Is Video an effective tool for your dealers online marketing?
Video seems to be all the hype, BUT for selling vehicles, I’m not sure where and if fits into the landscape for dealers. With sites like HotSwap.com and others on the horizon, maybe we’ll find out soon enough.
Until then, will dealers be willing to spend the extra effort and money it takes to produce videos of their inventory (I’m not referring to the cheesy photo stitched videos)? Most dealers are still struggling to get decent photos of your inventory and now we’re throwing videos in the equation!
How can a video walk around of a car be any better then several pictures? Photos are usually less grainy, larger in size and load faster. I can merchandise a vehicle with the right photos with a detailed description as well if not BETTER then using video and do it in ¼ the time it takes to shoot a video. I have dabbled into inventory videos and still do with particular vehicles. The time it takes to do it right is consuming.
Someone had commented on a TechCrunch posting..
“Do videos help sell cars? Maybe if your car is not a commodity, like a highly modified 800 hp Z06 Corvette that I saw listed on ebay a couple of months ago. Yes that you might want to watch the video to see how the car pulls etc. But I won’t be going to a site like that to watch a 10 min video grainy video of a regular civic”.
I’m going to agree with this commenter. When I do video a car, it’s usually a premium high-line or performance vehicle. Not only do I record a full walk-around but I have gone as far to include motor and exhaust sound bytes as well. This brings some interesting and positive feedback from the eBay community and shoppers.
Can videos of your inventory increase conversion on your dealer website?
During a Cars.com webinare interview with Mike Lavezzi of Pacific Honda, Mike tracked an adverse effect in conversion.
“I tried the videos, and I tried expanding the amount of information online, and I didn’t notice much of a difference. In fact, I actually found video to have an adverse effect at times. Customers would notice something that tuned them off about the vehicle. We stopped doing videos, and things started turning back around.”
Now that’s an interesting statement and one that I personally have a few questions about.
- Were you using actual video footage or photo stitched videos?
- Did you have a 10 second intro commercial before each video?
- How was the quality of your videos and were you using a text to speech voice over?
- What amount of information were you “expanding” with your videos?
Mike..if you happen to read this, we would love to hear from you!
Another avenue to consider with video is your major search engines allowing videos to show up in keyword search results (mostly in Beta at the moment). This could be a huge factor to consider as search engines continue to have an impact on your automotive dealer online marketing efforts.
Sean Bradley of Dealer Synergy really pushed the envelope with his article in Digital Dealer and is a huge advocate of Video Search, stating..
“The latest multi-media/video trend is video Internet marketing or Internet 2.0. Video search is the foundation for the next Internet evolution.”
Uploading your inventory videos and dealer commercials to YouTube, Google Video and other online video hosting websites could benefit in terms of branding, local market awareness and driving traffic to your dealer website. You can also make use of these videos on you dealer blog, Myspace page or other micro sites as well.
With all of this evident, it still comes down to time and money it takes to produce your dealer and inventory videos. Will or does the ROI makes sense?
How many of you are currently using video for showcasing their inventory?
Do you think video will have a huge impact on how we market our inventory online in the near future?
We would love to hear your feedback!