Cardinale Automotive Group
Inventory Fueled PPC
When it comes to our digital marketing, most of us have some form of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) active. There are multiple strategies to approaching AdWords, Bing and the like with regards to driving the most qualified traffic to a dealership site. Inventory based PPC advertising is one way to ensure that a dealer's vehicles are available via paid search marketing.
Because inventory can move somewhat quickly through a dealership, a key problem is getting the new inventory regularly updated as PPC ads, while pausing or deleting ads refererencing vehicles that are no longer on the lot. An automated strategy can help both pause and create content for inventory based PPC.
Platforms such as Google AdWords offer APIs that allow someone with programming knowledge to script incoming and outgoing inventory so that PPC ads are up to date. Some APIs even allow for variables such as price to change while keeping the rest of an ad intact when accessed programmatically. Whether a dealership's focus is on just a few vehicles or the entire stock, these APIs help create a flow for inventory based PPC to always be up to date.
Long Tail advertising tactics can especially benefit from specific inventory being fed into a PPC campaign. Is anyone else using API's to add inventory to PPC campaigns? If not, how are you making sure your vehicles are being properly represented via PPC?
Cardinale Automotive Group
"Selling" at the Zero-Moment-of-Truth
As an industry, we often activate a vast array of tools...shiny widgets....and systems in which to be effective to the modern consumer…..
HOWEVER....do our systems:
Target - Communicate – Integrate together; As-One; in order to ensure Buyers are delivered at the ‘Zero Moment’ through a direct-path to OUR specific Stores? Websites? Telephones?
As Dealers = "WE reserve the right, to Market OUR Brands, OUR Stores, OUR Inventory - with a single and direct connection to OUR stores, everytime!"
Automotive News | Dealers > Best Practices
( Nov. 24, 2014 )
Cardinale Group makeover flexes digital Muscle
http://www.autonews.com/article/20141124/RETAIL07/311249996/cardinale-group-makeover-flexes-digital-muscle
2 Comments
Automotive Group
Congratulations, I think.. I am curious how you are going to do this.. "Go to Facebook, and we're going to put a post on your Facebook wall to remind you of the car you looked at."
ZMOT Auto
Chris – Thank you for your kind remarks - we are indeed blessed and fortunate to have a designed and developed a truly integrated digital ( selling ) strategy providing enormous success for our internal and external automotive groups…. Specific to targeted ‘wall’ post comment….( sigh )….unfortunately, somewhere between the original interview with our sr. executives many months ago, to the journalist copy creation and on to an editor - the word choice of this comment was presented out of context…..ah the magic of journalism, never a dull moment J Specific to our FB strategy = utilizing the right-hand side / news feed ad positions on the FBX and WCA – specific targeting is achieved through and within desktop, mobile and tablet. Consumer activity on FB newsfeeds are tracked and monitored for peak placement times resulting in dynamic creative campaigns with exceptional conversion rates. As an aside - we greatly enjoy your thoughts and perspectives on the Driving Sales blogs. The best to you, always!
2 Comments
Carl Maeda
Autofusion Inc.
We sync our PPC ads with whatever the current promotions are at the dealership. These promotions could be manufacturer incentives or dealer specials. We then build out landing pages that emphasize these promotions. We also look at the user's intent to further break down the keywords and landing pages. Adwords allows you to see a limited set of demographic information so we are also experimenting with changing images on the landing page to appeal more to the demographic. We put a lot of time into our landing pages because you can send a ton of traffic to your site but its' almost useless if it doesn't convert well.
Anthony Levine
ZMOT Auto
Great article! I think the PPC ads -> promotion/landing page works great for specials. Although for automated inventory on Long Tail, a lot of times getting people right to the inventory they were searching for can work as well, rather than an intermediate page. Especially if there's no special that happens to be attached to those vehicles.