This month, Google recognized the achievements of top-performing digital marketing partners across the globe by awarding Premier Partner status as part of the Google Partners program.
As the industry’s leading automotive digital marketing agency for dealerships across the United States and Canada, Dealer.com has achieved 2023 Premier Partner status in the Google Partners program.
The Google Partners program underwent significant changes in 2022, including redefining what it means to be a Premier Partner, through advanced program requirements and offering Premier Partner benefits to promote growth and success with Google Ads. In 2023, the program continues to support its Premier Partners and their clients.
“Congratulations to our Premier Partners for 2023. These companies are among the top 3% of Google Partners in their respective countries – including the United States,” said Marcin Karnowski, Senior Director of Ads Marketing at Google. “It’s a true accomplishment, one that signals their leading expertise in Google Ads, in forging new client relationships, and in helping clients grow. We look forward to supporting them as they help their customers build smart online strategies and drive long-term success.”
Dealer.com, along with a select group of Premier Partners in the Google Partners program were awarded this achievement. This program is designed for advertising agencies and third parties that manage Google Ads accounts on behalf of other brands or businesses. Its mission is to empower companies by providing them with innovative tools, resources, and support to help their clients succeed and grow online.
And that’s a wrap for the NADA Show 2023! Thanks for stopping by the Dealer.com booth and demoing our latest innovations.
Dealer.com does more than provide websites, we’re the premier end-to-end digital marketing solution for your automotive dealership. And whether you are current or new Dealer.com customer, now is the time to get started on your digital marketing goals in 2023.
If you did not get a chance to visit our booth, no worries. There’s still an opportunity to demo the new products and enhancements we unveiled at the show. In the meantime, here’s a recap of what we debuted:
KBB My Wallet on Dealer.com Websites
Kelley Blue Book® My Wallet, a personalized shopper tool on Autotrader and KBB.com, will now be automatically integrated into all Dealer.com dealer websites. This means dealers will have even more information on consumers than ever before.
You can get everything from down payment, trade-in, and financing information – the data you need to speed up the deal-making process and get more accurate leads for your dealership.
Local SEO
Take complete control of Search Engine Results Page (SERP) beyond just your organic and paid listings as Google prioritizes local experiences when consumers search for cars. With Local SEO, dealers can promote their dealership and inventory to local car shoppers at exactly the time they are searching for your business.
New Car Customizer
With more consumers shopping online for cars than ever before, dealers must ensure their website has the tools consumers need for a seamless shopping experience while displaying a modernized web design.
Our new car customizer allows shoppers to find the vehicle they are searching for, even when dealers do not have the specific vehicle in inventory.
These are just a few of the solutions we got to share with dealers at the show. Be sure to sign up for a demo today!
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.
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.
The retail automotive industry has been through a lot in the last few years—a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and a historic inventory shortage. As it always does, the industry came out on top and is in a surprisingly profitable period. But don’t breathe too easy, because the next big challenge is already on its way — “the cookiepocalypse!” Don’t be fooled by the deceptively sweet name — the cookiepocalypse has the potential to upend the way your dealership currently connects with customers. Fortunately, there’s a sure way to protect your business from digital disaster, and it’s already in your possession — your own data.
What is the cookiepocalypse?
By now, you’re probably familiar with the concept of cookies — the little bits of data websites deposit onto your computer as you browse the internet. Cookies can be used for a variety of purposes, from streamlining your web browsing experience to tracking your search and shopping history. Cookies are especially important to advertisers because they are essential to target relevant audiences. But cookies also have a downside. Many argue that by tracking users undetected, they violate people’s privacy on the internet.
Caught between its lucrative advertising business and its commitment to privacy protections, Google has announced that its Chrome browser will stop allowing third-party tracking cookies beginning in 2023. Other less popular web browsers have already started the process of phasing out third-party tracking cookies. That’s welcome news for privacy advocates, but it has many digital marketers preaching doom and gloom about the future of targeted advertising, earning the 2023 date the calamitous name of “cookiepocalypse.”
What can your dealership do?
Many of the advertising technologies you’ve invested in rely on third-party cookies to track, find, and reach consumers. As a result, the disappearance of third-party tracking cookies could have disastrous impacts on the effectiveness of your digital ads. Without cookies, you’ll have a harder time reaching your audiences, personalizing their experiences, and connecting online and in-store experiences, especially through retargeting.
Your dealership advertising will also become much more expensive.
That’s bad news for both dealers and car buyers because personalization doesn’t just lead to more profits, it also leads to a better shopping experience. Bret Towne, Senior Director of Enterprise Data Products at Cox Automotive recently discussed the importance of personalization in approaching car shoppers.
“When visitors get personalized experiences, whether it’s personalized specials or listings, we see a 4 times increase in automobile leads, deal pencils and digital retailing. We see a 3.3 times increase in trade-in deals, and a 216 percent increase in conversion rates for those visitors. You want to personalize your digital storefront and make it as relevant as possible for that consumer.”
With third-party cookies on their way out, dealers need to be prepared with new ways to engage consumers as they arrive at their websites. Given the current level of reliance on third-party cookies, the transition will be no easy task for most dealerships. Fortunately, the solution is something you already have — your own first-party data, which is now more valuable than ever before. Your dealership doesn’t need a third party to track and store a shoppers’ interactions with your company, and it’s easy to use that information to continue personalizing the experience for that limited set of customers.
Augmenting First-Party Data
While it’s about to become the next-best alternative to third-party tracking cookies, first-party data has limitations for most dealerships. Because it can only show how a shopper has interacted with their specific dealership, it gives a fairly limited view of that consumer’s interests and intentions. To be truly useful, dealers need the ability to gather, cleanse, and act upon shopper data, and they’ll need a broader view than their own data can provide. That’s whyDealer.com has developed cookie-less personalization technology.
Bret Towne explained at a recent industry-wide event, “Dealer.com has been looking to solve this cookie-less problem for a long time now. We’ve been collecting over 26 billion key digital online activities that consumers are engaging in every single year, all in first-party cookie, with zero third-party cookie reliance. We also have a proprietary technology that’s allowing us to stitch together cross-platform first-party cookie activity. We’re able to reliably stitch together all of those digital signals about consumers that gives us a very holistic view about what those consumers are interested in, what level of in-market readiness they are, and ultimately, we can make predictions about what they’re going to do next.”
It’s easy to see how dealerships that learn to leverage and supplement their first-party data will have a competitive advantage as everyone is weaned off of their reliance on third-party cookies. On the vendor side of this transition, Dealer.com is in a very strong position to enhance your company’s ability to personalize the shopping experience as you move increasingly further away from third-party cookies.
How Does It Work?
There’s a clear reason for Dealer.com’s strong position as the industry transitions into a cookie-less world. It’s part of the end-to-end Cox Automotive ecosystem that allows the company to make connections no one else can. At a recent industry event, Noah Lee explained the exclusive process in detail.
“When somebody comes to the website, we recognize their device ID or IP address or the internet provider they’re coming from and we query our database to say, ‘do we know anything about that shopper?’ We have that info if they’ve visited Autotrader or Kelley Blue Book or if they’re in VinSolutions. And with our unique website solutions, we can show them vehicle- and customer-specific data.”
More important than how it works is that it really does work. Personalized experiences increase engagement and that’s not going to change with the death of the third-party cookie. Dealers are going to continue to need the ability to learn about consumers and use that information to predict behaviors and customize the buying process. Cox Automotive is doing that today without the use of third-party data, and the technology will become a lifeline for dealers following the phase out of third-party tracking cookies.
“When dealers have this identity capability powering their digital storefront for personalization,” explained Lee, “they personalize at a rate of 58 percent of visitors. 58 percent of visitors then get personalized experiences to drive up engagement. When we see that dealers aren’t using this technology, only 24 percent of website visits are being personalized. And what’s going to happen when the third-party cookies fully deprecate? That 24 percent will drop down to nearly nothing.”
Finding a Future Beyond Cookies
The cookiepocalypse may be on its way, but by now, your dealership is ready for anything. You’re already more prepared than you know for the death of third-party cookies because, in the form of your own first-party data, part of the solution is already in your possession. By adding Dealer.com’s cookie-less personalization technology and its vast universe of shopper data, you’ll have all the tools you need to continue powering your advertising, personalizing the sales process, and making profits. With the power of a powerful automotive advertising agency like Dealer.com in your corner, the cookiepocalypse might not be so apocalyptic after all.
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.
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.
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.
Today, almost all roads lead to a dealer’s website, even (and sometimes especially) when a customer might prefer to come into the showroom. In fact, 83% of customers want to do at least one step of the car-buying journey online, according to the 2019 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Study.
Customers are bound to have a lot of questions, especially amid all the recent changes and phased reopening across the country. To give customers the information they need to move forward in their buying journey, every car dealer websiteshould answer these questions.
1. Is the dealership open, and if so, what safety precautions are being taken?
The most helpful thing a dealership can do for shoppers is to provide accurate information and communicate frequently. This can be done in a few key places with highly visible website messaging, such as on slides, banners, and landing pages. Also include it in social media and email. Place this information prominently so customers looking to visit in person know their options.
Quick and simple access to information is the best way to let customers know a dealership is open and eager to do business.
2. Can I get my car serviced or repaired?
Leverage service department marketing to let customers know what measures are being taken to ensure safety during service appointments. Outline it simply on the website, whether it is offering no-contact car services, a delivery and pickup option, videos showing the disinfection process, or variable service hours to reduce the number of technicians in the dealership at a given time.
Dealership advertising campaigns promoting these new service processes can create added awareness as consumers explore their options for getting their cars serviced.
3. What is the best way to reach a dealer if I don’t want to visit a dealership in person?
Many customers may want to avoid visiting the dealership in person for a while, and virtual interactions are the next best thing to keeping dealership operations moving. Let customers know on the website that they can connect with staff virtually, and make shoppers feel as though you’re in the same room when you do connect virtually. Video chat enriches the digital shopping experience and gives dealers a direct and real-time opportunity to talk to customers. Video chats and other virtual communication channels also build trust with customers and keep deals moving quickly.
4. How much of the car buying process can be done online?
More customers are looking to digitally complete their car shopping process online. Clearly explaining the virtual car sales process on the website will help capture those customers, turning them into automobile leads. These digital retailing shoppers should be treated as much farther along in the buying process, especially if they are using online tools in lieu of an in-store visit. Consumers are investing time in the process online and should be rewarded for that with personalized, relevant follow-up communications. Leverage digital tools to help make the car-buying experience from home easier.
5. Is the dealership offering home vehicle delivery, test drives, or other social distancing options?
With shoppers still taking precautions, offering convenient, at-home options for them can lead to more potential buyers for a dealer. Simple messaging explaining new options and processes via landing pages, advertising, and website slides or banners go a long way.
Consumers will inevitably have questions and want to call, email, or text the dealership for more information. Make sure the contact information needed to get those questions answered is clear and readily available. It’s important to nurture every lead and ensure your response is timely.
This is a new experience for all of us, and we’re all navigating this together. Dedicate online real estate to explain what you’re doing to protect employees and customers.
One silver lining of COVID-19 is that online shopping has provided an alternative location for business to take place. It also accelerated the adoption of technology that many consumers desired before the pandemic deemed it necessary. Now, more dealers are ready to take on the next era of auto retailing where their web experience is the customer gateway to their business.
As car shopping moves from traditional retail to an online environment, your customers will be leveraging digital channels more than ever. Screen time will certainly increase as we spend more time at home, as we’ve seen happen in Europe with a 50% increase in internet traffic. The methods in which we research, shop and buy things – including cars – have already started to change. Whether that is researching cars on Kelley Blue Book, watching virtual test drive videos on YouTube, or using online car buying tools to purchase a vehicle, the way in which we market ourselves to shoppers needs to align with how media is consumed.
Adjusting media allocation and aligning creative messaging are two key components of this new shopping experience.Automotive search queries are expected to decline, yet online activity is expected to rise. Investments in channels such as video, display and social will help grow demand that can then be captured when things return to normal. The messaging that is included in all digital advertising creative needs to be personalized and aligned with both consumer needs and OEM marketing investments.
Media Mix Diversification
Video and display advertising are two channels that focus on building awareness with engaging content in order to increase consumer demand. As shoppers consume media in a variety of places and platforms, it is critical to have a strategy that is focused on your audience versus a single platform. Car shoppers who are interested in a Silverado 1500 are reading the news online, using Facebook to check in with friends and family, and browsing videos on YouTube to pass the time. Promoting a consistent message across all these platforms drives efficiencies at a lower cost than traditional print and television advertising.
One challenge we are looking to solve at Dealer.com is related to creative. Video production and creative services can both be very expensive. We’ve built products with our dealer partners in mind, decreasing the overhead and lowering the barrier of entry into these demand generation focused channels.
Here is a real-world example: General Motors is offering 0% APR financing for 84 months on the 2020 Silverado 1500 for well qualified buyers. All GM dealers should be including this in their marketing materials. Our video and display products were designed to do just that:
Inserting dealer-specific messaging is also a great way to communicate updates to potential customers, especially since the COVID-19 situation is constantly evolving. With this running on multiple platforms, including YouTube and Facebook, and serving to an audience of Silverado 1500 shoppers, you have a great branding strategy.
Personalized Advertising Experiences
Customers expect personalized and custom-tailored experiences today more than ever. And the data proves that performance across digital properties improves when users are served content that meets their expectation. In studies conducted by Dealer.com, we’ve seen a 2-2.5x increase in activity on Vehicle Detail Pages and a 12% increase in lead conversion when shoppers are served personalized content on Dealer.com websites. Combined with a personalized advertising experience, this is a win-win.
Here are a few recommendations to drive results:
Leverage in-market shopper data to strengthen audience targeting across all channels and platforms.
Segment audience-based website activity and serve them relevant content. Actively browsing inventory, looking at service schedulers, and engaging with digital retailing tools are all indicators of different stages of the buying lifecycle for your automobile leads.
Promote inventory using creative that matches the shopper’s interests. Dynamic inventory ads are available today.
Focus advertising spend on inventory that needs the most attention. One effective way to accomplish this is combining Facebook advertising with vehicle scoring algorithms.
As automotive shopping behavior evolves, being able to adapt will be paramount for long term success. Diversifying marketing portfolios, focusing on creative messaging, and personalizing customer experiences will position you for growth in the months to come.
