First let’s imagine a scenario that dealer A did nothing with video except what the manufacturer provides, and then dealer 2 does a video about a vehicle and included in the video is a walk around the car/truck, explaining the features and benefits and what that features means to the potential buyer; and then maybe spends a few moments on why buy here at his dealership and why buy from him or her.

Now, let’s take this one step further, both dealerships add the videos to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Remember both dealership use the manufacturer’s video, but, dealer B uses his dealership’s video alongside the manufacturer’s video. What happens when someone goes to the search engines to look up info on the vehicle? The dealership with both videos, and dealer B should come up on top, assuming they have performed and maintained the SEO on their website.

Please remember that 93 % of all major purchases are started by a search through the search engines and that video is the fastest growing media. Up from the single digits in 2010 to a whopping 63% in 2013!

Now, let’s look at this from the shoppers’s point of view, he/she goes to Google or any other search engine and sees the videos on top of the SERP (search engine results page) and sees the manufacturers and dealership B videos, who has made a better impression? Who has given the most information for what he/ she is interested in, who has developed the trust with the customer the most? I would say Dealer 2; do you agree?

Video is the way to go today, offer information about vehicles is what consumers are looking for so, why not give the buyer what they want? How much would it cost a dealership to hire someone to film videos, this can be done by an employee or an outside firm; who’s responsibility would be to edit and uploading the videos to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. showcasing their inventory, inventory, personnel, why buy here, interviews with people in all departments explaining what they do and how they do it, and how much they enjoy making the customer smile? This can include a fun contest, how many jelly beans or balloons will fit in this trunk? How many suitcases and golf bags can this SUV hold? A good way to maximize your exposure with your social media friends and invite everyone to participate, have the vehicle in the showroom loaded up the items to be counted, make it FUN! Include it in your website, paper, social media and other sources of advertising, offer a prize for the winner.

Remember when there were very few dealers with websites and those that had one reaped in the rewards? Now show me a dealership without a website, can you? Then came social media, and where are you? Inbound marketing drawing people to your website through offering information and developing trusting relationships with your followers and readers, where are you? Finally, are you a follower or leader if the latter, get on the video bandwagon.Incr