Automotive PPC
Here at Click Dealer, we adopt an integrated approach to SEO and affiliate marketing. Pay-Per-Click (PPC), gives your dealership the chance to feature within the top rankings of search results displayed on search engine giant’s pages, such as Google.
PPC can include formats such as text adverts, remarketing, product listings, display and dynamic search ads. Click Dealer create PPC solutions which will benefit your business’ needs in the best possible way.
We are able to tailor a package with your business’ best interests in mind. Some of these features include stock adverts, promotion adverts, mobile targeting, geo targeting, GDN/ YouTube campaigns, bid optimisation, click through analysis, spend checks and regular reporting.
Our in-house account specialists conduct in-depth research to ensure that our methods will achieve the highest possible ROI for your dealership. We use the best tools in the business to optimise campaigns and tailor them to your dealership, which results in significantly increased return visits to the site and growth in dealership’s conversion rate.
Using PPC is a highly recommended way to advertise your business because it provides you with targeted traffic, these users are actively searching for your type of dealership or business. The PPC ads make use of innovative techniques such as GEO targeting, click to call, ad extensions, targeting reactive market trends and promoting over-age stock.
Dealers will notice instant results when using PPC ads, because when somebody searches for keywords associated with your dealership, you will conveniently appear in the top search results. The best part of PPC is that, you only pay when somebody clicks on the ad – meaning that you still get exposure in the top rankings of the search results even if they don’t click on your ad.
What is PPC?
PPC is a digital marketing acronym that is used ever more frequently and stands for Pay Per Click. It is a pay for response model, the response being a click on an advert which would then take the user to a dealer’s website.
This incredibly effective advertising model is largely found on search engines, where advertisers pay a set fee for each click on their ad. It is common practice on search engine websites for advertisers to bid in an online auction on common search phrases to attract traffic to their site. These well used phrases are better known in the industry as keywords.
If and when a keyword that the customer has bid on matches a search typed into a search engine, then their advert will be displayed either on the right-hand side of the page or at the top. But customers will not be charged unless one of their ads is clicked by an internet user.
The most commonly used programme for managing PPC accounts is Google AdWords.
How Does PPC Work?
When a search is performed on Google, the search engine tries to bring up the most relevant and useful result in order to satisfy the requirements of the searcher.
Organic results are displayed on the search results page of Google, the ones nearer the top have almost certainly benefitted from Search Engine Optimisation. However, search engines will also give prevalence to paid ads along the top, right and bottom of the page where a business has a related advert to display. This is the very definition of PPC.
PPC Accounts and How They Work
Companies can gain exposure on search engines through creating accounts on Bing or Google AdWords, from there campaigns can be easily created to fit the needs of the business. As a result of the keywords setup in these campaigns, individual advertisements are triggered when a search is made, these ads consist of a title, description and accompanying links.
How to Create Bespoke Campaigns
There are various ways in which a campaign can be targeted including creating a detailed account structure tailored to the specific needs of the customer.
Below are a few key terms to help with setting up a bespoke campaign.
Match Type – Enables businesses to display adverts based on how precisely matched the search phrase is queried to a campaign.
Location – Tailor display adverts to a specific geographic location.
Scheduling – Set a schedule for which times of day an advert should be displayed.
Language – Only load adverts to devices set for a certain language.
What Do I Need to Do to Appear as an Advert? And How Do I Bid?
If only it was as simple as creating an advert and magically appearing at the top of Google every time a relevant search is made. Unfortunately, it isn’t! Businesses usually have to compete with many other advertisers bidding on the same searches too, all wanting to claw themselves to the dizzy heights of Google’s first page.
Just like in the used car industry, live auctions are a massive part of PPC marketing and they happen millions of times per second for every single search query that is ever made on a search engine. PPC is a very competitive business but the rewards make it more than worthwhile for dealerships to take the time and money to engage in the process.
As a way of making results pages fairer, search engines developed an algorithm which means that the most relevant advert will appear as well as the cost per click bid that the advertiser is happy to pay.
Click Dealer knows that Google’s algorithm is based on the quality score, ad rank and expected impact of ad extensions. This score is based on several factors, but the exact details are confidential. However, we do know that in general Google considers:
Keyword Relevancy – The relevance of the actual search made in comparison with the keywords the advertiser is bidding on.
Ad Relevancy – The relevance of the actual search made in comparison with the advert the advertiser is hoping to display.
The Landing Page – The quality and relevance of the page the searcher will land on if they click on the advert.
Historical Performance – If the advertiser has a history of good adverts, click through and conversions it is more likely that their future adverts will rank higher in the advertising slots.
Various Relevancy Factors – The algorithm is a secret, but we know that there are many other factors Google consider determining where an advert will rank.
So, using the quality score Google calculates for the advertiser and their adverts in combination with the maximum cost per click the advertiser is willing to pay, the live bid is made, compared against the competition and the advert will hopefully then appear.
The equation looks like this:
BID x QUALITY SCORE (MAX CPC) = AD RANK
The Benefits of PPC
It is vital that dealers are aware that PPC should be considered a huge part of their digital marketing activity but they shouldn’t throw all their eggs in one basket and hope that it will work miracles on its own. PPC works best when it is planned to work as part of a full comprehensive strategy and not used in desperation to chase sales aimlessly.
That said, PPC does have numerous specific benefits which can prove effective too, such as:
Highly-targeted website traffic – Providing varying ad copies for unique keywords and demographics should dramatically enhance the calibre of traffic to your website. Dealers can target the best sales periods with PPC ads and select which specific regions to run them in.
Speed to market – PPC ads can be launched quickly, unlike SEO, bringing in targeted traffic and qualified leads straight to your website.
Maximise the Return on your Marketing Investment – The only time you’ll pay for PPC is when an advert is clicked. This makes it easy to keep on top of your costs, work out your ROI and monitor conversions. In order to compare your dealership’s PPC campaign with your other marketing strategies, cost-per-conversions are supremely valuable if data is reported correctly then campaign results can be monitored meticulously.
Reach – Extra traffic can be diverted to your website, increasing your online visibility and ensuring that your dealership establishes itself as an industry leading example.
Testing capabilities – PPC serves as a wonderful way of running low-risk testing for keywords to determine whether a full site optimization campaign is necessary and indeed worthwhile. It’s also perfect for A/B testing on landing pages, so that dealers can direct traffic to various pages on their site to test which ones have the highest conversion rate.
As well as the above, there are also less well known, additional benefits of PPC that exist too:
Coherence – Dealer’s search marketing communications become rationally connected when using PPC as a strategy.
Consistency – SEO & PPC are not contradictory to one another and the multiple messages from both methods are used to support and reinforce.
Continuity – Over a duration of time search communications are linked together.
Complimentary – These two search communication channels work better in tandem than they do individually.
What is Best PPC Practice
When possible, all dealer’s PPC campaigns should adhere to best practice so as to ensure the highest possible chance of success. Below are some opportunities to capitalise on best practice.
Keywords
• Mix of generic, long tail, product specific.
• GEO modified keywords.
• Negatives used to ensure incredibly targeted campaigns.
• Fresh keywords will be added regularly based on the search query report.
Adverts
• Every Adgroup will consist of three live adverts.
• Each advertisement will include differing CTA’s and USP’s.
• Adverts with the poorest CTR/Conv rate, should be changed and replaced with a new alternative.
Match Types – Mixture of broad, phrase and exact match, phrase and exact match help to make sure that dealer’s campaigns are targeted and broad match expands reach.
Structure – Number of campaigns depends on the budget and marketing objectives. Click Dealer would generate several AdGroups to ensure keywords are grouped into relevant themes as this has a huge impact on CTR.
Deep Linking – Adverts and keywords are deep linked to ensure the best possible user journey. This is imperative to achieve the best possible conversion rate.
What Makes a Great PPC Advert?
Advert Title – Wherever possible the advert title should mirror the keyword phrase that has been searched or at least feature the key words.
URL – The actual destination URL should be reflective of the page URL the customer expects to land on. It may be a trimmed down URL (which redirects to a specific page) and may not be the URL the end user ultimately lands on. However, the shortened URL should exist and work.
Description – This should be relevant to the search and it should accurately describe the page/product or at the very least tempt the end user towards the page in an honest and relevant way.
Contextual Information – This is yet more useful information that Google decide to display that gives the end user further reason to consider clicking. This could be the number of ‘+’ the website has on Google+, the amount of reviews or ratings or could even be site links.
Key Elements to Make a Great Landing Page
Page Title – When a potential customer lands on a page they will quickly assess whether they are in the right place or not and if the webpage will help them achieve the purpose of their original search. The title of the page (and the landing page URL) will be a vital marker that an end-user will look at to ascertain whether the page is relevant for them. With that in mind it is incredibly important for this to reflect the exact contents of the page and will ideally relate to the advert (even more important is that the advert should correspond with the page it is sending traffic to).
Imagery – Just as the quality of imagery on dealer’s stock portals are imperative to generating leads and making sales, the calibre of imagery is essential for browsers when looking at the standard and relevance of the product they are looking to buy on dealer websites. Imagery on a page is often the initial thing they assess when determining if they have landed in the right place and with the right dealer, if the product is relevant and if the quality is sufficient to trust the webpage (and the dealership) itself.
Description – Just as with the PPC advert itself, the dealer’s description is very important for a potential client to identify if they are in the right place. The description should effectively describe the vehicle and its features or benefits, without being too wordy if possible. The layout should be simple to comprehend and definitely not packed full with jargon or acronyms that none industry people or experts don’t understand.
Call to Actions (CTAs) – It is integral that a potential lead is able to take some form of action if they believe that the website was useful to them and they’ve got the information that they came for. Often this will be a big button to “buy” or “add to basket”. But for a car dealer, this might be buttons such as “contact us”, “arrange a test drive”, “view our location on a map” or any other action that may get them closer to buying the car. This will change in the not too distant future as click and deliver and click and collect become more popular in the industry but for now arranging further conversation and interaction is always a great idea. Calls to action are so important because having paid for the click through to your dealership’s website, if it is not clearly obvious what the next step is the lead may close the webpage or even worse, return to the initial search engine results page.
Click Dealer are experts in automotive retail marketing and offer a variety of PPC packages to suit dealerships of all types and sizes. Whatever your ambition or targets, Click has the correct level of product to suit your aspirations. Contact sales@clickdealer.co.uk for more details.