How to Start An Online Auto Parts Business: A Guide
How to start an online auto parts business
Here are tips on how starting an online auto parts or accessories business. Or maybe you just want to grow your existing parts or accessories business and want some new ideas. Whether you consider your product line parts or accessories, aftermarket parts, or spare parts, this article should be helpful.
The parts and accessories business is a unique industry: Auto parts eCommerce is projected to grow at 6.7% annually through 2027. Even in years where the US economy faced economic weaknesses, historically, the automotive aftermarket has been recession-resistant.
In this article, we look at online marketing strategy and we compare marketing techniques including Google Ads, social media marketing, remarketing, and more. This is based on our 20+ years of experience helping clients start and grow online parts businesses.
Specialize in an automotive niche!
This is critical if you’re starting an online business selling auto parts: Focus on a specific niche. We’ve been recommending this for two decades and it’s an important aftermarket brand strategy to employ.
In 20 years, we’ve never seen a great correlation between a high number of SKUs, and sales or profit. We’ve had clients over the years with very successful businesses selling dozens or hundreds of products. On the other hand, we’ve watched businesses trying to sell hundreds of thousands of parts fail. Here’s why:
If you don’t focus on a niche, by default you’re competing with thousands of other online auto parts businesses. Some of those businesses spend millions of dollars per year on paid search and auto parts SEO. Unless you have a multi-million dollar budget you can’t successfully compete.
Another obstacle to starting your business is a huge lineup of products is impossible to manage without a large support staff. Even if you’re getting ACES and PIES data or automatic data feeds from vendors, you have to be able to manage your online store’s product categories. This includes the navigational structure, product content including product descriptions, and other labor-intensive functions.
If you plan on importing product data from your warehouse distributor (probably the same PIES data used by hundreds of other websites) and not putting time into editing your product content, you’re just not going to stand out online.
There are many market segments to specialize in when you stop to think about it: European makes, Asian makes, off-road, truck, Jeep®, Mustang, electric vehicles…the list goes on and on.
Google Ads are a fast way to start an online auto parts business
Google Ads can be a fast-track to producing revenue if you know what you’re doing.
If you have a new website, generating organic traffic is going to be a long-term effort. Paid search through Google Ads can get exposure for your website quickly and really helps start an online business. With Google Ads, you can reach customers exactly at the point when they are searching for your type of automotive products.
Google Ads now includes many campaign options: Search campaigns, Performance Max (“PMax”) campaigns, Display campaigns, Shopping campaigns, Video campaigns, Smart campaigns and Demand Gen campaigns.
These are all more complex than a few years ago, and you need to consider adding assets (headlines, images, sitelinks, videos, etc.) and audiences to maximize your effectiveness.
Google Shopping has evolved a lot in recent years. It’s included within Performance Max campaigns (remarketing is, too) and you need to work on data quality in the Gogle Merchant Center to maximize your effectiveness using Google Shopping. You can learn more about current Google Shopping data specifications here.
There are too many tips for Google Ads to cover in this article.
Have the right platform for your online car parts business
Want to know how to start an online auto parts business? Start by using the best eCommerce platform for automotive parts. (This article covers selling on an eCommerce website, not selling parts on Amazon.) You want to have the best car parts website possible. Let’s go over what that means.
For optimal auto parts marketing you need a website that works well. The top priorities for this include easy navigation, useful information to educate your customers, a site that considers E-E-A-T and EAST, and a fast-loading mobile-friendly site.
Site speed is critical for the highest conversion rate. A slow auto parts site repels visitors like oil repels water. A slow site holds back the ability to effectively market your auto parts store online.
It is also important to have site navigation and structure that works with your auto parts products. For example, year/make/model fitment search if you sell application-specific products.
There are automotive templates available for popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce or Miva. We have an article that answers a lot of questions on Shopify vs. BigCommerce, or BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce. Still, you’ll probably need to engage a website developer who understands fitment and vehicle-specific search.
Should you grow your auto parts business with Facebook or Instagram Ads?
Facebook and Instagram organic reach has been plummeting every year. It has dropped from over 15% of your followers in 2015 to only about 1% or less today. Meta, the parent for Facebook and Instagram, has clearly changed from having platforms to interact organically with followers, to a pay-to-play social platform. If you want to reach a broader, relevant audience on Facebook today, Meta Advertising is an option for you.
On the plus side, advertising on Facebook or Instagram is relatively simple. The most basic approach is to boost a post and you can do that on a very limited budget.
We will caution you, however, after analyzing tens of thousands of Facebook visits to websites over several years, Facebook visitors to auto parts websites tend to convert to buyers at a very low rate. Quite often we’ll see Facebook visitors convert at a rate of 10% to 50% lower than an auto parts website’s average conversion rate. If your site conversion rate is 1%, don’t be surprised if Facebook visitors convert at .10% to .50%.
Other products, like apparel or home goods, may have better conversion rates for Facebook visitors than auto parts businesses.
Facebook and Instagram are best used as top-of-funnel (“ToFu“) marketing.
Don’t confuse the number of followers or “likes” you get for your online auto parts business, with marketing that is intended to produce sales. Look at your Google Analytics to see how these Facebook visitors behave when they come to your auto parts website.
Using Facebook Ads Manager
You manage a Meta advertising program using Facebook Ads Manager. Besides Facebook, your Facebook ads can appear on the Facebook Audience Network, including other websites or apps, on Instagram or on Facebook Messenger. These are “placements.”
Best practice for Facebook Ads are similar to other online ads. Have a clear Call to Action (CTA). In other words, what do you want the viewer to do when the ad is displayed? What is the benefit to the viewer? If you add a button where do you want the button to lead to? Have a specific target in mind for your ads. If you’re trying to market your auto parts store online only in your city, use a geographic limitation.
You should install the Facebook pixel on your website. Facebook pixel data lets you make sure your auto parts ads are being shown to the intended audience. It also helps you build advertising audiences, which is simply the people you want to target. It also lets you take advantage of other Facebook advertising tools such as remarketing (scroll down for more of an explanation on remarketing).
Optimized landing pages to help grow your auto parts business
“Golly, I’m optimizing pages all over the place!”
If you want to know how to start an online auto parts business here’s a pro tip: Optimizing landing pages for your auto products or services increases sales by improving engagement.
An optimized page makes it easier for a customer to take an action or make a purchase. When you optimize a page it’s more likely a visitor will click the “add to cart” button.
Another goal of a landing page, for a local store, might be to generate phone calls. In that case an optimized page has a prominent number with your business hours. That number should be clickable when viewing the page on a mobile phone, which is how most customers will view it.
Optimized pages lead to a better site conversion rate (see our blog post on automotive conversion rate optimization). Your “conversion rate” is the percentage of visitors that take an action, either calling your store or making an online purchase. Think of it this way: increase your site conversion rate from 0.50% to 1.0% and your sales double!
Landing page checklist
Here’s a checklist for designing a product landing page that converts well:
- Show a clear image(s) of the part (and for best practice on auto parts images see our blog post on Google Shopping images).
- Include a headline with the part type.
- Have a clear description, not just a short sentence or a phrase with abbreviations.
- Make sure the brand of the part and the manufacturer part number are visible.
- Show the price of the auto part and in the case of an eCommerce store, show shipping cost.
- Show in-stock status.
- Have a clear Call to Action (CTA), which can be an “add to cart” button. The CTA should stand out on the page. For example, if everything on the page is blue and your CTA is blue, it may be lost visually.
- Reduce other distractions on the page that can grab the viewer’s attention away from the part. Keep it clean and simple. Don’t automatically throw in huge graphic banners.
Grow your online auto parts business with email marketing
Did you know a repeat customer is worth 3 to 7 times the cost of a new one? You can see how the math works in our lifetime value article. Lifetime value is abbreviated as “LTV.” In that article we show how one new auto parts customer can be worth several hundred dollars over two or three years.
Our article on LTV shows how you can pay $12 to acquire one new customer, who then contributes $147 to your bottom line over three years.
Once someone buys from you, or even asks to be added to your mailing list, you have their email address. That’s valuable!
An extremely cost-effective way to sales is with email marketing campaigns.
Develop a relationship with your customers via email. Send out regular updates if they’re opted in to your email newsletters. This can be weekly or monthly. Send out deals and new automotive products you’re adding to your store. The better you nurture your lead, the more your customer will come back for more and buy your products.
Setup triggered email automation campaigns to send a personalized “thank you” message with the customer’s name and product details.
Summary
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