One of the biggest challenges for dealers today is knowing which marketing channels deliver the best reach, frequency and ROI. For marketers everywhere, it can be difficult to reach an intended audience, and when they do, many times the audience isn't paying attention.

Take television, for example. Many dealerships still create and air commercials on TV and cable for brand awareness. But take a look at these stats:

*31% of people aged 18-49 are light TV viewers
*18% of US population have never signed up for cable
*Only 45% of TV ads are watched

As expensive as TV ads are, there's a large segment of your intended audience that either aren't watching at all, or are simply tuning out commercials. Consider that most people, especially the younger generations, watch TV with smartphones or tablets in their hands. When commercials come on, it's easy to hit the mute button and scroll through emails, check social media or watch a video on YouTube.

Increasingly, YouTube is a favorite alternative to television, with more than 5 billion video views daily. Additionally, the average length of visit to YouTube is 40 minutes. Not only do people love the entertainment value of YouTube, but they rely on it for educational and research purposes; including researching new and used vehicle options.

* YouTube clearly has an influence on auto shoppers:
* 75% of auto shoppers say that online video has influenced their shopping habits
* 60% of auto shoppers who used video during research visited a dealership website
* 40% of auto shoppers who use online video for research said it helped them discover a vehicle they weren't aware of or previously considering

But the best thing about YouTube for auto marketers is its targeting capabilities. On YouTube, there are four ways to target an audience:

1) Demographic/Geographic. YouTube provides a multitude of demographic information such as age, gender, income and location. It also factors in signals from Google's search and maps properties to locate auto intenders near your location.

2) Interests, behavior and life events. We all know that major life milestones often precede new vehicle purchases. YouTube makes it easy to target newlyweds, new parents, parents of high school and college aged kids, college graduates and people who have recently moved. You can also target by specific interests; e.g. automotive or brand names.

3) Consumer patterns and shopping behavior. How well do you know your most valuable customers? Many of them shop at certain department stores, frequent nice restaurants and attend local sporting events. Knowing the behavior of your most valuable customers allows you to create lookalike audiences and target similar prospects on YouTube and other Google properties.

Additionally, you can find consumers who have their vehicles serviced and purchase tires at independent repair facilities, and create ad campaigns designed to drive them into your service department.

4) Video content that your audience is watching. This one's a no brainer. If a consumer in your PMA is watching a manufacturer test drive or walkaround video, your dealership name should be the first thing they see. Again, YouTube can tap into Google's search properties so it's easy to target in-market auto shoppers, and also consumers who are looking for service.

In addition to its incredible targeting capabilities, as an advertising platform YouTube allows for greater budget and scheduling control. Perhaps its greatest advantage is that you only have to pay for video views and interactions. This means there's a huge opportunity to raise your brand awareness even when you don't have to pay for video views.

You've probably seen skippable pre-roll ads on YouTube videos. Whenever you want to watch a video, you have to sit through five seconds of a pre-roll commercial before you're allowed to click on "Skip Ad."

This five seconds is where the greatest opportunity lies. If you create a commercial that displays your dealership name and can grab the viewers' attention in the first five seconds, even if the consumer clicks on "Skip Ad" you are raising your brand awareness and increasing the reach and frequency of your message—for free!

Hopefully, your message and accompanying images are compelling enough to appeal to auto intenders, and they won't skip your ad. Either way, it's a win-win situation.

The ROI of skippable pre-roll ads varies, but a recent national Lexus campaign delivered the following results:

*13:1 ROI for every dollar spent
*12% YOY total RO increase
*19% YOY total revenue increase

Videos are a cost-effective way to increase your dealership's brand awareness and capture the attention of consumers, where their attention is focused most—increasingly, that attention is on YouTube.

How long does it take to build customer loyalty? It might start with a great sales experience, but if a customer feels like they've been taken advantage of in the sales process, it will be hard convincing them to come back for service. True customer loyalty is built over a period of several years in the service drive.

But providing a great customer experience in the service lane is not enough, on its own, to build loyalty. Just because I receive good service somewhere doesn't make me a loyal customer. In order to become loyal, I've got to like and be able to identify with the brand. I also want to feel like my business is appreciated and receive special offers designed just for me—that I can actually use.

That's why your marketing program is such an important part of building customer loyalty. Marketing provides you with the opportunity to tell the story of your brand. Who are the people behind the dealership name? How are they helping out in your community? How do you demonstrate customer appreciation? Are the offers that you send out to customers relevant and personalized, or are they just randomly selected and blasted out in email campaigns with the hope that you'll get a two percent response rate?

Just because a customer redeems a coupon and comes in for a service does not make them loyal. If the only reason they come in is because they got a great deal for a service, guess what? At some point, an independent repair facility will offer them an even better deal, and that customer will defect. The reality is, they were never loyal in the first place.

Building loyalty requires playing the long game with a strategic customer retention process. This process requires seamless integration of your brand story, customer experience in your service lane and marketing messages.

Consider the following facts:

In 2018, 82% of registered vehicles were serviced at a 3rd-party service center
85% of those visits included maintenance
36% of those visits included repair
7% of those visits included enhancement

Dealerships cannot afford to lose this many customers. Yet, most dealers do not make the necessary investments in service marketing to win their customers' loyalty. The path to loyalty is a long one, and your marketing goals need to align with the customer experience at every step.

Step 1: Customer Enters Purchase Cycle

This phase includes customer awareness, need, research, product selection and the actual purchase. Your marketing goals during this period are to build brand awareness, win customers over, encourage customer action and ensure that your dealership is in consideration.

Step 2: Customer Ownership Experience

This phase is when the customer is driving the car in their daily routine and they start coming in for standard maintenance. Your primary marketing goal in this phase is to establish yourself as a trusted and knowledgeable resource for their vehicle needs. At this stage it's also critical to deliver on the promise of an excellent customer experience in the service lane. This is best achieved with technology designed to boost productivity and better manage your dealership.

Step 3: Service Needs Increase

As the vehicle ages and/or goes out of warranty, service needs and spending rises. This is a critical customer defection point, but also the greatest opportunity for retention.

Let's analyze who actually brings their vehicles in to get serviced at dealerships:

• 75% of 0-2 year old vehicles

64% of 2-5 year old vehicles
43% of 5-10 year old vehicles

You can see by these statistics that customer defection greatly increases once the warranty expires, and once the vehicle is in the hands of a second owner. Does your current marketing strategy address warranty-end customers and second owners?

Prior to warranty expiration, your customers should receive messages of appreciation, along with your very best offers for anticipated repairs on their vehicle. This is a critical defection point so you want to do everything you can to keep them coming in.

To find 4- to 6- year old vehicles in the hands of second owners, search registration records in your primary market area (PMA) and use tactics like screen scraping to locate and target potential new customers. Also add service conquest campaigns to replace the inevitable defections that do occur.

By now, you should be established in the customers' mind as a trusted resource and the first place your customers think of when it's time for service. At this stage, equity mining campaigns are also helpful to identify which customers might be good candidates for new vehicle offers.

While it's important to provide customers with a great experience in the service drive, those efforts must be integrated with a marketing strategy that aligns with that experience. Winning customer loyalty requires a strategic approach that targets customers with relevant and personalized offers, as well as marketing messages that tell your brand story and establish your expertise. This takes time, so be sure your marketing strategy is designed to play the long game.

As many dealership marketers know, search campaigns are a necessary part of a multi-channel marketing strategy. The danger with search campaigns is the potential for pay-per-clicks to become very expensive, which tends to happen when marketing vendors use a single strategy for all dealerships, and set up campaigns as "set-it-and-forget-it."

Your dealership is a unique business with a unique market and unique customers. Therefore, the keywords and strategies used in your PPC campaign should be different than the keywords and strategies used in PPC campaigns of other dealerships.

With the right keywords and strategy, benefits of a well-executed PPC campaign include:

* Real-time measurable results
* Budget & scheduling control
* Target traffic
* Reduced cost due to paying only for clicks,not impressions

PPC campaigns can greatly increase the ROI of your dealership's current Owner Retention Program (ORP) marketing strategy. Here's an example:

Dealership 1 and Dealership 2 were both using email and direct mail for their ORP marketing. Dealership 1 added a multi-channel marketing strategy that included social media, display advertising and phone calls. In one year, Dealership 1 saw a 3.9% RO increase and $168,300 average increase in RO revenue.

Dealership 2 added the same multi-channel marketing strategy with the addition of PPC. In one year, Dealership 2 saw a 7.5% RO increase and $299,200 average increase in RO revenue.

The difference is significant because Dealership 2's strategy targets both passive consumers and active consumers, while Dealership 1's strategy only targets passive consumers.

A passive consumer is one that we identify as ready to take action based on online behavior, lifestyle factors and vehicle history. We target them through multi-channel marketing to reach them with the right message at the right time.

An active consumer has an immediate need; for example, it's time for an oil change or the brakes start squeaking. The consumer turns to a search engine and enters a phrase such as "BMW oil change," or "Silverado brake pads."

If your dealership doesn't have an effective PPC strategy, you risk not showing up in the search engine results, and the consumer will click on another link.

More than 60% of Google's searches are performed on a mobile device, so it's also critical to have your PPC campaign optimized for mobile search.

Customize PPC for Consumer Micro-Moments

Google has identified five key micro-moments that occur during the consumer's road to the sale. These moments are when information is actively acquired, shaping a car shopper's preferences and purchase intent.

An effective strategy is to create a PPC campaign that targets consumers during these micro-moments:

1) Which car is best? These initial research moments focus on collecting general data to understand which cars are recommended by experts and are considered best in class. Information is increasingly collected from YouTube videos featuring trusted reviews and comparisons. The conversion rate for consumers at this stage is just 2%.

2) Is it right for me? This is a critical stage where searches become more personalized. Car buyers want to know whether specific vehicles will suit their lifestyle so it's common to see searches about appearance, safety features and luxury options.

Videos are instrumental in this phase as consumers turn to YouTube to watch vehicle test drives and highlight reels on attributes and configuration options. Static images still play a role in showing how a car looks, but the vast majority of these pictures are now being viewed on mobile devices. The conversion rate for consumers at this stage is 6%.

3) Can I afford it? Once choices have been narrowed down, consumers concentrate on the financials. Information around prices, owning and leasing options are critical at this stage and are increasingly being searched for on smartphones. Conversion rates for consumers at this stage is 13%.

4) Where should I buy it? Once consumers have determined which car to purchase, they seek out dealership locations, hours and inventory. More dealerships are getting the comparison treatment as consumers examine online reviews to obtain the best experience. Conversion rates for consumers in this category are the highest, averaging 40%.

5) Am I getting a deal? Even after consumers get to the dealership and start negotiating packages, their online research continues, with 50% of shoppers consulting mobile phones to ensure they are getting the best price. Conversion rates for consumers at this stage are around 10%.

Owning each of these micro-moments can help steer car shoppers to your dealership. When you create a PPC campaign, it's important to make sure you're in consideration at each stage, as the opportunities to raise brand awareness in the first few stages can help convert shoppers into customers later.

If you're not happy with the ROI of your PPC campaigns, don't be tempted to give up. Adjust your strategy and focus on common search phrases used during the micro-moments. When added to a multi-channel marketing strategy, PPC campaigns have the potential to double your ROI.

When it comes to social media advertising, Facebook reigns supreme with Instagram a close second. These are ideal platforms on which to raise brand awareness, bring customers down funnel and generate leads.

For dealers, a presence on Facebook and Instagram is essential, because quite simply, this is where your customers are spending their time. Check out these usage stats for different age groups.

- 80% of adults age 18-49 use Facebook
- 73% of Facebook users check feeds 5-6 times daily
- 55% of adults age 50+ use Facebook
- 40% of adults age 30-49 use Instagram
- 57% of adults age 25-29 use Instagram
- 78% of adults age 18-24 use Instagram

As you can see, having a dual presence on Facebook and Instagram provides you with a broad reach to social media users in every age range

I have heard from dealers who have tried advertising on these platforms with varied results. Some see the ROI but many don't. If you haven't seen the ROI you have hoped for, make sure your marketing vendor's strategy incorporates these five keys necessary to creating successful social ads campaigns.

1) Focus on your business objective

Before you start any campaign, decide what your objective is. Do you want to build awareness of your brand, generate more leads or complement your other marketing objectives by increasing reach? Don't expect to accomplish all of these with one ad campaign.

If your marketing vendor is still using social metrics such as likes, shares and comments to justify your marketing spend, beware. It's fine to keep track of those but your goal is not to have 1,000 fans. Your business objective builds a frame for the rest of the ad campaign.

2) Plan with target audience in mind

Facebook and Instagram users are real people, not proxies or bots. Because of this, these platforms offer very precise targeting with an accuracy of 85%. You can choose from many different parameters including demographics, interests, lifestyle, life stage, psychographic and geographic.

Perhaps best of all, you can upload your customer database and Facebook and Instagram will match those customers with users on their platform. This allows you to serve personalized ads and videos that greatly expand reach and frequency.

Once you are getting good results with your target audience, Facebook and Instagram can create lookalike audiences to discover potential new customers in your geographic area.

3) Ensure media best practices align with your objectives

Depending on what your objective is, your social ad campaigns are designed as high funnel (awareness), mid funnel (consideration) or low funnel (conversions).

If you're running a low funnel campaign, the amount you're willing to bid for a conversion will be higher than what you want to bid for high funnel campaigns. Know what a conversion is worth to you, or let Facebook/Instagram decide the best bid for you.

Select an optimization goal that meets your business objective. Use Facebook Pixel codes on your website to track activity and actions. This allows you to track user behavior on your website and also to tie specific activities, such as scheduling a service appointment or submitting a lead, back to a social ad campaign.

4) Think about creative for a mobile world

The majority of Facebook and Instagram impressions are delivered on mobile screens. Your goal is to develop creative that will stop people as they scroll through their news feeds.

Create ads with simple, stunning and clean images. Keep text to a minimum and ensure that text size is optimized for mobile so you can read it on a small screen. Design ads for sound off.

5) Measure effectiveness

Before you launch a campaign, define the KPIs you will use to measure your objectives. If your goal is consideration, your KPI might be website visitors. If your goal is conversion, it might be leads. If your goal is to increase service revenue, your KPI might be the number of service appointments scheduled online, or monthly ROs.

Note your baseline KPIs before the campaign starts, then again after it ends. Was there an increase? An effective social ad campaign should have a pretty immediate impact in just 30-60 days.

If your campaign didn't move the needle on your KPI, don't give up. Re-evaluate.

Start with your audience. Are you reaching the right audience? If you're using your own first-party customer data, it's hard to go wrong.

If your audience is good, look at reach and frequency. You want to ensure a 50 to 70 percent reach of your target audience at all times. As far as frequency, it typically takes four to seven impressions to drive a customer to take action.

Finally, look at resonance. Is your message relevant? Don't create an ad for an oil change and serve it to customers who have recently been in for an oil change.

Does the creative appeal to them? One strategy to increase resonance is to segment your target audience by their expressed interests and create different ads for each segment. For example, if a portion of your audience is interested in technology, create an ad with a technology focus. For nature lovers, include stunning visuals of the outdoors.

Social advertising can be an incredibly effective complement to your marketing strategy. But there's a lot more involved than just coming up with a cool ad campaign. Facebook and Instagram give you the tools for success; all you have to do is find a marketing partner that knows how to properly leverage them.