Recently, we shared eight free website strategies to boost your online performance. Now we are looking at the paid strategies that can take your website results even further. Every good website strategy should include a healthy marketing budget – whatever that may look like for the dealership.

Here are the paid marketing strategies that we believe are worth the investment – as well as some best practices to help you get your money’s worth:

Search Engine Optimization

Any website worth its salt will be based on best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to help it gain traction and start building prominence. Initial SEO acts as a launch pad, but your website requires ongoing work to maintain – and increase – its momentum. After all, SEO is the act of aligning your website with search engine algorithms, and search engines continually update their requirements throughout the year.

Is additional SEO work worth the effort for your dealership? Well, 70% of online users click on organic links¹ and hold organic results in high esteem, which means that investing in your dealership’s organic website presence will reflect well on your brand. In fact, SEO is the single biggest investment you can make for your website - averaging 44% of all revenue².

SEO takes time to build results and bring revenue, which is why many dealerships choose to partner with a reputable SEO expert so they can jump right in. Results can also be achieved by the dealer if they have sufficient time to learn through trial and error.

Best practices for SEO:

• Focus on one area of your website at a time, starting with sectors that need the most improvement.
• Create value-driven copy that establishes your dealership as a trusted expert (eg, blogging!).
• Use longtail keywords to align with shoppers’ search intent and pull in more relevant traffic.
• Remove any old, broken or “spammy” links from your website and comment sections.
• Pay attention to search engine updates – past and present – to maintain your site compliance.

Pay-per-Click Advertising

Paid marketing is one of the fastest ways to build brand awareness and see an ROI on your marketing efforts. As the name suggests, Pay-per-Click ads are an SEM strategy that operates on a keyword bidding system, and you pay a pre-specified amount only when your paid ad is clicked. These ads reside on search engines like Google and appear prominently in relevant search results.

One of the greatest strengths of paid advertising is its ability to apply shopper behavior to your ad strategy. In 2021, 76% of businesses still don’t use consumer behavior data in their online marketing³, which means the field is open for dealers who take the initiative to tailor their ads to their prospects’ actions. These actions include search history, frequently visited websites and purchase history.

Best practices for PPC advertising include:

• Set a budget in advance for your PPC ads – you can grow your budget over time.
• Identify your customer type (eg, location, similar interests, demographic, etc.).
• Align your messaging with your audience type (eg, educational for first-time buyers).
• Know your customers’ pain points and target solution-based keywords (eg, “tire repair”).
• Start with small campaign to test which ad types and messages resonate the most.
• Use analytics to gather data on ad performance and ROI for future campaigns.

Remarketing Ads

Many shoppers don’t make a website conversion the first (or second, third and so on) time they visit a website. About 97% of website visitors leave a website without converting⁴, and it’s difficult to know which pages they viewed unless you can track their visit. Remarketing ads use special coding on each webpage to track website visitors and send them relevant advertisements based on their visit.

Best practices for remarketing ads:

• Use responsive display ads to automatically adjust size and format to different screens.
• Tag specific user actions, such as adding an item to their cart, to trigger remarketing ads.
• Add personalized incentives (eg, promo code or free shipping) for the products viewed.
• Upsell or cross-sell your existing customers through ads for relevant products and services.
• Analyze ad performances to track response by location, age, incentives and more.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the most influential virtual spaces for dealers who want to connect with prospects and existing customers. With so many available marketing tools, any dealer can find a cost-effective strategy that fits their budget and achieves significant results.

In particular, Facebook is a fantastic platform to reach niche audiences, as it offers superb audience targeted capabilities. Interest-based marketing is especially helpful to reach Facebook users who have demonstrated an interest in auto, tires, parts, repair services and more.

Best practices for social media marketing:

• Create custom audience lists for specific conversions.
• Use high-quality images to attract audience attention.
• Establish and maintain a consistent brand voice on ads.
• Study competing dealer accounts and their strategies.
• Post organically, too, to build up engagement and trust.

Investing funds into your online marketing doesn’t automatically guarantee you will see the results you are hoping for. Success is achieved by choosing the marketing tools that fit your dealership’s goals and budget, and then implementing best practices to enhance the campaign performance.

Do you have more questions about using paid marketing strategies to grow your sales revenue without overextending your budget? Net Driven’s team of marketing experts can help. Connect with us today!

¹Search Engine Journal

²Higher Visibility

³SmallBizGenius

⁴MailChimp