would not have need added on Fox News, to such a high degree, if consumers were not playing and enjoying the videos. The videos would not have been added if they were not generating more advertising revenue for the website.
News websites have acknowledged and have created content for consumers who are auditory and visual learners. There are many consumers who would rather watch a video to get updated with the latest news rather than reading text. In fact, when a consumer is on the go, video makes it easy to catch news on a train, bus, or in the back of a cab.
What type of learner are you?
If you wanted to learn about the different types of home mortgages, that could save money, would you rather read an 800-word article or watch a 2 minute video?
Are You Ignoring Auditory and Visual Learners?
If the top news websites cater to auditory and visual learners, why wouldn’t car dealers? Unfortunately, most car dealer websites have all their primary selling messages, product presentations, and frequent services presented in text.
Google research has indicated that auto shoppers find video the MOST helpful type of media when shopping for a car. Video drives consumers to take action, and in some cases, moves them to visit the dealer’s showroom:
To be fair, stock vehicle videos, created by the manufacturer, can be found on some dealership websites. However, I would rather see a video created by the dealership. Custom videos give a local auto shopper an opportunity to connect with the “passion” of the dealership about the cars that they sell.
Consumers come to a dealership’s website for many reasons. Those visits could be enhanced with videos to cater to visual and auditory learners that want to learn about financing, leasing, your service process, extended warranty programs, your trade-in process, and why they should do business with you!
I have never found a sexy way to explain the benefits of an extended warranty plan, in text. However, I could make a great video explaining the benefits of such a plan using visual aides and graphics in a video.
Service is a great area to add videos because most service pages have content that is boring. Imagine the value a dealer would be offering if their top 10 services were explained in separate videos and placed on attracting website pages. Not only would these separate pages be an opportunity for social media syndication, they would allow the dealership to create a nice video menu page explaining their services.
Video Marketing Is Not New
Video marketing discussions are not new on DealerRefresh. However, if dealers considered that their websites are NOT meeting the needs of auditory and visual learners, it might cause them to prioritize their marketing investments to move video higher on the list. Dealers wonder why only 2% of website visitors will submit a lead form.
Maybe another aspect of that low conversion is that dealers never thought about the possibility that a large percentage of consumers are not connecting with our “boring” text content.
Could the lack of video communication and education be one of the last big website blunders that auto automotive industry has yet to correct?
What are the key “stories” you want local car shoppers to know about your dealership? Get those stories into video and place them on your website this month.
What are you waiting for?
