Category: Advertising

AWA 2023 Award Winner: Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet on Dealer.com Websites

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Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet on Dealer.com websites received the Enterprise Retailing award during the 2023 AWA Awards. Presented by Brian Pasch Enterprises, the AWAs have been a benchmark in the auto industry for recognizing innovative products in technology, design, search marketing, social media, and digital retailing. 

Pictured L-R: Mike Wulfe, Katie Wilkins, and Paul Paridy.

  

Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet is an intuitive tool designed to improve the shopping to buying journey and drive more quality connections between buyers and sellers. 

Debuted at the NADA Show 2023, Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet automatically integrates into Dealer.com dealer websites who have Accelerate My Deal. This means dealers will have access to everything from down payment, trade-in, and financing information – the data needed to speed up the deal-making process and get more accurate leads. 

When My Wallet meets Dealer.com websites, consumers will have the most comprehensive and consistent power of Digital Retailing at their fingertips.  

How Does Kelley Blue Book My Wallet Work? 

If a shopper engages with Kelley Blue Book My Wallet on Autotrader, they’ll be prompted to enter a desired monthly payment, trade-in, down payment, credit range and term length. This gives consumers more accurate “all-in” pricing.  

From there, their entire search will be customized. Consumers gain budget guidance to help them better understand purchase power and can shop by payment which opens a whole new world of possibility. Dealers Get insights into the consumers financial profile on more leads to provide a personalized sales process with less friction. 

Kelley Blue Book My Wallet + Accelerate My Deal 

80% of consumers think it is a good or great idea to buy entirely online. And with Accelerate My Deal, consumers can complete even more steps online, speeding up the deal for everyone.* 

When shoppers enter their information into Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet it’s automatically transferred into the Accelerate My Deal experience.  Accelerate My Deal leads on average close at a 48% higher close rate compared to other internet leads helping dealers get more highly qualified leads and boost their profits.** My Wallet gives shoppers a personalized shopping journey and Accelerate My Deal moves the shopper from journey to purchase. 

Want to transform digital retailing with a truly connected, end-to-end experience for consumers? Click here to learn more about My Wallet today.  

*2022 Car Buying Journey Study 

** Cox Automotive Product Analytics. Accelerate My Deal Lead to Close Analysis using VinSolutions sales data. Data from Jan 2020-Nov 2020. Analysis performed January 2021 

Summary: Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet, a personalized shopper tool on Autotrader US and Kelley Blue Book, will now be automatically integrated into all Dealer.com dealer websites. Learn more about this exclusive lead-driving tool.  

  

Amplify Your Fixed Ops Merchandising to Find Hidden Profits

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Current inventory shortages have caused dealers to look inward to find other sources of revenue. The most natural place for most dealers to look is the fixed ops department, which accounts for about half of the average dealer’s revenue, but only about 1/10 of the overall marketing focus.

Dana Ayer, manager of Performance Management at Dealer.com, recently spoke to dealers about how to find hidden profits through fixed ops merchandising. He shared how dealers can increase customer engagement, boost auto sales leads, and drive revenue with the right fixed ops messaging. Key takeaways from the presentation included:

  • A review of current market challenges and why fixed operations can increase profits
  • What vehicle owners expect from dealerships and their fixed operations departments
  • Fixed ops improvements that have been most impactful for thriving dealers
  • Best auto dealer marketing practices to get the most out of your fixed ops merchandising

Watch the webinar to see how your dealership can drive operational efficiencies, outpace your competitors, and improve profits by amplifying your fixed ops messaging.

Watch the Webinar

Learn more about Dealer.com

Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2022

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Digital marketing is always changing, and it can be challenging to know which trends might impact your business and which ones are passing fads. In conversations with marketing specialists, industry experts, and dealers, we’ve identified top trends expected to make an impact to automotive retail in 2022.

Keep an eye out for this new technology as you start planning your digital marketing in 2022, and check out many of them for yourself at NADA Show 2022 in Las Vegas in March.

Personalization

This isn’t exactly a new trend, but personalization continues to be the name of the game in digital marketing for car dealers. Today’s successful dealers are connecting with in-market shoppers by giving them a highly personalized experience throughout their buying and ownership journeys.

With the right data and the right technology, dealerships can deliver individualized digital marketing campaigns and website experiences, targeted at specific subsets of customers. By using first-party consumer intelligence, dealerships can speak directly to each shopper—appealing to their interests, incentivizing them to buy, and keeping them progressing down the path to purchase.

This focused auto advertising strategy is far more personal for consumers and far more effective for dealerships than one-size-fits-all mass advertising efforts. In fact, shoppers who saw personalized website content had a 216% higher form submission rate and a 175% increase in VDP views, and were four times more likely to pencil a deal.*

Digital-First Shopping Experiences

Providing flexible shopping experiences for consumers has been a priority in auto retail for the last few years, and that trend will continue into 2022. Expect to see even more digital-first shopping experiences that give shoppers the flexibility and convenience of choosing which parts of the car-buying process they prefer to complete online.

The technology helps dealerships drive automobile leads and give consumers more of what they want—a digital, convenient, streamlined, transparent car-buying experience. For example, Accelerate My Deal, Dealer.com’s guided online shopping experience, helps shoppers structure deals with real monthly payments, explore and select F&I products, schedule a test drive, complete online credit applications, and reserve a vehicle—all online.

Advanced Data Connectivity

Most dealers today know the power of data, but expect to see new ways to harness data—especially first-party data—across departments. Advanced data and workflow integrations across technology platforms will help dealerships bring in customers, increase profits, and promote dealership growth. 

Modern technologies that combine workflows across sales, service, marketing, and operations bring the entire dealership in harmony. Working together, these technologies boost efficiency, elevate the consumer experience, and give dealers more opportunity to increase profits.

Cox Automotive brands Dealer.com, VinSolutions, Xtime, and Dealertrack DMS, for example, offer solutions that bring marketing, sales, service, and operations in sync. By leveraging first-party transactional data from trusted consumer sites Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book, Cox Automotive technologies work together to give dealers a complete view of each customer. This unmatched proprietary data and connected suite facilitates workflows across departments and enables dealers to deliver the right message, to the right consumer, at the right time.

Build Brand Awareness at Every Phase of the Buying Journey

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Competition for car buyers today is fierce, which means it is critical to keep your dealership top of mind at every phase of a consumer’s shopping and buying journey. But with so many possible paths to purchase, it can be challenging to effectively build and maintain brand awareness for your dealership.  

With the right tools and best practices, however, you can maximize the return of your auto dealer marketing efforts and keep your dealership’s name on the mind of car shoppers throughout their buying journey.  

Identify Shopper Preferences and Target Messaging 

Today’s consumers are spending more time looking for cars online (more than 7 hours, according to Cox Automotive research) and less time at the dealership. Shoppers spend time on several websites, including your dealership website and third-party sites like Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. With all that time spent online, reaching consumers with targeted digital advertising is critical to building brand awareness.  

As shoppers browse online, they leave behind clues about their unique shopping preferences that your dealership can use to personalize your car dealership ads. These behavioral insights can help you reach shoppers with targeted, relevant messaging.  

You can identify and activate these insights by aggregating customer data from your website and CRM to deliver personalized, one-to-one marketing messages relevant to each customer’s interests. 

Use the Right Technology to See Real Results  

In addition to telling you what a shopper’s preferences are, behavioral insights can also tell you when a shopper is ready to make a purchase. With this information, you can use advanced technology to deliver impactful messaging about your dealership at just the right time—as shoppers are forming important opinions about what and where to buy.  

With the right digital marketing technology, you can automatically serve up personalized ads at the exact time a shopper is looking for a vehicle. You can also retarget customers that have visited your website with a relevant ad, and send personalized, targeted emails with automated workflows. 

Leave a Lasting Impression on Your Shoppers  

Every car shopper’s journey is unique, but a few best practices can help you build and maintain brand awareness with the right shoppers. But with the right strategies and technology in place, you can deliver the right messages at the right time—and leave a lasting impression on each individual shopper. 

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Marketing in a Lean Inventory Environment

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Given today’s inventory shortage challenges, it can be tempting to cut back on advertising. After all, what’s the point in marketing when you don’t have as much inventory to sell. But experience has shown that cutting advertising can lead to significant, long-term setbacks.

Henry Ford understood this concept way back in the early 1900s when he said that stopping advertising to save money is like stopping a clock to save time. But that doesn’t mean your marketing has to stay at status quo. Here are a few smart ways to evolve your marketing strategy for lean inventory times.

Adjusted New-Inventory Campaigns

Now is a great time to focus your marketing on vehicles with more availability. Promote in-transit inventory and vehicles scheduled to arrive. Remove bargain pages and raising prices to match demand. It may also be wise to add urgency to advertisements that help customers understand the realities of availability limits. Fear of missing out can bring in new customers, even if those customers have to wait just a little longer to get their vehicle.

Used Car Advertising Campaigns

New cars may not be immediately available, but there are a lot of pre-owned cars in the world, many of which are prime for purchase and resell opportunity. Shift your used car advertising dollars toward pre-owned campaigns, targeted at shoppers with trade-ins and who are more likely to buy used. As long as you can continue to source used inventory, you can sustain sales operations until manufacturers catch up to meet new inventory demands.

Pre-Order Purchase Campaigns

A car doesn’t have to be physically on the lot for you to sell it. Advertise the opportunity to pre-order a car and promote the option to hand-select features, giving your customers a customized, personalized vehicle purchase experience. These types of pre-order campaigns can also direct your automobile leads to your dealership’s digital retailing tools, allowing them to complete large portions of the buying process online.

Brand Awareness Campaigns

Inventory may be scarce, but buyers are still out there. Brand awareness campaigns can keep your dealership top of mind with active or soon-to-be active shoppers, while reinforcing all the reasons to buy from your dealership. Just as importantly, these types of campaigns prevent competitors from stealing market share by filling an advertising void.

Service Campaigns

Less inventory also means more miles on your customers’ current cars. Shift some of your advertising spend to promote your service department. In doing so, don’t forget about lesser-known services like your wash bay, auto detailing, and other services that can be attractive for drivers wanting to make small upgrades and make do with what they have for the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

As Henry Ford predicted all those years ago, time and car sales continue to march forward. And while inventory shortages are only temporary, the customers you bring in through your marketing can last a lifetime and help your dealership sustain short- and long-term success. To learn more strategies for thriving in the current inventory environment, check out our free Lean Inventory Playbook.

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Are You Getting Enough Digital Traffic?

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The world of automotive retail is changing and attracting new customers to your dealership is more complicated than ever. As consumers spend more time online, and the marketing tricks and tactics that worked yesterday inevitably change with tomorrow’s technology and consumer demands.  

In this new world of automotive sales, dealers must constantly evaluate their digital marketing practices and make adjustments to keep up with today’s consumer demands. And the best place to start this evaluation is by checking your digital traffic. 

Stand Out in the Crowd of Competition  

The car buying process for most consumers starts online—looking at local inventory, comparing colors and options, and trying to find the perfect car for the perfect price, as close to home as possible. These consumers are thorough in their online research, spending an average of about 14 hours online looking for cars,1 which is great news for dealers like you trying to drive traffic to their website.  

Here’s where the process gets somewhat complex. The world wide web is a big place. Consumers can find easy access to the information they need in a number of places, right down to the details of how much they’re willing to pay for their next car purchase. So, it might as well be your website that informs their next purchase decision. On the other hand, if your dealership’s website doesn’t answer or even address their questions, would-be customers may pass you by. 

Optimize Your SEO Strategy 

If your website isn’t getting enough digital traffic, there’s a good chance your dealership’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy isn’t doing enough to set you apart from all the other dealership’s in the world. It’s the first symptom that your site is getting lost in the shuffle of search results. 

To ensure your inventory and dealership services consistently reach likely buyers browsing search engines, your SEO strategy must be optimized for local reach. The specific mix changes from dealership to dealership, but your SEO strategy may include some combination of custom content like blog posts, news articles, and new make/model pages designed to help connect you with local buyers. 

This approach is proven to elevate performance across your digital strategy with higher organic rankings, increased website traffic, and more leads from qualified visitors. But because implementing the right strategy can be complex, it’s always a good idea to enlist the help of the experts—a proven team of copywriters, strategists, and SEO specialists—to enhance your website’s overall visibility.  

After just one year of running Dealer.com’s car dealer SEO service,2 dealers experienced an average of:  

  • 30% more website visits    
  • 52% more VDP views 
  • 59% more phone leads 
  • 14% more form leads 

If your digital traffic has seen better days, optimize your SEO for local searches and partner with a team of SEO experts you can trust to drive digital shoppers with proven results. 

To learn more ways your dealership can adapt in a new age of automotive sales, check out our free eBook: 4 Questions to Improve Your Dealership’s Digital Marketing. 

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Sources: 

  1. https://www.dialogtech.com/blog/18-automotive-marketing-stats/#:~:text=Car%20buyers%20spend%20an%20average,hours%20 online%20during%20their%20search.  
  1. Based on a study of 43 franchise dealerships with Premium SEO and Dealer.com Advertising from December 2018 – May 2019 VPP.  

Advertise with Digital Expertise and Flexibility

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The automotive industry is resilient. No matter what headwinds the country is facing, where your dealership is located, or what models are sitting on your lot, there is a consumer to match your inventory. To make this happen, you need to connect your vehicles and dealership services with in-market shoppers. Is your dealership’s digital advertising up to the task? 

Choose the Right Partner 

A multi-channel, data-powered, dealer-first advertising portfolio drives more high-quality traffic, website engagement, and leads. But a great portfolio isn’t just about the right channels and the right budget. Your advertising partner should work with you to flex your portfolio as your business needs fluctuate with the calendar and with current market conditions.  

Flex for More Demand 

Want to know some of the ways a flexible portfolio will benefit your dealership? A holistic, always-on portfolio ensures a steady pipeline of both low and high funnel shoppers, and a healthy, constant demand for inventory and services across your dealership. When inventory is flying off the lot, an always-on advertising strategy means a steady stream of leads and website traffic to help keep your momentum strong.  

During times of slower inventory sales, dealers can flex some of their investment away from inventory and use Dealer.com’s extensive multi-channel strategies and unrivaled shopper data for other purposes. These might be to gain more traction from automotive service marketing, more awareness to your remote services, and more brand recognition in your community. ​Keep in mind, pulling back on your advertising in the midst of headwinds essentially makes your dealership disappear and takes you out of the game. 

Maximize Your Potential 

Need more convincing that choosing the right advertising partner is as important as the channels and budget? Consider these features of the Dealer.com Advertising solution: 

  • Deliver the most effective advertising portfolio aligned to your strategy. Our platform deploys personalized, integrated ad campaigns.  
  • Spend smarter on every channel, and reach shoppers wherever they are online. Showcase your vehicles and dealership services to shoppers at all stages of the consumer journey. 
  • Access only the most relevant shoppers.We deliver your inventory and fixed operations ad campaigns to the most relevant in-market. 
  • Protect your digital advertising investment from fraud. Our partners monitor and protect your digital advertising from spam, bots, artificial traffic, and ad fraud. 

Dealer.com Advertising connects dealers with in-market shoppers using data and expertise you can’t find anywhere else. We have the flexible, intelligent and secure platform to make your digital advertising strategy a success.  

Learn More

Advertise with Precision and Consistency

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Most consumers and dealers would agree that 2020 has been a rollercoaster in more ways than one, and the wheels are just hanging on to the proverbial track. Dealers are facing some challenging headwinds: economic fears, inventory shortages, political uncertainty, and fluctuations in consumer confidence. This is a lot to unpack, so for now let’s focus on your marketing strategy: how have these headwinds influenced your investment and allocation recently? Have you adjusted your plan to spend more, spend the same, or spend less?  

Stay the Course 

We hope you didn’t select the last option, to spend less on marketing, and it’s not simply because we sell digital marketing and advertising solutions. When it comes to marketing and advertising, it’s important to stay the course in the face of challenging times.  

Re-evaluate Budget Allocation 

Maintaining your marketing spend may be easier said than done, right? Well, consider how you want to ride through these turbulent times and come out the other side of them. It’s no secret that some dealers are faring better than others, despite almost identical circumstances. For instance, some clients we surveyed are reporting record sales and record website performance, while other dealers are faced with lots of empty parking spaces on the lot. The key is to use your marketing budget more wisely, and to adopt this principle early so that you remain in the driver’s seat rather than trying to make up for lost time later. 

Better Data Means Better Advertising 

Regardless of your current situation, you should always be advertising—but doing it with precision. Are you using data and consumer intelligence to target in-market shoppers? Other providers may claim to use your dollars efficiently, but Dealer.com takes this to another level. We’re able to gather buying signals from 3 of 4 automotive transactions, and then use this data to make sure you’re reaching the right audiences and marketing the right vehicles. This data includes what vehicles your shoppers have researched in the past 90 days on Kelley Blue Book or Autotrader, two of the most trusted third-party research sites.  

Experts Are Here for You 

Staying the course during these highs and lows will also allow you and your Dealer.com Advertising Performance Manager to dive a level deeper into your strategy to further prioritize selling your vehicle inventory and fine-tuning your automotive service marketing. We are here to help drive your strategy, as much or as little as you want us to. We bring our A-game and our A-team whether you just need to run your advertising or lead your advertising team. 

While market forces are challenging dealers to invest more wisely, precision advertising connects the right shopper to the right vehicle or service at the right time, every time. Find out more about how our team can help maximize your dealership’s potential, what new products are available and coming soon, and the results we deliver to dealerships like yours. 

Learn more about Dealer.com’s Advertising Solutions.

What You Need to Know About Google My Business and Store Visit Tracking

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Google My Business (GMB) has long been one of Google’s key tools for business listings. A verified and well-managed GMB listing makes your dealership easier to find online, lets you engage with customers through messages and Q&A, helps support your advertising performance and can improve your search visibility.

Google My business

But in addition to these benefits, recently Google took a pretty big step forward in making GMB significantly more valuable. That’s because Google My Business can also enable  dealers to receive store visits reporting, which helps tie Google advertising directly to in-store visits. This combination represents a powerful marketing attribution tool to improve your presence online and measure the marketing impact to your dealerships.

But taking advantage of this opportunity requires a few steps, and comes with a few caveats. Here are the key things to know:

1. Store Visits is highly impactful, but you need a Verified GMB Account to be eligible for it.

Store Visits insights represents very powerful advertising attribution. It will help you make smarter advertising decisions, in addition to helping you continue to bridge the online to in-store consumer experience. That said, activating Store Visits depends entirely on your dealership actually having a verified GMB account. It’s well worth the effort to ensure your GMB account is set up properly. After verifying your GMB account, you’ll also need to let us know the account email that it’s verified under. We’ll link your GMB account to a Google advertising account.

2. Verifying your GMB account isn’t always simple, but there’s a lot of help available to guide you through it.

GMB account verification involves a few steps. For instance, as part of the process you’ll need to request that Google send you an old-fashioned post card as part containing a code that needs to be entered into an online portal. It can also be tricky to gain control of a GMB account even if your dealership already has one set up.But the process is worth it. For help, Dealer.com Managed Services teams are well versed in GMB and can walk you through each step, while also helping ensure you have an effective strategy around your GMB listing. This includes Managed Social to help you monitor and respond to Google Reviews and post content as well as Managed SEO which helps you create business descriptions within GMB, upload images and adjust business hours, and Managed Content & Creative to help ensure your current offers are updated. Even if you don’t work with Dealer.com Managed Services, Google also offers some convenient downloadable resources to help you. Here are our favorites:

3. Not every dealer will be immediately eligible for store visits.
Although you’ll become eligible for Store Visits with a verified GMB account, the verification process doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get this new functionality right away. Google is rolling it out currently, and is promising that most dealerships will be eligible for Store Visits “soon.”

As a Google SMB Premier Partner, Dealer.com works with Google to ensure you can take full advantage of the advertising, search and social opportunities Google offers. New Store Visits offers the potential to see the value of these opportunities in a powerful new way. It’s well worth the effort to verify your GMB account.

For more, connect with us directly or download our best practices guide to Google My Business.

Carl Cannon Holistic Digital Marketing Strategy with Dealer.com

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Carl Cannon Chevrolet Buick GMC needed a strategic, transparent advertising and SEO partner to help them create a holistic digital marketing strategy.

Learn how a partnership with Dealer.com helped them increase traffic and sales for their dealership.
 

Download the Case Study