The internet has changed the way we do things. This is especially true in the world of business. Indeed, the internet has become a powerful tool for businesses as it allows them to expand their reach. To be more specific, Google Ads can be incredibly useful when it comes to maximizing your reach and getting the most out of your online platforms. Considering how useful it can be, it would be in your best interest to maximize your use of the internet. This is doubly true for businesses that benefit from a wide reach.
Car dealerships, in particular, benefit massively from an expanded reach. Because of this, it would be in your best interest to utilize Google Ads for car dealerships. Now, the main thing stopping people from utilizing Google Ads is their lack of knowledge of this useful tool. This is why we thought it would be useful to put together a short guide on this subject. If this is something that you want to learn more about, read on for a beginner’s guide to using Google Ads for car dealerships.
Key Takeaways
- The Power of Google Ads: Google Ads is a highly effective tool for expanding reach and driving traffic to business websites, particularly beneficial for businesses that thrive on broad visibility, such as car dealerships.
- Understanding Google Ads: Google Ads operates on an auction system where advertisers bid on keywords to display clickable ads in Google search results, making it a versatile and accessible platform for any business.
- Setting Up an Account: Create a dedicated Google Ads account for your dealership with a unique username and password, and use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to identify relevant keywords for your campaigns.
- Effective Keyword Strategy: Utilize a mix of short and long-tail keywords related to your specific niche or location, and include keywords associated with car makes and models offered by your dealership to optimize ad spend.
- Location Targeting: Focus your ads on a specific geographic area to attract local customers, ensuring that your ad budget is spent on reaching individuals most likely to visit your dealership.
- Bidding Strategy Basics: Start with a base bid of $1.00-$2.00 per click and adjust based on performance. Consider using automated bid adjustments to optimize your spending effectively.
- Automation and Efficiency: Automate the management of ads, keywords, and bids to reduce manual errors and ensure timely updates, which is crucial for handling multiple car models and trims.
- Incorporating OEM Incentives: Regularly update your ads to include Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) incentives and promotions, as this can significantly increase click-through rates.
- Bid Adjustments for Demographics: Adjust bids based on user demographics and in-market segments to lower cost-per-lead and maximize the efficiency of your ad spend.
- Continuous Improvement: Regularly review and refine your Google Ads campaigns to stay competitive, ensuring that your dealership meets both short-term and long-term business goals through effective use of online advertising.
What Is Google Ads?
What is Google Ads? Google Ads, AKA Google AdWords, is Google’s advertising system. Advertisers bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google’s search results. Since advertisers have to pay for these clicks, Google generates money from these ads.
Depending on how competitive the keywords you are bidding on are, and how relevant they are to your company and its actual conversions, AdWords can be very effective as an advertising platform. We’ve found that Google AdWords is extremely effective for many kinds of businesses, especially if you utilize the right keywords.
What’s great about Google Ads is that just about any business can use it due to how accessible it is. You can advertise your business on Google by signing up for a Google Ads account. Once you have your account, all that’s left to do is to set it up for your specific business.
How Do You Set Up Your Account?
As we’ve already mentioned, the first thing you need to do is to sign up. We recommend that you create an account with a unique username and password for your car dealership, rather than using your personal Google account. Setting up your account is an easy process that shouldn’t take much time.
Once you have your account, the next thing you have to do is to set up your keywords. This shouldn’t be too difficult as you can use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to see what searches are popular and to get ideas for keywords. Keywords for ads can be different from keywords for website content, so you need to update your ad campaign often.
Pay attention to keyword length when bidding for keywords. If you bid on too many short keywords and misspellings of common words, you may end up wasting money on minimal results. Instead of focusing solely on short keywords, we suggest utilizing long-tail keywords as well. Long-tail keywords have 3 or more words that are related to your specific niche or location, but only 2/3 of your search traffic is coming from this source. Aside from the typical keywords associated to your business, it might also be good to utilize keywords associated with the makes and models of the cars that you offer for your dealership.
Aside from the keywords, you’ll also want to make sure that you are making the most out of location targeting. People want to buy cars close to where they live. If your dealership is in New York, you should only show ads to people in other cities within 100 miles of New York. That way, you aren’t wasting money by targeting people who aren’t likely to be interested in your dealership.
Lastly, we have to talk about how bidding works. The first time you use Google Ads, it can be a bit tricky to figure out how to set up an effective bidding system. The simplest way to start is to set your bids to $1.00-$2.00 per click and adjust from there. It’s also good to have Google automatically adjust your bids up to the highest bid, although we don’t recommend starting out that way.
What Are the Effective Tips for Car Dealerships?
Now that you have a good understanding of how Google Ads works, we thought it would be useful to give you a couple of tips that will help you make the most out of Google Ads. Here are three tips that you should keep in mind:
- Having a marketing manager manually configuring automotive ads, keywords, extensions and bids for each model, trim and year can be rather tedious. To add to this, doing it manually also opens you up to human error. Luckily, you can pretty much automate this entire process. To maintain up-to-minute data, we suggest using your own scripts or asking your advertising agency to make sure they can connect to your website platform and automatically update your campaigns based on the models already uploaded onto the site. If you are consistently late by a week or two with each new model uploaded throughout the year, you’re missing out on tens of thousands of lost leads. If you’re looking to maximize your use of Google Ads, this is definitely a good place to start.
- It would also be wise to include Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) incentives in your ad titles. When you review your ads at the beginning of each month, make sure to update your ads to include all available OEM incentives with the lowest monthly payments available for each model and trim. Some of the more advanced agencies will automate this process, but the effort is worth it since you’ll see a significant increase in your overall click-through rates.
- Not many people are aware of this ability to adjust Google Ads bids, and those who are often finding it easier to just ignore it, but automotive marketers can’t afford to ignore the ability to adjust bids according to user demographics and in-market segments, because a minute change like this allows you to lower your cost-per-lead. This is incredibly useful as you’ll want to make sure that you’re making the most out of the resources that you have at your disposal.
Conclusion
We hope this guide proves to be useful when it comes to helping you maximize your car dealership’s online platforms. Despite how competitive this industry is, having a good grasp of how Google Ads work will help you achieve both your short-term and long-term business goals. While Google Ads require a lot of work, time, and resources, the benefits that it brings to your business are well worth it. Not only will Google Ads allow you to expand your reach but it also helps you level the playing field when it comes to how well you perform against your competition. Be sure to keep all of this information in mind so you can make the most informed decisions possible regarding your business and Google Ads.
New Digital Marketing Agency is a data-driven digital marketing agency and Google ads agency in Toronto. New Digital can revolutionize your PPC strategy through advanced keyword research and utilization to maximize your reach and ensure you’re targeting the right customers. Get in touch with us today!
