Five top promotions for the automotive category

Surprise! This woman was the only one of 12 finalists in the an automotive give away to have the "winning key".

Like the fast food industry, auto dealers are big sponsors of sports contests of all sorts.  However, in addition to branding, auto dealers are also invest to  build and convert their own social audiences.

After researching  auto contests and giveaways from around the country,  LocalMediaInsider found that the best ones that attracted a convertible audience  had two factors in common: Significance and relevance. In other words, the prize has to be big enough for the purpose, and relevant to the brand. If you give away an iPad, as one marketer put it, you may not get automotive buyers. On the other hand, if the offer is not big enough, the promotion will not work.

This is a round-up of great contest and giveaway ideas from around the country that have worked for auto dealers to accomplish a variety of objectives. 

1.Give aways of brand paraphernalia to attract brand afficionados

A sticking point between media sellers and automotive dealers when planning a sweepstakes is often what to give away. As noted prize has to be big enough to attract people and the dealer wants to limit the cost. 

To create a give away that is at least related to the automotive category is not easy. Once the brand has enough of a social or email list, something general such as an oil change or a car wash can bring people in the door. These are great "every one wins" giveaways for auto dealers that already have an established Facebook group.

But what if the dealer needs  to find new people that are already own or are interested in their brand? A simple giveaway of a $500  gift certificate towards a car hasn't worked - the cars are too high priced and the perception is that this is just another sale in which the discount may be buried.

If the dealer has a unique brand, a great giveaway is related paraphernalia.   A  Harley Davidson store found that a give away of a $500 towards store goods brought in the right set of brand afficionads without giving away a bike. Here's the screen shot:

Some auto dealers also have expensive merchandise their audience would enter to win: Mercedies, BMW, Cadillac for example all have shops for branded key rings, clothing and gear inside the dealership. If the value is high enough in the car's swag shop, it can attact current owners and fans of the brand.

2. Weekly $100 gas giveaway

Lee Enterprises created  the top tabs in the custom Facebook page for Bommarito Automotive Group, and included  a weekly give-away of a $100 gas card,  or a trip to a nearby restaurant with winners also announced in social updates. The goal for the contest was to build the fan list, but a few extra questions could turn this kind of contest into a lead generation program.

A similar idea is a give away of a high-end detailing service. The Toronto Community News sold  400 gift certificates for a $150 car wash for $50 each in a daily deal program.  This promotion worked after two other ideas failed - a free oil change and $500 off a car were not the right offers to bring in new people. See this case study on the detailing offer;  note that the auto dealer was focused on finding potential car buyers and bringing them into the dealerships. Customers can take a test car while theirs is being washed!  If works to sell a daily deal, it will probably work to acquire a fan.

3. Photo and video contests

What about a "Car is the Star" contest for a automotive brand? Many automotive dealers want to find an audience that already has their brand.  Cutest kid in a BMW?  This contest can be tweaked and target marketed as well as amplified with core media.

The time is right to move into video in certain cases.  A viral video that will build a YouTube presence and generate great virality on Facebook is still almost anything with kids and pets.

Try asking mom's to video kids explaining how a car works, and let the video contest reside on Facebook and Youtube. Backseat Pet Contest anyone?  This idea was used by an appliance company (kids explaining how an appiance worked) for the purpose of "drowning" a negative video review on YouTube, and went a long way to build new customer relationships.

Other ideas from around the country: Virtual (brand name) Car Show with visitors voting on the best car.

4. Simple sweepstakes with lead generation survey

Some dealers just want direct leads period - but we recommend adding a lead gen question to any audience building contest.  A survey attached to a simple give away - $500 plus the ability to test drive a hot convertible - was enough to attract 30 hard leads for Quad City Ford.

The campaign, created by the Quad City Times on the Second Street platform ran on Facebook.  Best practice for lead generation programs is to keep questions to just three and make them simple. One question needs to be "Would you like to be contacted by a sales representative?"

5.  Give away a new or used vehicle

The grand daddy of auto contests, of course,  is an auto giveaway. For new dealers,  new brands or just competitive dealers wanting to   go big"  with social promotions, this is  a great option and surefire winner if promoted.

Honda, Ford, Mazda, Toyota and Volkswagon are just a few of the brands we've seen giving away a car somewhere in the country in the past year. But it's difficult to persuade most dealers to go this big on a local level.

An example of one who  that did - and reaped the rewards - is a new Volkswagen dealership that entered the  Billings, Montana market  in 2012.  The dealership wanted to capture market share in a huge way by creating something highly attention-grabbing.

Volkswagen Billings teamed up with The Billings Gazette, a 41,500 circulation newspaper,  also part of Lee Enterprises,  to create the promotion. They came up with a  giveaway sweepstakes contest to win a brand new 2012 Volkswagen  Jetta. 

The $70,000  marketing package consisting of print and digital to run during the first 90 days of Volkswagen BIllings’ grand opening, as well as the Win a Volkswagen contest, which was run on Facebook and like-gated, using the Second Street Media Platform.  All promotions for Volkswagen Billings included the giveaway contest, which was branded as winavolkswagen.com.

Here is an exemple of the newspaper ads:

The contest consisted of a random drawing from online submissions of 12 finalists who would then show up to a giveaway party at Volkswagen Billings to draw a key to start the Jetta. The key that started the engine was the winner - great photo opps to kick-off sharable content for the car dealers  new fans on Facebook. A great way to get potential customers in cars at the dealership!

Likes for Volkswagen Billings’ Facebook page grew from 54 to 2,100 over the course of the contest, and the dealership exceeded sales expectations.

Even after the contest was over, as the dealership wanted to continue the relationship and potentially give another Volkswagen vehicle away in following years.

Another example is a Fiat Giveaway co-promoted by ABC15 Arizona. The overall campaign was a five figure revenue deal - and produced 3000 likes for Fiat, a 700% increase in fans. 

Give aways can also work for  brands looking for a list of people who already own their car:  "Need a new Fiat? Send us a photo of your old one"  can work to attract a large audience of the right kind of future buyer for drip marketing, though it limits the audience.

Even Cadillac has given away a car,  see their contest in the  "best big giveaways" from Second Street Media here. 

 Media partnerships for auto giveaways

Some auto giveaways allow media to participate in gathering names and fans, or just drive trafffic to broadcast channels during the sweeps, in return for  a reduced cost on advertising and partial or all trade for the campaign.

As an example, an ABC affiliate in the D.C./Vriginia area acquired 10,000 new fans by partnering to give away a Ford Fiesta, case study here.

Freedom Interactive's Orange County Register secured Honda corporate - located in the area - as a sponsor for a contest to promote app downloads. Honda was interested in building an e-mail database.  The  contest prize for everyone who dowloaded was entry to win a free Honda  Insight. The cost of the car was included in the trade portion of the deal, case study here.

The media also promoted heavily, including two months of print, rack cards, online ads an a banner on the app itself. Users could also "text to download" the app. So in addition to cash, the Register picked up resulted in more than15,000 app downloads and 10,000 entries.

Part of the deal can be to drive traffic to the media site, rather than the dealer page. To build web traffic and an audience for its morning show,  ABC affiliate  asked viewers to  "Watch Good Morning America every day from Nov 4 to 8, 2013, go to goodmorning america.com to enter by "correctly answer a questions" from the last five shows to win one of 3, with the winners "surprised" on air.  Tell us why you or someone you know deserve  to win. The winner was "surprised on the air" later that month. Where the landing page resides is all part of the negotiation.

Don't forget used car dealers and the after market.  A souped up classic car give away or contest to rennovate a clunker can attract a different kind of audience and open up a  new category for selling automotive aftermarkaet services, such as engine repair, bodywork and paint.

Conclusion

Like any contest, contests for auto dealers need to be designed to meet specific opbjectives:

• If the dealer wants and needs to grow a social audience from scratch,  it is  time to go big.

• If the media also needs to build app downloads, fans or emails it may make sense to partner, throw in the extra promotions or trade and walk away with a bigger home run.

• Once the social audience is built, smaller contests will work to engage the existing audiences, using media to amplify the campaign. 

• For auto dealers with a specific interest in finding people who already own older models of their cars, photo contests can work to find them and develop great social content.

• If a dealer is primarily interested in hard leads,  a simple sweepstakes with a survey can do the trick. The value needs to be at least $500, and tie-in something automotive, such as a chance to test drive the highest end car.

• If the brand is super unique - say Tesla, Indian Motorcycles or a boating store - a gift certificate for $500 of brand swag may do the trick.

• $100 a week gas card, or free detail a week are other ideas that have worked in some markets to build the social list.

As always, work with dealers to make sure they promote the right offer to the right audience, and have a follow-up plan to convert their new fans. Sending a quick email after the promotion to people that did not win with a special offer will help: "Sorry you didn't win this time. But please stop by for a free car wash. You can test drive our new models while you wait."

Many thanks to all the media reps and sales managers who contributed these case studies and  to Second Street Media who has a number of case studies in their own media lab.

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