Today, a boat dealer needs to find a way to stand out. Easy to use video technology has emerged as a leading way for your marketing efforts and spend. Why? It connects, influences and engages your target audience. While emailing and directly engaging with customers and prospective customers is still here to stay, it’s time to embrace new solutions if you haven’r already done so. Today, consumers are more prone to obtaining their information through a video, if one is available. Incorporating video into your boat dealership’s marketing strategies is a logical step to take.
Numbers To Consider
If you’re looking for some concrete evidence to support this idea, the numbers don’t lie. There are some very impactful video statistics that support the discussion around the value and ROI of video worth considering:
- Before reading any text, 60% of site visitors will watch a video if available (Diode Digital)
- One minute of video is worth 1.8 million words (Forrester Research)
- 56% of consumers believe if a company has a website, it should have video content (Animoto)
- The Average user spends 16 minutes & 49 seconds a month watching online video ads (ComScore)
- 80% of consumers say a video showing how a product or service works is important when learning about the company (Animoto)
YouTube has now become the 2nd largest search engine in the world, it’s true, bigger than Bing, Yahoo, and Ask, combined. Google is the only search engine that ranks above YouTube. Video is a must-have in your online marketing efforts today because it dramatically impacts search results. Video is not the future, it has arrived.
How Can Boat Dealership Use Video?
Video’s power and reach can no longer be disputed, and boat dealerships can take advantage of video in many different ways. We recommend reducing all the options down to two simple and effective paths as a starting point.
1. Enhance your emails with video
A powerful and simple tool called Vidyard gives you the ability to embed a video right into the body of an email. Imagine you have sold a boat to a new customer, and just before delivery your sales representative sends a personalized email with a short 30-second video embedded that he/she easily created on their smartphone. It’s that simple. Your customer will receive a personalized video message, garnering better engagement and enhancing the overall customer experience.
You can take these personalized video messages to an even higher level, and use them as a tool to reach out to customers and remind them to service their boat to help drive your service revenues, let people know about a new boat that may be of interest or just reach out and thank them for being a customer.
2. Get customer testimonials on video
Using a tool like StoryTap allows your dealership to create case studies or client testimonials on video, simply and quickly. These videos can be saved and placed on your website as well as pushed out on your social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram. StoryTap’s cloud based tool allows you to set up a video interview with a client and send them that link, and then the customer simply answers the prompted questions looking into their video camera. You can set up as many questions as you want, or as few. Once the client finishes answering the questions, it’s automatically saved and ready for your final edit using the simple tool.
Conclusion
In summary, the era of video marketing has arrived. It will only continue to grow and become entrenched in every aspect of our life. Looking at age demographics, people from the ages 18-40 are welcoming video with open arms on their mobile devices, tablets and desktops. It’s time to start embedding video into your dealership marketing strategy. So be sure that video marketing is on the table for you as a boat dealer.
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DockMaster Software is an industry leading management system for marinas, boatyards, and boat dealerships. DockMaster includes Unit Sales, Prospecting and F&I with fully integrated financial management and numerous integrations with CRM applications, dealer websites and text/messaging services. The Service module includes estimating, labor tracking, and complete parts management with ordering/receiving, subcontractor fulfillment and invoicing. DockMaster Mobile allows technicians to clock on/off jobs from any mobile device. Visual Marina™ management includes storage & billing, occupancy tracking, reservations and dry stack management, including integrations to leading consumer applications for boat rentals, online reservations, concierge/launch scheduling and our new Fuel Integration with FuelCloud. DockMaster also includes Point of Sale, Order Entry with eCommerce and a complete accounting system. Learn more at www.DockMaster.com and follow DockMaster on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Or email info@dockmaster.com
