YouTube and the Motor Industry
YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world, besides Google. I personally feel it is so popular as people are inherently lazy and watching a video on YouTube is a great deal easier than reading something. Of course there is the added bonus of YouTube being a video upload and sharing site, and so a video is always going to be more popular than words or images alone. Without doubt, many businesses are capitalising from YouTube. Businesses ranging from make-up artists giving tips on how to apply make-up, to advice on how to find the quickest way around a race track, are just two examples of this growing trend.
As a motor dealer we have started using YouTube to video all cars in stock. The benefit as you can imagine is very obvious. It gives people a close up on a potential car they are interested in. Most car dealer websites only show photos, which if well done can give a great appraisal of the car. However, being able to move around the car, zoom into small stone chips and other blemishes you get with a used car, not only informs people about the condition of the car, it also helps build up trust and honesty – something often missing in the motor industry.
Being able to view a used car from the comfort of your own home is also popular for many people. Often people do not like to walk into a car showroom for fear of being pounced on by a salesman, and so by looking at a car online allows them to see a car and get a much better idea of its condition in non-threatening environment. The current problem as a car dealer we face, is finding the space to video a car. If you ever visit a car dealer, you will probably be aware of the lack of space available, and believe it or not, videoing a car takes up a lot of room, as you have car doors to open and close, and also it is essential that you get the all important distance shot of a car. Another problem we have found is trying to find time for the all important task of videoing and then uploading to the website.
The great thing about uploading cars to YouTube from a business perspective is not only will you get potential customers watching it (as in we send them the link after they have made contact with the business) but also people in general looking at buying a specific model, who may have never came across our business before. Current research suggests that the average car buyer in the UK and the US will spend 8 hours on the web alone researching a car…So no doubt as part of someone’s research plan they will very likely land on YouTube. There is the fact that we could be having someone view a car who lives in another country and so would never buy from us. However, it is a free of charge service, and just think, if we have 200 cars online, which each get 1000 views, that is 200,000 people looking at our stock. Out of these 200,000 people there will be some who live far away, but also there will be a proportion who live locally.. youtube watch time