Today’s car buyers are usually excited to show off their new car to their friends, families, and associates, either in person or by posting a video of their new vehicle on social media. This creates a huge opportunity for your dealership to earn sales referral business while building a strong library of customer testimonials to utilize across all your online marketing strategies.  What if YOU assisted the customer with their video while they were still at YOUR store? Now the customer is sharing a VIDEO of themselves with their new vehicle, telling people about the wonderful experience your dealership provided, how happy they are with their new vehicle, why their salesperson was great and why others should buy a car from YOU.

Here is an example of how one successful dealership I know has implemented this strategy. They have an area set up with a gong and red carpet. The salespeople use their smartphone cameras to essentially interview the customer about their experience while they are excited. Best part? The salesperson is in the video WITH the customer. The salespeople work as a team and another salesperson (or manager) does the recording. The dealership gets a solid video testimonial that can be used for marketing; the salesperson gets a little juice to sell himself; and, best of all, the customer gets a video they can share with their friends and family!

You may be wondering how the dealership can get away with doing this, as there are all sorts of “potential” issues with using a customer’s video for marketing and/or review purposes without their written consent.

The dealership does one simple thing to ensure it is following rules, it incorporates a media release into its finance paperwork. This way, when the customer comes out of finance and is taking delivery of their new (or new to them) vehicle, and is excited, the salespeople can capture these memories for the customer. And the dealership can utilize those videos on social media or any other channel they wish. Will every customer agree to do a testimonial? Of course not. But If they do they sign the release in the F&I office.

This is an excellent way to build a solid list of customer testimonial videos that will grow throughout the years. Think about it. If your store sells 9 cars per day and, to be conservative, let’s say 50% decline being filmed, that still means 4-5 video testimonials a day, 120 per month… and so on. You get the picture (or video, I should say).  Now you have a library of testimonial videos to display on a testimonials page of your website, next to your inventory videos, on other third-party touchpoints, on social media, and to use as part of your online marketing strategies.

Some may think it is difficult to elicit these responses. Well, it's not. Just follow two rules: First, train your salespeople to ask specific questions to get the required response you need; and second, always ask the customer to talk about themselves! Don’t ask them why YOU are wonderful, ask them what THEY thought about the experience. You’ll get the answers you are looking for.

If you incorporate video testimonials into your sales and F&I process and train your staff to ask each sold customer to do one, you'll have more videos than you could desire in no time. Now, go make some videos!