Choosing and Managing Paid Advertising for Your Auto Dealership

Paid advertising is a method of Internet advertising that uses various ad forms like banner ads, text ads, display ads, etc. to promote your business on the Internet. By spending a little share from your traditional advertising budget, you can reap huge benefits from paid advertising.

Paid advertising is already a popular online advertising strategy used by many auto-dealerships in the US. According to Borrell Associates Inc., in the year 2012, auto industry in US spent $11.9 million on paid search.

Choosing paid advertising for your auto dealership
There are two types of paid advertising

Display ads: Display ads or banner ads contain some advertisement. They usually contain text, images, audio or small videos. You can place your auto dealership’s ad on a web page where your target audiences usually spend time. When a user clicks on the ad, it directs him to your auto dealership website.

In display ads, you need to pay the publisher an initial setup fee and a small sum whenever the ad is clicked. Display ads are a great way to create brand awareness and promote your auto dealership among your online users.

PPC text ads: The ads that are displayed at the top/bottom and the right side in the search engine result pages (SERPS) are generally termed as Pay Per Click (PPC) text ads. These ads are displayed when a specific keyword or phrase is entered by the online user. Thus PPC ads allow target marketing.

In PPC text ads, you have to bid and buy the keywords. Search engines will show your ad when a user types those specific keywords. One advantage of PPC campaign is that only pay when a user clicks on the advertisement. You can take advantage of PPC ads by doing proper keyword research and then biding on accurate keywords.

Managing paid advertisements
According to Dealeron.com, a new car buyer uses the Internet; and in particular, searches engines, three times more often than they use traditional means. So, if you want your auto dealership website to be visible to potential customers, start using paid advertisements.

Choose an effective ad campaign
When choosing paid advertising for your auto dealership, know how to make the right choice. Be careful in choosing the method that really works and helps you find more potential customers.

Define what you want to achieve
Be clear about what you want to achieve. Set short and long term goals to assess the performance of your advertisements.

For example, set a target that you must sell 30 cars in a month and 100 in 3 months. This helps you measure the performance of your advertisement and get to know if these paid ads have really helped you.

Keyword research
This is very crucial part of paid ad campaigning. Do some research and take advice from professionals to prepare a keyword list that is appropriate and specific to your auto dealership. Keywords are expensive and may not be helpful for your dealership when chosen in general sense, they have to be related to your niche and likely are used by your target audience.

For example, if you only sell luxury cars like Mercedes, Ford or BMW in the USA, then select keywords like 'Mercedes Benz dealers in USA' or 'Ford auto dealers in USA', because these keywords are usually used by people who are planning to purchase a specific car. Don't bid for keywords like 'Cars in USA' or 'USA Cars'.

Design effective landing pages
Landing page is the page that visitors land on after clicking on the ad. The message displayed on the ad must match with the content in your landing page. Design a simple and clear landing page that calls for an action of the prospect. It can either be a sales page or a registering page.

According to Unbounce website, 80% of the PPC pages direct to the homepage (which is not a good idea). Here you need to understand that homepages are not designed for any specific call for action, they only have information about your dealership website and content for initial engagement. Whereas, landing pages are designed for conversion, they direct visitors for specific action.

So, avoid having homepage as your landing page as it only increases your bounce rate and decreases your conversion rate.

Track the performance and improve campaign
Your advertising campaign can turn out to be a disaster if you don't keep a track of it. Monitor the ad campaign regularly and track the results. Check for the goals you have set and analyze if that campaign is positive.

Searchoptics.com is a leader in digital marketing solutions for the automotive industry. Search Optics interactive marketing services include custom websites, search engine optimization, paid search and mobile solutions that generate leads which result in sales opportunities. Search Optics specializes in automotive digital marketing and automotive marketing services.

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