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How Dealers Can Leverage YouTube to Sell Accessories

Courtesy of Insignia’s Guest Blogger: Jason Lancaster President of Spork Marketing, LLC

With the ability to reach almost half of the U.S. population¹, YouTube.com offers tremendous opportunities for dealers. By observing a few Internet video best practices, you can promote vehicles, sell accessories, and build a fan base. Here are two examples of auto dealers that promote vehicles and sell accessories with video that we can all learn from.

Auto Styling by Berge Ford

With more than a dozen videos that have 10k+ views, Berge Ford of Mesa, Arizona, boasts solid YouTube stats. Here's their most popular video (40k+ views):

What they've done right:

• Berge Ford used popular keywords “lifted truck,” “2011 F150,” and “6” lift” in their video title, video description, and video tags. YouTube's keyword tool shows that these are all popular search terms.
• Berge shows the truck right away, which increases the likelihood that viewers will stay tuned – if your videos start with promotional advertising, some viewers will skip it and move on.
• Detailed specs appear both in the video and in the video description – accessory enthusiasts generally love to read about specs, so it's very smart to focus on them.

 Finally, the fact that Berge's video has achieved success with low production values should prove once and for all that any dealership can make videos that get attention on YouTube.

Big Bad Trucks at Paddock Chevrolet

Paddock Chevrolet of Kenmore, New York, has uploaded almost 1,000 videos to YouTube, and this one has more than 10k views:

What they've done right:

• Paddock Chevrolet placed their name, phone number, web address, and logo on the video, which keeps dealership info in front of the consumer without making the video feel too commercial.
• The video spokesperson worked jokes and personality into the video.

 If they've done anything wrong, it's that they didn't spend enough time and energy on the “big bad Chevy,” which is the search term people used to find this video. One of the keys to YouTube is to be as informative and entertaining as possible. If  you have to choose between one or the other, choose to be informative – that will build your dealership's credibility and establish you as an authority on accessories.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave a link to your video in the comments for a free critique!

Author Jason Lancaster is the President of Spork Marketing, an Internet marketing and consulting company, as well as the editor of ExhaustVideos.com, a website dedicated to exhaust sound clips.

Citation:

1. comScore January 2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings show that 47.3% of the U.S. population watches Internet video.