Pay-Per-Click is a No-Brainer for Car Dealerships

Jul 21, 2010

Coming from a traditional media background, I consistently watched dealers spend a MINIMUM of $5,000 per month in traditional media – whether it was newspaper or radio or cable or magazine ads - we all know them.  There are plenty of options out there.  While the dollars are repeatedly funneled into these mediums, dealerships do their best to analyze the results, but let’s be honest, it’s extremely difficult to quantify the ROI of that $10,000 newspaper spend.  Sure, you’ll place a call tracking phone number on it and see some calls from the ad, but what happens when you start to see those calls dwindling? You call the newspaper representative (I know because I used to be one) and complain: “I’m not getting any calls, and I’m spending a ton of money with you!!!”

I’m sure this exact situation has happened to many dealers as of late.  In fact, I bet the next thing that newspaper rep says is “well, people just come into the dealership – they don’t call!”  And while this, in fact, may be true some of the time, don’t you want a better answer for your $10,000 investment?  This same statement can apply to almost any traditional media format. 

The answer is out there: pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.  Here’s how that $10,000 investment – or let’s even cut it in half and say a $5,000 investment – would work with pay-per-click.  You invest in only relevant keywords for your business.  Let’s say I’m a BMW dealership in Chicago. I would bid on thousands of terms related to BMW within a specified radius, all appropriate franchise search terms paired with targeted surrounding city names, and all of the varying models that I carry.  I would even buy terms for my other profit centers including used cars, service and parts.  So now I’m encompassing everything that I do as a dealership and blanketing my targeted market area to about 30 miles around my dealership.  Talk about honing in on my customer!  Now, a 30-something (who doesn’t get the paper because they get their news online) is searching for a new BMW 3 Series from his Lincoln Park condo and sees your ad in the search listings, specifically targeted to his search for a BMW 3 Series.  He clicks through to your website, lands on your BMW 3 Series inventory and submits a lead for a quote. 

Of course this is a perfect scenario, but you get the idea.  Here’s why you should love it.  Remember when you were spending $10,000 with the newspaper and getting a lackluster call volume?  Well, if you were to spend about half of what you’re spending with the paper on PPC, you would likely get over 2x the call volume that you were receiving with your newspaper ad.  So let’s evaluate: half the budget = 2x the call volume. Those are the kind of results I would buy into!

Automotive dealerships need to continue the transition of their traditional media dollars into online efforts.  In my opinion, there is too much money wasted on the ‘feel good’ of being in the newspaper.  The fact that the dealer down the street is in the paper isn’t a good reason any longer. 

What I love about being in the online arena is that now when I get that phone call from one of my dealers asking ‘what am I getting for my $5,000 investment?’ I can now show them exactly why it makes sense – this form of media drives phone-ups and email leads that are quantifiable and much more targeted.  In these days, quantifiable and targeted is what every dealership is seeking.