Before buying a new vehicle, shoppers check media sources. However, the dealer website is one of the sources that continues to grow in importance in an auto shopper’s purchasing journey.
The prospects should be able to find the dealership website before they use it. To stay competitive with search engine advertising in your local market, it is essential to establish some best practices at the time of setting up paid search campaigns to promote your dealership inventory. By implementing the following practices, you can reach the targeted shoppers as they’re searching online.
- Campaign creation with makes and models: Consumers are able to find the car they are searching for and your dealership easily, is the primary factor to remember before you are going to start a paid search advertising campaign. So using of model and make keywords along with your location is very important to shown in the search results when someone searching for them.
If you have more than one make, it is better to create separate campaign for each of them to get the maximum from your advertising. This will provide a facility that you can effectively control and monitor the performance and budget for each campaign. However, it may look like a good strategy to extend the budget by combining all the makes you sell into a single campaign. In those cases, you will not be able to control or divide your spending for each brand. Then, create ad groups by model within the campaigns.
- Keep your dealership name in keywords: Do not forget to keep your dealership brand name as keyword along with makes and models keywords. Keeping the dealership name as a keyword in the list makes you to display in the search results when users search with your name and your online presence will increase with the number of search results in the search engine page increase.
- Make sure to reduce current inventory: Spend for the advertising on the old car models that you have from more or less a year in your physical inventory. New car models can make excite the customers. Don’t spend precious advertising dollars on those you don’t have at present. Update text ads with new offers to sell quickly.
- Understand OEM guidelines: At the time of bidding on competitor’s offers, it is important to understand the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) guidelines and the financial impact to your campaigns. Bidding the same OEM dealerships is generally against for most OEM guidelines. For instance, a Toyota dealer bidding on another Toyota dealer’s terms is often against the OEM guidelines.
The lifetime value of a happy customer is more than profit on one transaction. When you set up a search ad campaign, it will generate some calls for service. Actually, these are not bad calls. If the customer is satisfied with the service that you provide, he will be a customer for you for many years to come. So don’t leave the calls that you got for service and make them for long term.