Content Marketing in the Automotive Industry
Building an Automotive Industry website starts with a great content strategy. Let’s get started.
Every Business Needs Great Content
Connect instantly with highly-vetted writers across 50+ industries. Manage your entire content production in one easy-to-use platform. Never worry about content again for your SMB.
Get Started
A fully-supported, flexible content marketing solution for digital and creative marketing agencies. We will match you with highly-vetted writers to best support the content needs of each of your clients.
Learn More
Large enterprise businesses in need of a turn-key content marketing solution. Add a dedicated, expert writing team from Scripted to research, produce, and publish premium content.
Learn More
Producing consistent, quality content on your publishing or media site means managing a lot of moving parts including multiple deadlines, assignments, and payments for freelancers. Scripted can handle it all.
Learn More
Whether you’re selling car-related products and services or run a blog that details the competitive landscape
of the automotive industry, you need great content to grow your audience and increase traffic to your site.
One of the most effective ways to do this is by creating and following a detailed content strategy for
businesses in the automotive industry. But this can be tough when your expertise lies in cars—not content
marketing.
Fortunately, digital marketing experts here at Scripted have already done the research for you to help you
get more traffic to your site through a combination of quality content and SEO strategies. Let's get started.
Why Does Content Marketing Matter in the Automotive Industry?
Before you get started on a marketing plan for your automotive brand, you should know exactly why you
need it. First, realize that the more high-quality content you have online, the better the chances your
marketing efforts will be successful. After all, most consumers do their research online before making
automotive purchases.
One study found that
88% of car buyers go online to research cars first. And according to another study,
accurate information is one of the key drivers of satisfaction with car websites as consumers prepare
to buy a new car. So whether you want more people to buy from your company or need more readers to visit
your automotive site, expert content writing can help capture the attention of consumers as they do
their research.
Get Started on Your Content Marketing Strategy
Now that you know why content marketing is so important, you should consider a few facts. Start by
answering some questions. For example, who will be most affected by your content? And what's your
reason for creating content? Here's how to get started.
Defining your target audience means thinking about who you want to visit your website. This
depends on what you’re offering. If you’re an auto brand selling cars, your target audience
is comprised of people shopping for cars.
The same is true if you run a car review website or blog informing people about the latest
vehicles on the market. This means you’ll need to provide accurate, updated information that
buyers can trust as they decide which car to purchase.
On the other hand, if you sell car accessories or services, your target audience is likely
people who already own one or more cars. Keep their specific needs in mind as you develop content
that will increase organic traffic to your website.
In fact, you can better target your audience by developing a few customer personas. A customer
persona is a profile of your ideal customer that defines their values, attitude, interests,
and goals involving your products or services. It not only defines who your customers are, but
also what their most common pain points are--and how you can address them with your automotive
products or services.
For instance, as you do some research on the people most interested in buying a new car, you
might find that most of them already own one car, have a family with at least one child, and
like to explore their world through family road trips on the weekends. Knowing this information,
you can tailor your automotive content to suit their needs.
If you also want to appeal to people looking to upgrade their car with new accessories, you
can create another customer persona for your target audience. It might include information
about their average income, age range, typical goals for car improvements, and their favorite
automotive brands. Such details will help you produce the most helpful content for your target
audience.
Next, think about the primary reason you’re developing content for your automotive brand to begin with. Some of the most common reasons for content marketing include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Boosting brand loyalty and engagement from current customers
- Introducing a new product or service
- Getting a chance to increase organic traffic to your site through SEO strategies
- Collecting new leads
- Showing that your brand is an authority in the automotive industry
Now that you have a content marketing purpose and target audience in mind, you’re getting closer to the ability to increase organic traffic to your website through content writing. But first, you need to decide on a few more details about the content you’re going to publish.
The Types of Content to Write and the Platforms to Publish On
As you work on marketing your automotive brand, you’ll notice there are lots of types of
content to publish—and plenty of places to publish those words. This is good and bad. On
one hand, it means you have variety in what you write for your brand and where you can
publish it. But this variety can quickly become overwhelming. The good news is you don’t
have to create every type of content out there, and you don’t have to publish it everywhere.
Instead, focus on a handful of content types to start with. Once you feel confident publishing
those, you can consider moving on to other options. For instance, most brands start with
the following:
- Blog posts
- Social media updates
- Email newsletters
- Pictures
These are popular with the target audience and simple to put together. Once they master
those types of content, automotive brands might move on to more complex options that require
more time and expertise to write, edit, and publish. These include:
- Videos
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Case studies
- White papers
- eBooks
Before you decide on the content to publish, think about what your audience would most appreciate, as well as what you hope your content will do for them. For instance, if you want to introduce a new product, a picture and blog post—or even an infographic—can show off its appearance and features. On the other hand, if you want to teach your target audience how to fix a car problem, a step-by-step guide or a video would likely work best. So think about why you’re publishing the content before you decide on the channel to use for it.
Use the Best SEO Keywords for the Automotive Industry
You need to do some keyword research to find the terms your target audience would be most
likely to use when looking for an automotive brand like yours. You can use online tools
that help you determine the best short and long-tail keywords for your business, and then
create content around answering those queries and giving searchers the best possible
information around your topics.
There are several tools to help with keyword planning. One of the most popular tools is
Google Keyword Planner.
To use it, you can simply enter one or more keywords that come to mind instantly when you
think of your business.
What terms would your audience use to find a company like yours? It likely depends on what
products or services you’re offering, but in the automotive industry, let's start with
“cars.” Once you enter that keyword, this Google tool will tell you some facts about it,
such as the number of average monthly searches and how competitive it is to rank for.
You’ll also get a list of keyword ideas to use as the focal point in the content you create.
For instance, here are the related keywords you get from Google when you enter “cars” as
a keyword:
- cars; 1 million to 10 million searches per month and medium competition
- honda civic; 100,000 to 1 million searches per month and high competition
- tesla model 3; 100,000 to 1 million searches per month and medium competition
- tesla truck; 100,000 to 1 million searches per month and high competition
- jeep wrangler; 100,000 to 1 million searches per month and high competition
- tesla cybertruck; 100,000 to 1 million searches per month and low competition
- audi a3; 10,000 to 100,000 searches per month and medium competition
- cars for sale; 100,000 to 1 million searches per month and high competition
When you use Google Keyword Planner for your automotive content, you can also refine
your search terms based on several details. For example, you can decide if you want to
include car brands and years in your keywords. Additionally, you can choose to expand
your search by including words like “cars trucks” and “motor vehicles” in your SEO list.
Overall, keyword planners like Google’s are very helpful in using SEO to increase organic
traffic to your website.
The better you know your audience and your business, the easier keyword research will
be. You know what you're an expert in, what your customers want to know, now just use
the GKP to help you find key terms to target.
Look at What the Best Automotive Companies Are Doing
If you need some inspiration before you start creating and publishing automotive content,
you should pay attention to what the top brands are doing for content marketing. After all,
some of the most popular brands in the car industry are known for publishing great content
that keeps readers coming back. Look at some examples of what a few big automotive brands
have done as far as content marketing to increase organic traffic.
One of the most trusted sites for buying, selling, and researching cars is Autotrader.
Not only is it easy to list a car for sale or browse car listings when you’re ready
to buy on this site, but it’s also possible to learn more about specific models.
That’s because the content marketing on this site is exceptional.
For instance, someone interested in buying a car can go to Autotrader to browse new
and used listings, find local dealers, get tips on buying a car, or use calculators
to determine how much they can afford on car payments. And a visit to the blog shows
lots of posts on the following subjects:
- Car industry news
- Best car deals
- Car reviews
- Sneak peeks at brand new vehicle models
- Car comparisons
As you can see, Autotrader has a lot of appeal for anyone even thinking about buying or selling a car any time soon. If you want to target this type of audience for your brand, you should create the same type of content—with your own twist, of course!
Many car brands have robust websites with lots of information car buyers and owners
alike might want to read. Land Rover
is a great example. If you check out its website, you’ll see several large pictures
and interesting videos that will catch your eye, most of which explain why you might
want to become the owner of a Land Rover.
But this site also features the following types of content to explore:
- Vehicle specs and images
- Payment and trade-in calculators
- Owner stories
- Updates on the brand’s latest innovations
- Downloadable brochures
These features ensure there’s plenty of written content for SEO keywlandords to appear, helping increase organic traffic to the site. This means you can take notes on this SEO strategy, especially if you want lots of content despite not having a blog.
This is among the most well-known sites to visit when you want to start planning on buying or selling a
car. One reason for this is the substantial amount of helpful content at your fingertips when you visit
Kelley Blue Book.
Not only can you see car values on this site, but you’ll also have access to many resources that can help
you do the following:
- Research car makes and models
- Look into different car loans
- Compare cars
- Check your credit
- Find out about recalls
- Get a vehicle history report
When you read the articles on this site, you’ll also see top 10 lists, buyer’s guides, the latest car news, and more. If you want readers to make your website their go-to resource for all things automotive, make sure you model your content after Kelley Blue Book and similar sites.
Measure Your Results As You Go
Once you have a list of SEO keywords to use—and you know what type of content you’ll publish and
where—it’s time to write. But before you get too much content created, it’s important to consider
how you’ll measure your content marketing results. After all, no matter how good your content is,
some of it will do better than the rest. And you’ll want to know which content does the best so you
can publish more of it!
Fortunately, it’s easy to measure your success with content marketing in the automotive industry, as
there are lots of metrics to track—and plenty of ways to track them. One of the most popular ways is
through Google Analytics, which more than 40 million brands use.
This useful tool connects to your site and tells you the most important facts about it, such as:
- How you’re doing compared to your competitors
- Which websites your web traffic comes from
- Where your website’s visitors live
- How long visitors spend on each page
- Which browsers and screen resolution your readers have
- How many visitors take action when they visit your site—such as buying or clicking links
- How fast people leave your website
Google Analytics can give you the answers to all these questions and more, allowing you to find ways to improve your website’s content. After all, when you see that a post on your blog gets more visits and clicks than any other page on your site, you know you’re doing something right—and you can try to replicate that success on future posts to boost traffic to your site!
Get Content Writing Help from Experts
Whether you’re creating brand new website content or want to start a blog, you’re going to need lots of
written content. And if you don’t have the time or skills to write a lot about the automotive industry,
you need help from content writing experts. That’s where Scripted comes in.
Our automotive writers
are knowledgeable about cars and reliable enough to provide you with the tone you’re looking for to impress
your target audience. So if you need blog posts or video scripts about buying, selling, or repairing cars,
our talented writers can help. Browse our list of automotive writers, and then contact us today to get started!
