Inventory Display Advertising and the Longtail Automotive Purchaser: The Perfect Marriage
No matter what your role at an auto dealership may be, you know that customers considering buying a vehicle will thoroughly research their possibilities well in advance of making a purchase. This behavior gives you an advantage in the sense that your prospect is educated and knows what they want; however, there are also drawbacks to the long sales cycle that is unique to your industry. At the same time, you face special challenges when developing online display advertising for car dealers: your approach is completely different from selling shoes or electronics on a website.
It’s important to optimize your use of online marketing by striking the right balance among as many effective options as possible. One of the most successful tools in online display advertising for car dealers is dynamic inventory display advertising, which pushes relevant ads to your target audience based on factors such as search behavior and history. Dynamic inventory display advertising is useful for generating qualified leads, because it offers a personalized experience to connect your dealership with potential customers.
Dynamic inventory display ads are also excellent when it comes to capturing the so-called “long tail” auto purchaser. The concept refers to those prospects using infrequent search terms to research vehicles rather than the highest trending terms. In a sense, marketing to this group runs contrary to typical SEO principles which focus on the most popular search keywords across the industry. Because the most traffic lies in the long tail end of the search spectrum, it’s important to utilize the right marketing tools to attract it. When you leverage dynamic online display advertising for car dealers with the long tail phenomenon, you’ve harnessed a powerful tool that can help you overcome many of the most common obstacles.
CHALLENGE #1: It’s difficult to keep a potential car buyer engaged.
Dynamic inventory display ads seek to present the right content to a target audience at the right time, which means anticipating a user’s research behavior even before they begin. It’s important to embed long tail concepts into your display ad unit, seeking out customers and serving marketing content to them as it would appear if they were looking at a set of search results.
CHALLENGE #2: You struggle to maintain a prospect’s interest post-click.
Consumers become frustrated if they click on a display ad which directs them to a main website or some other landing page that’s not directly related to the content that interests them. If they don’t immediately access information relevant to the ad, they’ll leave within a few seconds without navigating to other pages on your site. You can lose a sale within a matter of seconds if your prospect is turned off post-click.
In the world of online display for car dealers, it’s key to not only post relevant content but also exact content. In other words, your dynamic inventory ads must lead a potential customer directly to the landing page of the vehicle (Vehicle Detail Page or VDP) that attracted their attention in the first place. From there, they can decide whether to check out more of your inventory.
CHALLENGE #3: You see low ROI for your marketing dollar.
Keeping your Vehicle Detail Pages relevant, targeted, and simple also solves another challenge you might have experienced with online marketing: you’ve invested in expensive advertising efforts but aren’t seeing results. When your message is focused and presented within the right context to a user, you’ll decrease bounce rate and increase time on site, increasing your chances of closing a sale.
CHALLENGE #4: You can’t keep your ads current with constant changes in inventory.
A streamlined ad optimization process is invaluable to busy car dealerships with constantly-changing inventory. You need a solution that starts with your inventory, using a direct feed your inventory can be updated daily (or better) to enable you to make changes as necessary to present accurate content in the display ads you’re presenting to potential customers. Avail yourself of automating tools that allow you to adjust your material on the fly, such as truly dynamic technology that uses a template-based system to modify groups of ads at one time.
If you have any questions about this or any other part of your online marketing activities, please feel free to contact us. We’re always happy to provide a free audit of what your currently doing.
About Speed Shift Media: We provide dynamic inventory display advertising solutions to auto dealers, digital publishers, and agencies. Our platform combines advertiser data in real time — inventory, promotions, and messaging — using sophisticated targeting, retargeting, and self-optimization technologies. We also offer an innovative, premium automotive display network that delivers unparalleled relevancy and engagement. In short, we make sure the right message always reaches the right user, for exceptional results.
