Dealer Revenue

Car Dealership PPC Ad Copy Tips

There are so many aspects to managing your pay per click ad campaign, especially if you're managing it on your own on a dealership level.  Like they say, knowledge is power, and breaking that learning into smaller pieces can be extremely helpful.  One place to start is with determining the text in your ad copy.

First, make sure everything is spelled correctly, words are used in the right context, and all the punctuation is right.  In other words, use good grammar.  Web visitors are looking for any reason not to convert, so make sure you don't give them an easy one.  Earning the trust of potential customers begins with proper grammar.  A simple misspelling could be the difference between a buyer clicking onto your site or your competitors.  Make sure the text in your ad is clear, concise, and brief. Having an ad that is easy to read and understand just gives you another leg up on your competitors.

Use the keywords that are being searched for in your ad copy.  Google bolds these words, so searchers will notice that your ad contains the same words they used, increasing the chances they will click onto your ad.  Google even offers a tool (Dynamic Keyword Insertion) that will automatically plug these words into your ad.

Use a call to action in the text.  By using simple phrases like buy, test-drive, call, or sign-up in the body of your ad could be what makes searchers click on your ad.  Sometimes you have to tell viewers what you want them to do, and adding a call to action to your ad copy could be the push needed.

Keep testing and rewriting.  Even when you find a version of the ad copy that is converting well, it's important to keep measuring and reworking that text.  What might be optimal one day may not be the same the next.  Make sure you have the proper analytics tools (or partner with a PPC ad campaign vendor who does) to measure the necessary metrics.

SEO & PPC: Mutually Beneficial for Auto Dealers

I've touched on the fact that car dealerships should both optimize their website for search engines (SEO) and run a pay-per-click ad campaign (PPC) for their auto dealer website. Seeing both a paid ad and a natural search result on the same page will help your potential buyers have more trust in the website they are clicking on -- your car dealership site. I wanted to add some more specific ways that running these two seemingly very different online marketing campaigns can be very mutually beneficial.

It is fairly easy to measure the return you receive on your PPC investment. For each and every keyword you can measure cost per click, visits, web leads, phone calls, and eventually actual car sales. SEO on the other hand is not nearly as perfectly quantifiable, because your own development costs (the investment part of the ROI equation) are harder to track and there is no good way to know exactly how you’d rank without doing expending your resources on SEO. If the other dealerships in your local area are not using great auto dealer websites companies, then you may not have to invest in a top-notch interactive dealership marketing provider to generate lots of SEO traffic and leads.

You can track keywords, but often, determining which keywords are directly resulting in sales can be difficult. If your auto dealer doesn't provide your dealership with the analytics to track your SEO keywords properly you should consider switching to a car dealer websites provider that does.

Having a worthwhile analytics system for your search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns make all of this much more feasible. Your auto dealership needs to be able to track each keyword, lead, and sale that results from these two types of online marketing. If you can’t, you aren’t getting the maximum benefit of your ad campaigns.

Google's Bid Simulator and Your Auto Dealership

Given the complexity involved with running a dealership’s pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign, Google is trying to make the self-management of PPC campaigns as easy as possible with the introduction of their bid simulator.

Existing Google AdWords users will be able to use the new bid simulator to see the potential difference in clicks compared to a higher or lower maximum cost-per-click (CPC).  To use it, click on the "Keywords" tab in your AdWords account, and then click on the bid simulator icon (it looks like a mini-graph) in the "Max. CPC" column.

The bid simulator uses data from the past seven days, and shows your auto dealership how many times your dealer ads could have been shown had the max CPC been higher and lower.  This will allow your car dealership to decide which keywords are worth spending a little more, and which you are spending too much money on.

Of course, Google is quick to point out that past data does not predict future results, so take all of this information with a grain of salt.

While this tool can help make optimizing your auto dealer pay-per-click campaign a little easier, it by no means makes it easy.  Successfully managing and running your car dealer PPC ad campaigns requires someone at your dealership to be extremely dedicated and knowledgeable.  Using an expert PPC management vendor will free your dealer staff to sell more cars, as well as give your auto dealership the results you need from your PPC campaign.

Auto Dealer Incentives and Cash for Clunkers

The Cash for Clunkers program seems to be wildly popular, regardless of its political and environmental implications. There are dealerships that have all but run out of the most popular new vehicles, and by some accounts, tens of thousands of customers have made their way into auto dealer showrooms.

Even though some consumers, politicians, and program critics are unhappy with the Cash for Clunkers incentive program, auto dealers are still reaping the benefits of this giant influx of dealership traffic. So why has it proven to be so successful at generating interest and showroom traffic?

Incentives. Consumers (more so now than ever) are always looking for a reason to buy. This could be a coupon, a discount, or an additional item thrown in for free. The success of Cash for Clunkers shows that even in an extremely challenging marketplace and economy, consumers respond to compelling offers when they feel that are getting something unique and timely. They are willing to trade something precious (their time to go visit a dealership) in exchange for something valuable and fleeting (the Cash for Clunkers offer).

How can you leverage this lesson? Use an incentive based lead generation tool on the home page of your dealer site. Increase the incentive when your customers submit their contact information if they schedule a test drive. Using incentives on your auto dealer website has continually been shown to increase leads, dealer showroom traffic, and car sales. Make sure your dealership heeds the lesson from the Cash for Clunkers program—great incentives sell cars.

Common Auto Dealer PPC Mistakes

Almost every auto dealer that tries running a search engine marketing campaign (PPC) on their own ends up making a mistake or two. Heck, even the PPC veterans make a mistake from time to time. While occasionally trying something that ends up not being as effective as thought is understandable, some errors happen far too often.

Here is a list of common search engine marketing mistakes:

Sending Your Car Dealer PPC Traffic to Your Homepage: People use search engines to find something specific; sending them to a generic homepage won't help them find what they searched for. Instead, use landing pages specific to keywords to solve this. There are even car dealer websites that use dynamic landing pages as part of their PPC efforts so that the landing page is always contextually relevant to the users search intent.

Bidding on Only One Keyword: Not all searchers are going to use the same keyword to find your dealership. Research to find the most common forms and words searched. Your car dealership’s website analytics may help with this.

Using the Same Ad Copy for All Keywords: Just like sending all traffic to the same homepage, you don't want everyone who searches to see the same ad text. Fit the ad copy to the keyword it is tied to. Even better than that, use dynamic keyword replacement to ensure that as many keywords as possible are bolded in your ad—this is a basic PPC tip that has proven to dramatically increase click-through rates.

Optimizing Page For Conversion: Landing pages are great for this since their only purpose is to provide relevant content and convert visitors into leads. Make sure you have plenty of contact forms and calls to action. Again, having a dynamic landing page solution ensures that your page is relevant to a visitor—this is necessary to maximize your conversion rates.

Bidding on the Wrong Keywords: Do some keyword research before you begin bidding on keywords. There is no use spending money on keywords that don’t convert. If you don’t have a list of keywords that convert well, take ample time in a very controlled and measurable process to determine which ones work and which don’t, so you don’t end up wasting lots of money.

It may be worthwhile for your car dealership to have your PPC ad campaign managed by a search engine marketing vendor. They shouldn't be committing any of the above mistakes, which will give your auto dealer website a better chance of having a PPC campaign with a high ROI.

Diversify Your PPC Ad Campaign

Many auto dealerships that run their own pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns only place paid ads on Google, since it is the biggest, most used search engine.  However, a study by ad network Chikita finds that while Google may see the most search engine traffic, both Bing and Yahoo see a higher percentage of their traffic click onto the paid ads that are shown on the search results pages.  The study finds that the click thru rates on PPC ads are:

• Google: 0.97 %
• Yahoo: 1.24%
• Bing: 1.5%

This information highlights why it is important for your auto dealership to run PPC campaigns on all three major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo).  Although Google sees more searches on a daily basis, a smaller percentage of those searchers actually click on paid advertisements.  Diversifying your PPC ad campaign means that your ads will reach the most amount of people, as well as have the highest chance of actually being clicked on.

Managing one PPC campaign on your own is difficult enough; finding the most effective balance between all of the search engines, keyword choices, and bid amounts seems near impossible.  The only way to do it effectively is to track, compare, and measure each campaign both separately and together.  Since each search engine has their own reporting platform, this is incredibly difficult to do on a dealership level.

If you haven't already, your auto dealership needs to explore the option of running a PPC campaign managed by an expert.  It can be much less expensive than you may think, and the results are typically better than you’d see on your own.  In addition to all of the automation and simplification this will bring to your PPC campaign, there are PPC vendors who have the ability to track the things you need in order to really optimize your PPC campaigns across all three major search engines.

Use Google Search to Research Your Competiting Auto Dealerships

Google has done a great job making their search results better and more effective for the car buyers that use their search engine, especially when it comes to local search. As it stands now, those who search Google for a term like "Ford dealership" or "used Nissan dealer" will see local results for these terms, even if a city isn't included in the actual search term.

While this greatly helps searchers, and even your dealership, it isn't helpful if you are attempting to research your competing dealership websites. For example, if you want to see what PPC ads are appearing when you search for your competitor's dealership name or where your dealership website ranks for those who search in the next town over, you may not be able to see what someone in that neighboring city would see.

That's why the website SearchMuffin is great. This site allows you to choose the city you'd like to see Google search results for, allowing your dealership to see what local searchers see when they search in Google. You can use this information to see how well your dealership ranks in neighboring cities, as well as which PPC ads appear for those same searches.

Your dealership can use this data to tweak your website search engine optimization (SEO) to help your dealer website to rank higher in the search results of neighboring cities. Don't let your competing dealerships rule the search engine results without your dealership knowing about it--this could mean a loss in potential car sales.

Local Search Domination for Your Auto Dealership

For small to medium auto dealerships, most of the car sales you do will be to local customers.  While there might the exception for a special order car every once in awhile, a lot of the vehicles you sell will be to those who live, work, or play in your local community.  Check your CRM to determine where the majority of your sales are coming from, and use that information to help your dealership set up it's search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

If the majority of your sales are coming from local customers, then it makes sense to tailor your SEO strategy to reach those in-market buyers.  Imagine the influence it would have if a potential car buyer typed your make, city, and "dealership" (Baltimore Ford Dealership) into a search engine, and your dealership came up first, or multiple times on the first results page.  This type of search engine domination is not only possible for local searches, but it's also very important.

Achieving this type of search engine results requires that your dealership has a website structure that is properly optimized.  This means that each page has it's own optimized text, as well as a focus on local keywords like your city name.  Check with your auto dealer website provider to see what efforts are being made to optimize your dealership website for local search terms.  If at least one of your dealership website pages doesn't show up for local search terms, find out what your website provider is doing to fix that.

Auto Dealer Websites and Gender Segmentation

Segmenting your auto dealer market can be difficult, but done with the proper insights and research, it can be extremely beneficial to your car dealership.  It's no secret that different types of car shoppers act differently, respond to different things, and buy differently.  Building your car dealership website so that it appeals to the types of people in your market area can help your auto dealership sell more cars.

According to an eMarketer study, one of the biggest differentiators in how people spend their time online is their gender.  It seems to determine how users act online more than race, ethnicity or even economic status.  While more women say that they use the Internet than men, men tend to spend longer per session online than women do.

You can use this information to better your auto dealer website.  Are there areas that appeal to men where they can spend a few minutes, such as a blog or detailed articles about the cars that you sell?  Do your auto inventory pages have important information in a quick and easy to read format for the women who are researching their next car purchase?  Make sure that you don't lean too heavily in one direction or the other.  Having a balance of types and lengths of information typically results in the most effective auto dealer website design.

Segmenting your dealership market can be overdone. While conducting and using market segmentation can be helpful, it's very easy to cross the line into stereotyping genders, races, and ethnicities.  Use market segmentation as a guideline, but remember that there are always exceptions to rules.

SEO Synonyms for Auto Dealer Websites

Most Internet sales managers (ISM) that are involved in the search engine optimization (SEO) of their dealership websites know that determining the "right" keywords to optimize for is a big part of the process.  Once you think you have them, you're faced with the task of adding the right amount of each keyword to your website copy in order to achieve the best optimization results.

Keyword stuffing happens when you overload the content on your website with the words and phrases your dealership is attempting to rank in search engines for.  Typically, using these words 4-7 times per page is ideal, but unfortunately, there is no magic formula.

To help your dealership website find the most effective keywords, consider using various synonyms of the keywords that are originally being targeted.  When you combine this with a reporting platform that allows you to identify which specific keywords are leading to sales, your dealership will be able to know which keywords are the most effective for SEO and potentially PPC campaigns.

Also, when you use more than one keyword that essentially means the same thing (for example auto and car), you decrease the risk of being penalized by search engines for using keyword stuffing in your website copy.  If your dealership website is properly optimized for each word, you will attract more search traffic by using synonyms since those searching for cars and autos will find your site.  Talk to your auto dealer website provider to ensure you have the proper optimization structure and analytics software to truly benefit from using synonyms on your dealership website.