Many utilize AdWords display advertising in some capacity or another to help with driving traffic to a website.  While many are familiar with the branding and awareness benefits of display advertising, some are still confused about what display advertising does and doesn’t do, and how to best take advantage of this marketing method on the Google AdWords platform.

If a business is expecting conversions and direct actions based off of their display advertising, they may be disappointed unless the advertising features a great offer with a time limit.  The main benefit of display advertising is branding and awareness.  Just like McDonalds, Coca Cola and Amazon, having a brand be represented on a wide scale helps a company ultimately gain a following and hopefully be the first brand that a consumer thinks of when they go to make a purchasing decision.

Google helps up the ante by offering targeting and negative targeting for display ads.  Targeting can include remarketing lists (including look-a-like customer acquisition), in-market buyers, keywords, topics, demographics and interests.  Smart companies will combine specific targeting with negative targeting to ensure that their ads don’t show on sites that are irrelevant to their business.  After a business runs AdWords display advertising and begins getting clicks and impressions, they can, among other things, optimize delivery via the “placement” section of AdWords.

All of these tactics help build awareness for a brand and the targeting helps make the most efficient use of this.  What are some ways you all use the Google display network to help promote your dealerships?

The word is out, Google has done away with ads on the right hand side of search engine results pages, instead opting for four ads at the top of the page instead of three and only seven ads on the first page instead of eleven.  While this has sent many into a panic, these Google AdWords changes, while important, may not require additional action from businesses using the platform.  If anything, a watchful eye will be most important in the days to come.

Most search engine marketing campaigns at this point should be utilizing ad extensions, constantly working to improve quality scores and continually trying to have ads land at the top of the page.  While there are now less ads on the first page of search results on Google, the top four ads may now display extensions when possible, instead of just the top one or two.  This means that ads that may not rank in position one might still get a lot of additional real estate in search results.

A negative side effect of the change may be increased cost per click.  Businesses should watch their PPC spend to make sure that their bids are making sense with respect to their goals as well as their positioning in Google search results.  Companies should make sure that the stiff competition for the top four positions doesn't drive their average cost per click up.

At the end of the day, these important Google AdWords changes may do damage to poorly run campaigns, but could also provide additional juice to well-optimized campaigns with active management.  What are some ways you are dealing with the changes to AdWords?

While looking for specific long tail keywords that convert for the lowest cost is imperative in any PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign, automotive PPC has an extra set of issues to deal with. Many times, potential zero moment clients still use basic terms to search out and ultimately purchase a vehicle.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) approaches are often geared towards avoiding basic one or two word keywords, instead opting for laser specific long tail terms that indicate buying signals. Unfortunately, this becomes a tad more nuanced when dealing with automotive PPC because many customers will perform an extremely basic search looking for the nearest dealership in order to see its available inventory, and ultimately submit a lead and purchase a vehicle. Thus, while no true buying signals might be present in a given search, clients may still use those broad queries in search engines to find places to purchase.

Another issue frequently arises because manufacturers and competing dealerships realize what kind of searches drive interested traffic to their website and begin bidding on many of these terms, driving up the cost of advertising on search engines. To combat this, dealerships should consider the match types being used on each keyword, what kind of targeting they’re doing and how they can perhaps make their ad copy stand out a bit more.

Finally, many of the search terms used in automotive PPC are the same used when researching a vehicle. If a dealership can include vehicle reviews, specifics and related inventory on their landing pages and/or vehicle detail pages, they have the chance to retain researchers and convert them to shoppers.

Most dealerships cannot afford to miss out on traffic for certain search terms, even if they are a tad more broad than many PPC managers would feel comfortable bidding on. Often, decisions have to be made in an automotive PPC campaign regarding campaign focus – given a limited budget, a tightly focused campaign can do a lot more in a short period of time for simple popular terms than a more general campaign. What are some ways you all account for patterns in shopper searches?

Location based advertising is advertising that integrates location-based services. Google teased this functionality for AdWords but has yet to roll it out in a widespread fashion. Marketers should be looking for and seizing any opportunities to use this advertising.

The impressive thing to note about location based advertising is that specific ads can be digitally served to customers by pinpointing their location. This is akin to a well-placed billboard or poster, however the marketing could be further narrowed by interest or demographics so that only the optimal customer sees it at the optimal time and place.

The closest digital advertising has gotten has traditionally been geotargeted ads. While this can help get messaging in front of a radius of potential clients, it doesn’t allow for a laser approach where only specific people receive the message within that radius. Rather than rely on IP address, location based advertising would actually be factoring in the geographic coordinates of a user’s specific device.

Some marketers believe location based advertising is the next big digital marketing advancement for 2016. Are any of you using this yet?

Of all the many businesses that participate in digital marketing, many are not following the basic process of testing advertising to see if any of it actually works.  While "A/B testing" and "split testing" are nice buzzwords in the field, the actual process required with these often requires patience from the same companies that are expecting fast results from their marketing.  If one masters the basic flow of confirming optimal marketing tactics with data, they should have no problem with testing advertising.

Step one is to form a hypothesis based on what is known already, and to test it on the least important part of a campaign that it applies to.  That way, the rest of an account can remain unaffected while a specific campaign runs the new idea on a limited budget.  Many companies falter here by applying a hypothesis on a widespread rollout, making it difficult to see if it actually works or not.

Step two is to evaluate those results.  If the original test isn't successful, revisit the original idea and start over.  Once there is some success in testing advertising ideas, those are the ideas that should be given more money. It's much easier to justify moving more budget when the data points in favor of the hypothesis.

While basic, many businesses are in such a hurry to drive immediate results, especially with mediums like pay-per-click, that they either skip testing or apply testing too broadly without confirming that it works.  What are some other ways you all test when optimizing your marketing?

While marketing messages may fluctuate, most websites stay fairly static in terms of their offerings.  Different things may go on sale and different promotions may be featured on a site's home page or specials page, but rarely are those messages tuned for specific visitors.  However, it can pay to create custom onsite content intended specifically for each potential customer.

Personalising onsite content amounts to having a site's images and copy change dynamically based on a user's cookies and browser history.  If a user has been searching for "cheap" items, showing a special discount to them might be more helpful, while someone that's been to a site already might want to be shown the last thing they were looking at.  Right now, this can be achieved with software.  In marketing, personalized content can be indirectly achieved via SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and directly via SEM (Search Engine Marketing/Pay Per Click).

If a site isn't set up effectively to allow installing additional software to track and personalise the onsite content, the next best idea would be to work diligently on SEO, creating optimized pages that rank in search for specific types of needs.  These same pages could double as landing pages for SEM campaigns that are geared towards certain types of searches, or other awareness campaigns that are targeted towards certain types of users on their respective platforms.  Thus, users arriving on a website are likely to at least be seeing extremely relevant material, if not completely personalised.

Truly personalised onsite content can help deliver the right message to the right user at the right time to encourage a sale.  What are some ways you are all creating custom experiences for your potential car buyers?

Digital advertising has definitely increased it's effectiveness since the days of untargeted spam pop-ups.  Now, behavioral, geographic and demographic targeting have made digital marketing very effective - especially on mobile.  While marketing that actually brings in conversions en-masse was confined for the most part to only the most affluent advertisers, thanks to higher levels of targeting, even small businesses can now benefit from precise marketing.

Granularity is key when building campaigns on a small digital marketing budget.  Layering in multiple 3rd party segments helps refine customers down to only those that are most interested in a business' products or services.  For example, an auto dealer could layer in 3rd party data to find in-market buyers, and target directly to those users to make the most of their digital marketing spend.

The challenge for small businesses is to make sure that they eliminate anything that makes buying something on their website difficult.  Everything must load quickly and correctly, or the momentum created by digital marketing gets lost when the user hits a site or landing page. Calls to action must be obvious and easy to use, even on a mobile device.  Businesses should have a click-to-call option on the mobile version of their website.

Digital marketing has areas where it is acceptable to have a longer message, but companies should be aware that this doesn't work as well on mobile, and that a concise version of their message might be a better way to gain conversions.  Because most users browse and shop on mobile devices, campaigns should optimize for mobile first and work backwards to ensure a comparable experience on desktops and laptops, rather than the other way around.

Digital marketing is complicated, but with some targeting and mobile-optimized campaigns, a business can thrive regardless of advertising budget.  What are some other ways small businesses can get ahead in today's marketing climate?

Businesses can utilize social media even more in 2016 and actually see ROI from it.  Here are some social media objectives that can bring a company closer to it’s marketing goals.

Mobile-first is not a new idea, and many now follow this philosophy when designing websites and other elements around the web.  However, people only really browse the same few sites and apps - most times while on their phone. Most people generally won't download a new app or type in a new URL outside of this unless they are forced to.  So rather than build out tons of new mobile content, meeting the customer where they already are (social networking apps) should be among a business' prime social media objectives.

Native video is getting bigger on Facebook.  Rather than merely linking a YouTube video, social media objectives should include uploading media directly to each social networking platform.  These platforms design their native players to work quickly and easily in their apps, making the content easy to consume and among the most popular and response-generating content on these apps today.

Content creation strategies have spawned tons of new work that is constantly broadcast online.  However, the most opportunity comes from responding to users quickly.  So businesses should focus less on blasting out their own content (be it useful or sales-oriented) and increase focus on responding quickly to comments and discussions on their own social media page and throughout each network.
 
All in all, meeting and engaging customers on various social networks should be at the top of every business' social media objectives list for 2016.  What are some ways you all use social networks to engage customers?

I had the pleasure of sitting in at a seminar at the Google headquarters put on by Google and Carfax for car dealerships.  While much of the information could be deemed general knowledge, some of the ideas that Google had discovered via analyzing years of data and trends is surprisingly actionable for obtaining auto shoppers today.

One of the main differences between new and old auto shoppers is preparedness.  Shoppers can do all the necessary research - including what price they should be paying for a car - before they even physically enter a dealership.  The main way to handle this is absolute transparency with regards to the pricing and condition of a vehicle.  This allows an auto shopper to feel more trust with the dealership, which in many cases can be the only thing preventing a successful sale.

Auto shoppers are on mobile.  Sometimes this occurs while the shopper is at a dealership!  They could be reviewing inventory or price checking while being shown a vehicle.  Therefore, competitive pricing and accurate inventory on a dealership website is key to giving an auto shopper a good experience and getting a sale.

Car salesmen are stereotypically untrustworthy.  Auto shoppers need to have trust in a dealership before they will purchase a vehicle.  Also, shoppers visit 2 or less dealerships thanks to being armed with mobile phones that have all the information that they need to make a decision.  Thus, a salesperson should get out of their own way and focus on making the car purchasing experience a positive and transparent one.

The most eye-opening trait of today's auto shoppers, especially for digital marketing agencies specializing in auto, is that auto shoppers don't submit leads!  Almost 50% will never submit a form lead.  This goes back to trust.  Auto shoppers do not necessarily want to leave their information and be bombarded with spam or contacted by a pushy salesperson.  Some ways to get around this are to make lead forms easier to fill out, require less information and make sure that the customer knows what they will get when they submit the form (i.e. "we will not spam you, but will contact you within 2 hours to follow up").  Another must-have is call tracking, because as form leads decrease, phone leads increase.  Seeing as shoppers already have all the information they need to make a purchase, they are more likely to go straight to the dealership or call in and make an appointment.

All in all, auto shoppers today have all the necessary car buying info on their mobile device, they don't trust dealerships easily and they don't submit form leads.  This can be nightmarish for digital marketing agencies trying to prove that they are driving leads, but great for transparent dealerships with well priced cars that cater to a customer’s needs.  What steps are you all taking to make the most of the current customer behaviors of today?

Digital Marketing Agencies Must Stay Competitive

Digital Marketing Agencies Must Stay Competitive

The landscape of marketing has changed over the last couple of decades, and digital marketing continues to change almost daily.  ROI is getting easier to determine, and marketing agencies are being fired left and right by businesses looking to maximize benefit by having just one good agency rather than several mediocre, behind-the-times vendors.

As budgets shift, digital marketing agencies should strive to provide more personalized customer engagement.  This requires different competencies from marketers, including knowledge of data analytics and content creation to improve ROI.

Specialized knowledge is a huge benefit here.  Car dealerships should seek out digital marketing agencies as partners with knowledge specific to the automotive industry for best results, rather than an agency that covers multiple business verticals.  Some key skills these agencies should have include the ability to manage large amounts of data, the capability to create sales funnels for each marketing channel that truly reflect a shopper’s intent and of course the nimbleness to overcome financial barriers and still demonstrate ROI.

The world is becoming tougher for digital marketing agencies whose methodology includes generic or cookie-cutter approaches to generating leads.  How are you all staying absolutely up to date on all the latest ways to engage and retain business digitally?