How To Drive More Business In The Automotive Aftermarket

The aftermarket and parts sector of the automotive industry is extremely fast paced, constantly changing and highly competitive. New competition continues to enter the market at a rapid rate so driving profitable business becomes increasingly difficult.

As a specialist automotive marketing agency with experience working with aftermarket and parts clients for over 20 years, we know the market, inside out. If you’re struggling to drive business in the sector or would simply like to drive more of it then here’s just a few pointers…

Revisit the competition

With new competition entering the aftermarket at a frightening pace, and existing rivals constantly developing and evolving their offering, revisiting your competition at regular intervals is a must. It’s vital to keep abreast of what they are doing well, what they’re maybe not doing so well and where you could potentially get the edge on them. Being fully in touch with your competitive environment is fundamental to your marketing success as it gives you the context and framework to effectively develop your strategy.

Ensure you’re effectively differentiated

Effective brand differentiation directly drives business. Without it your customer’s only way to make buying decisions when comparing your products to those available from your competition, are often features (which can usually be ultimately copied or bettered), or worse – price. This is something you can take steps to avoid. By leveraging your core brand proposition you can create a clear competitive advantage that gives your potential customer’s a reason to buy from that’s not solely based on logic. In fact in some cases brand can be such a strong factor that customers will choose a desirable brand which costs more and is inferior in performance.

Invest in digital marketing

It’s amazing that a small number of businesses we speak to within the aftermarket are still not doing any digital marketing at all and instead relying on traditional marketing tactics such as print advertising, DM and telemarketing. Whilst Covid-19 has proven a wakeup call to these ‘digital luddites’ and forced a rapid transitioning towards a more digitally-minded marketing approach, the (hopefully temporary) demise of other staples such as sponsorship, live events, conferences and trade shows has accelerated the need to double down on digital. We’re currently seeing significant growth of the following digital marketing tactics within the aftermarket sector:

Social Media: With a particular growth across Facebook and Instagram channels for B2C activities and LinkedIn remaining a gold mine for aftermarket B2B marketers – no surprise when you consider there are presently 30 million companies and half a billion professionals generating some 9 billion content impressions in the LinkedIn feed every week.

Paid Marketing: Because organic reach on social media is increasingly limited, paid marketing across Facebook and Instagram in particular is essential, and LinkedIn whilst quite costly is definitely worth considering and testing. In addition, pay per click campaigns on Google AdWords and Microsoft Advertising continue to drive great traffic and conversions for our aftermarket clients.

Content Marketing: Creating regular content that informs and educates your audience will help to further establish your brand as a thought leader within the aftermarket. It doesn’t have to be limited to blog articles either, as content can often be quickly adapted and distributed in multiple formats including video, infographics and podcasts. The great thing about good content is that it’s potentially around forever, and can be working for you even whilst you sleep!

Email Marketing: When used correctly, email marketing can often outperform most other digital marketing tactics. Automation is important for the trade side, to nurture leads into new partners. For B2C, cross-selling, up-selling, special offers and abandoned cart emails are always effective. One thing to remember is to always try to use personalisation and segmentation within your email marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation: An ongoing process that will increase your brand’s visibility within the search engines. The first step is to get your on-site optimisation up to scratch, following detailed keyword research. Once this is done you can focus on creating quality content that people will want to share to attract links and grow your website’s authority.

Right now, digital marketing has never been more important for aftermarket brands, and the potential return on investment has never been higher – but only when it’s done correctly. This means thoroughly understanding each strand of the digital marketing mix, and ensuring you have a solid digital strategy in place which ties all your activities together into one integrated action.

If you’re looking for help in achieving these things, it pays to partner with an agency that knows your market – and your customers – inside out. To prove a great return on your investment, for a limited period we’re offering a 3 month Test Drive of our bespoke digital marketing services, discover more here: https://wda-automotive.com/automotive-marketing-trial/

WDA Automotive recently enjoyed a fantastic VAG Tuner Live 2018 event at Donington Park. The video above gives a glimpse of what we got up to as well as an insight into our new photo and videography capability. We’ll have more on that very soon so stay tuned!

VAG Tuner Live 2018 is the fourth year of the show which was launched in 2015 at the Donington Park Circuit Exhibition Centre and has been held annually since then.

Vag Tuner Live is regarded a ‘must do’ event within the VAG scene, showcasing the biggest names from Europe’s performance tuning market. Very much a ‘hands on’ event, show-goers can pretty much access all areas, including pit-lane and garages, with some brands offering hot laps of the circuit and a huge variety of cars constantly circulating.  This year’s event saw a really great turn out with show-goers braving the blistering heat to visit some brilliant stands and see some truly amazing cars.

WDA used this years event to officially launch our new photo and videography capability, taking footage for an upcoming promo video.

WDA have produced lots of broadcast quality video’s over the years including commercials for MER and Silkolene. However, there’s been a massive explosion of growth in video on social media in recent years with views of branded video content increasing manyfold over all channels – over 250% on Facebook between 2016 and 2017, for example. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying video is now a ‘megatrend,”. Our new capability means we can cater to both ends of the spectrum, and is a particular boost for WDA’s growing digital department.

WDA had a great time catching up with clients and industry contacts alike, including Scorpion, Ramair, Autobrite, Revo, Goodridge, and Nankang (one of the highlights being the Nankang Apocalyptic Mustang…!) Great to see lots of WDA’s branding and marketing work around the paddock, in particular Scorpion and Revo. See what we did for both of those brands here.

 

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Nankang

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Nankang car

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Blue R8

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Pits

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - RS

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Rothmans Porsche

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Revo

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Scorpion

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - WDA team

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Seat

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Scorpion Honda

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Helmet and gloves

VAG Tuner Live 2018 - Awesome

Get in touch

If you’d like to say hello or enquire about how we can help your automotive business, give our team a call on 01332 372 728 or drop Anna an email at [email protected].

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