The Mediums
Digital advertising is a broad term that spans many different technologies. In the automotive industry, it generally refers to:
- Search
- Video
- Social
- Display
Each medium stands on its own, but Video, Social, and Display all help contribute to the overall Search strategy. It is recommended to fund the mediums in the order listed above. Search is the medium where the consumer tells you exactly what they are looking for and your ad is your response. For example, you don’t want to bid on searches for “2019 Mitsubishi Outlander Pictures” because there is no purchase intent in the Search phrase. However, a Search for “2019 Mitsubishi Outlander Lease Payment” is a term you want to purchase all day every day.
Video, Social, and Display will generate direct traffic and leads on occasion, but they primarily serve as a branding tool that ultimately increases Search volume. As a result, it is important to monitor your impression share in Search and keep those campaigns funded as they grow. Otherwise, your investment in the branding mediums simply drives interest in the market, allowing another dealer that is fully-funded to capture those customers on Search at your expense. A fully-funded Search campaign has ~85% impression share. Each month will be a moving target to maximize your campaigns.
Each dealer’s digital advertising strategy will vary based on market, sales volume, and competition. A good strategy will include a combination of reach and frequency. With search being the digital medium where the consumers are effectively raising their hand asking for information, you want to fill that bucket first. From there, your advertising mix is really determined by your advertising budget and the cost to advertise in each medium. If it costs you $1,000 in fees to run $250 worth of display advertising, that probably doesn’t make much sense. Here is a good general media mix framework to start with:
The recommendation to advertise in Video, before Social, followed by Display is based on the specific way the platforms charge for the content and the quality of the ad placements themselves. More detail is available in each of the individual mediums below.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
The Basics (PPC)
When someone is shopping via a search engine (Google or Bing for example) for terms related to your business, you can pay for an ad to appear on the page (preferably at the top) with an “ad” label. Your ad’s placement is determined on a combination of how relevant it is to what the consumer searched for, your bid (what you’re willing to pay), and the quality of the experience the consumer will have if they click your ad. Your ad position, or Ad Rank, is extremely important. Consumers commonly click the first thing they see that looks like it answers their question. As the name implies, you pay each time a consumer clicks any part of your ad.
Just getting a consumer to click on your ad hasn’t accomplished anything other than getting charged for it. A commonly overlooked part of digital advertising is the landing page. When a consumer clicks your ad, think about why they clicked and what they expect to see. If they click an ad that says $5,000 Off MSRP, don’t land them on a page where the price is full retail. At a minimum, be sure you are landing them on a page relevant to the ad; don’t just send everything to your home page.
Strong performance in Search requires the right keywords. Advertising on the keywords that drive results and avoiding those that don’t can be the difference in PPC delivering a strong ROI for your store. Google has developed a guidebook to help navigate consumers’ search intent based on the keyword searched. They have categorized the intent into 5 specific micro-moments.
Each micro-moment represents a series of search phrases, some focused more on purchasing soon and others around the initial research process. Mitsubishi will cover the research-oriented micro-moments: “Which car is best” and “Is this car right for me?” Dealers should cover the purchase intent moments: “Can I afford it,” “Where Should I buy it,” and “Am I getting a deal?” Aligning with this strategy will ensure the dealers and Mitsubishi are not driving up the cost for each other, and the consumer will be taken through a more relevant purchase process based on their current place in the shopping process.
Advanced (PPC)
The key to a high-performing search campaign is relevance. Provide the consumer what they are looking for, which usually boils down to “Do you have It?” and “How much does it cost?” The rest is typically covered in their research phase that they would find on mitsubishicars.com.
The ad itself is a key driver of success. The ad structure is made up of 3 headlines, 2 descriptions and a variety of extensions. This is an important area to really understand how your search provider writes ad copy. The best way to find out is to ask. They should be able to tell you another dealer they are running ads for, and you can do some searches using Google Ad Preview to see what the ads look like. Ask yourself and the vendor some basic questions:
- How does my ad copy vary by campaign?
- Are you writing ads for every vehicle I sell, new and used?
- Are you writing ads for the services we provide?
- Do those ads have pricing, offers, or vehicle details in them that the consumer is looking for?
One thing to look out for are vendors that use “dynamic keyword insertion.” Effectively their ads would say “Come see our great selection of (insert model name here) today.” In that case, whatever model the consumer searched for would be included in the ad. That isn’t a very relevant result for the consumer.
In 2018, Google rolled out a new “Responsive Ads” format that takes advantage of the latest machine learning capabilities. Responsive ads allow you to provide Google a number of different snippets of text for headlines and descriptions, and Google will programmatically A/B test the best combination and serve that version moving forward. If you want to know what attracts the consumer to click your ad more, a lease payment or the savings off MSRP, you can load both blocks of ad copy and Google will serve the one that shows the highest performance as it tests them.
Ad extensions are a great way to occupy more of the page, pushing your competition further down and delivering more rich content to the consumer. All of your ads should include most of the extensions, but keep an eye out for which extensions are serving the most, specifically call extensions. If you load extensions that might not be as valuable for a particular campaign, it can prevent more valuable extensions (call extensions) from showing up as often. The search engines dynamically A/B test the extensions to deliver the most conversions possible. Similarly, you should also be providing multiple versions of the ad copy itself to allow the search engines to determine what the best combination of ad copy and extensions are to deliver results.
Google’s Dealer Guidebook does a great job of breaking down some of the key aspects of digital advertising, and there is a lot more great information available on www.thinkwithgoogle.com.
PPC Campaign Structure
Your search campaign structure can directly impact your ROI. To better understand campaign structure, you first need to understand the elements that make up a campaign. A campaign is a set of ads, keywords, and bids that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings. Campaigns are often used to organize categories of products or services that you offer. Here are some examples of standard dealership campaigns:
- Brand – “ABC Mitsubishi”
- Dealership – “Mitsubishi Dealer Near Me”
- Geo Brand – “San Diego Mitsubishi”
- New Models – “2019 Mitsubishi Outlander for Sale”
- New Inventory – “New Mitsubishi for Sale”
- Pre-Owned – “2016 Mitsubishi Outlander”
- Service – “Mitsubishi Oil Change”
Each campaign is made up of Ad Groups. Ad Groups contain one or more ads that share similar targets. You can use Ad Groups to organize your ads by a common theme (i.e. vehicle models). A “New Model” campaign would be comprised of the following Ad Groups for each model:
- 2019 Lancer
- 2019 Mirage
- 2019 Mirage G4
- 2019 Eclipse Cross
- 2019 Outlander
- 2019 Outlander Sport
- etc.
Ad Groups are further made up of keywords. These are words or phrases describing your dealership, vehicle inventory, services, etc., that consumers type into the search engine when shopping for a vehicle, service, etc. These keywords help establish the consumer’s intent. The better your ads and Ad Groups align with the consumer’s intent, the better your ads will perform; therefore, a solid campaign structure is critical as it can directly impact how much you pay for each click based on the relevance of the Ad Group. There are a variety of different types of keywords. The more often your ads fall into the exact match category, the more effective your ads will be because you know what message you want to deliver for that specific search. The different keyword types available are:
- Exact Match
- Phrase Match
- Broad Match
Bid and Budget Management
There is a lot of technology available to help make your dollar go further, commonly referred to as bid and budget management software. Some vendors may have developed their own, some will utilize off-the-shelf solutions, and some will take advantage of systems baked into the platform directly such as Google’s Smart Bidding technology. Regardless of which platform they utilize, it is important to utilize one.
Bid and budget management platforms monitor what is happening in the search platforms and adjust your bids accordingly. In addition, they can move money from one campaign to another on the fly based on need. The platforms work constantly in the background to deliver you more results for less money. A great way to see how often your vendor or their software is optimizing your campaigns is to look in Google’s change history in your Adwords account. You should see hundreds to thousands of changes per month.
PPC Bad Habits
A commonly discussed topic for PPC advertising is whether you should buy your own dealership name. The answer is different for every dealer. Search your results within Google Ad Preview (just searching on Google or Bing directly will deliver skewed results based on your past browsing history). Who else is buying a keyword that triggers on your name? There can be competitive brands, 3rd-party lead aggregation sites, and the other Mitsubishi dealers in your market potentially. Also have a look at where your organic ad shows up. If you have any ads or organic listings showing up above your organic listing, you need to buy your name.
There are a number of approaches to Search marketing that are not recommended. The most common is to only serve an ad on your top-selling models. That can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Keep in mind, with Search, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, and that is usually only when someone is interested in what they see.
Another common mistake is to day-part your ads, which means that you only serve your ads at certain times of the day. You can quickly outthink yourself with this approach. The thought is that you would only serve ads when your store is open. Or some believe a more advanced version is to serve ads based on when your ads typically convert. What advertisers are missing is that the buying process is not a single event. One search leads to another, and another, and if your ad doesn’t show up, you have potentially removed yourself from consideration. Don’t try and dictate when consumers can shop.
Keys to Success
- Write relevant ad copy for every vehicle and service you sell
- Buy keywords with purchase intent for your products
- Utilize ad variants and multiple ad extensions to increase the performance of your ads
- Answer the consumer’s questions with your ad copy. “Do you have it?” and “How much does it cost?”
- Check your ad history for bid and budget changes
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The Basics (SEO)
The search results below the paid ads are the “organic” search results. These links direct users to specific pages on your website. The more relevant and useful your site content is to the search term the consumer entered, the higher the link will appear in the list. However, PPC ads will always be at the top of the page. The optimization of your website to help your site appear in the organic search results is referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO focuses on improving your site for users in order to increase your organic search engine rankings. SEO primarily revolves around creating useful content, building links, and optimizing metadata to convey relevant information about your site to the search engines.
When building out the core pages on your website, make sure they contain content that is considered unique to your dealership. Some of the key pages/topics to address are:
- Home
- About
- Service
- Contact
Make sure your title tags, meta descriptions, and headings are useful, relevant, and free of anything related to spam tactics, e.g. keyword stuffing, over-optimization, empty values, or duplicated values. You should also set up Google Search Console and implement Google Analytics in order to see what is working and what isn’t.
It’s important to claim your Google My Business listing as that drives the results smart home devices such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa see and report on, such as your phone number, hours of operation and location. Your site should be free of technical issues such as unintentional 4xxs and internal 3xxs links, which are the most common errors that are seen on dealership sites.
Advanced (SEO)
Once you’ve built out your core pages, work to identify new content opportunities that you can include and create legitimate link opportunities for the dealership. Some examples of links generated from useful and appealing content are as follows:
- Topically authoritative content (model research, comparisons, how-tos)
- Local content (relevant event content, anything useful and underrepresented where the dealership can add value)
Below is a list of potential links generated from strategic offline actions:
- Sponsorships
- Newsworthy activities
- Winning awards
- Hosting events
As a best practice, monitor your Google Search Console and Google Analytics and continue to evaluate content performance. You should be making ongoing strategic decisions. This is not a “set it and forget it” practice. You’ll also want to ensure your listing information is accurate and consistent on major citation sources. Here are a few key items you will want to be sure are accurate:
- Business Name
- Address
- Phone Number
- Website URL
- Accurate Core Category Selected
With solid content on your website and a linking strategy to relevant content, you also need to focus on the framework of your website. Be sure to implement industry-standard schema.org Structured Data Markup where applicable. Most of this work should be handled by your web provider or an SEO Specialist that can be provided access to the content management platform behind your website.
Keys to Success
- More does not equal better: always err on the side of quality over quantity
- Build content and links for users, not search engines
- SEO is about Expertise, Authority, and Trust – none of these things happen overnight for highly competitive keywords. Be patient.
Video Advertising
The Basics (Video)
Video advertising is growing rapidly. According to Google, automotive-related searches on YouTube have now surpassed automotive-related searches on Google. The number of videos viewed per minute on YouTube grew from ~ 70,000 in 2016 up to ~ 5 billion in 2018.
Video advertising comes in all shapes and sizes. The most common format is referred to as “pre-roll” which runs prior to the content the consumer is online to watch. Video advertising can be a variety of lengths based on the platform it is running on. The most common are 15- and 30-second videos. Platforms like YouTube also support short-form 6-second videos that can be great for building a story over multiple videos.
Video advertising is invoiced in a variety of ways based on the platform. The most common methods are CPM, CPV, and sometimes CPC.
Advanced (Video)
There are a number of video-serving platforms available to dealers. YouTube’s TrueView platform is unique in that it will not charge you unless the consumer watches your full ad (or first 30 seconds if it is longer) or they click your ad. Anything less is free branding. It is very important to understand how your video vendor and platform charge for the media. The easiest way to find out is to ask how much of your budget is being spent on media. Be careful; unfortunately, some vendors specifically go through other video platforms to be able to bake additional fees into your overall cost per view. YouTube’s TrueView platform spend shows up directly in AdWords, and all Google Premier Partners are required to provide you direct access to view that data.
Your ad creative on video is equally important. Don’t just run your dealership’s TV commercial as a pre-roll ad. You are missing the benefits of a targeted audience. Work with a vendor that can generate videos for you on every model you sell with a relevant message the consumer is looking for. Keeping in mind that YouTube’s platform only charges you if the entire ad is watched, be sure to get the more relevant portion of your message towards the front of the video to keep the consumer engaged and to get as much relevance in front of the consumer before they skip.
Only paying for a completed view or a click is the reason Video is recommended before Social and Display advertising. Most Social and Display platforms charge per impression and classify an impression as 50% of your ad showing up for 1 second or more. Compared to 29 seconds of free running footage, the comparison is night and day. That doesn’t make Social or Display advertising bad mediums; it just differentiates them from Video.
Advanced marketers can use video to tell a story by requiring one video to be seen first and then serving follow-up videos to build a story across multiple videos, commonly done with shorter videos referred to as bumper ads.
Keys to Success
- Advertise videos for every model you sell in order to improve relevance to targeted audiences
- Understand how you pay for video
- Utilize creative designed for pre-roll vs television
Keys to Success
- Continue your consistent message on Social with the information the consumer is looking for
- Advertise your pre-owned inventory on Facebook Marketplace
- Consider a reputation management solution to ensure you know how your dealership is being talked about by your customers and prospects
Display Advertising
The Basics (Display)
Display advertising is referred to in a number of ways: Display, banners, ODA, retargeting, and remarketing to name a few. The last two are inaccurate and actually refer to audiences that can be targeted across a wide range of mediums. Display is typically billed by CPM, and the impression is triggered when 50% of your ad shows up for 1 second or more.
The most common platform for Display Advertising is the Google Display Network (GDN). GDN can help you reach people while they’re browsing their favorite websites, with over 2 million sites in the network reaching over 90% of people on the internet.
There are 3 common sizes for display advertising, as well as a dynamic responsive ad type that builds the ad based on the size of the area it has to fit in:
- 160 x 600
- 300 x 250
- 728 x 90
- Responsive
Advanced (Display Advertising)
Display has many of the same audiences available through Search and Video. Utilizing retargeting audiences to reach consumers already shopping your website will deliver the best results. Layering in behavioral audiences of in-market shoppers by model with relevant ads for that model will help increase your reach to new customers at the right time.
No different than any other medium, your ads should have relevant content and be consistent with the other mediums. Include a compelling offer and a clear call to action.
Keys to Success
- Know where your ads are being served. Regardless of what the consumer’s personal habits are, you want your ads to be in a brand-safe environment
- Maintain a consistent message with other mediums
- Have a clear call to action
Social Media Advertising
The Basics (Social Media)
The most common version of Social Advertising is through Facebook. Facebook has the largest audience and also provides access to Instagram’s platform as it is owned by Facebook. Facebook has different ad types that can be utilized to best reach your dealership’s goals and needs. Facebook’s current campaign types include:
Social advertising is typically charged on a CPM model. However, each of the campaign types works a little differently and may have a different billing structure.