Automating Ads for Dealers | Car Dealership Advertising

Car dealership advertising has come a long way. Gone are the days of relying solely on print media and capturing customer emails for success. While direct mail marketing and dealership email marketing are still key components of a well-structured strategy, it’s important to leverage software, data, and automation for better results from your digital ads.

Digital advertising is still about being transparent in providing the highest quality information about your vehicles to the right customers—you just have better tools to help you do so. With technology, you can save time, gain deeper insights, and optimize your marketing efforts to stay ahead of the competition.

Automating your digital ads with the help of a data-rich platform will transform your dealership’s merchandising. Learn how in this guide.

The Importance of Digital Advertising for Dealerships

Around 95% of car shoppers research vehicles online before buying, which is why many dealerships invest heavily in digital ads¹. To draw in those shoppers, you need your vehicles to appear where your customers are searching. Digital ads and vehicle listings on popular third-party sites are the answer.

However, the average person today sees thousands of ads every day². You’re competing with all those other messages, including from other dealerships. To stand out and grab customers’ attention, your ads need to be compelling and full of the vehicle details they’re interested in.

Data and Automation in Modern Dealership Advertising

Data is your best friend when it comes to listing your vehicles. You want to bring traffic to your lot but don’t want to waste valuable time manually writing ads. Drafting and executing ads that command attention while being hyper-focused often ends up being a time-consuming process, even though the concept can seem simple enough.

Plus, slick copy typically isn't even enough to draw attention to your vehicles these days. You need to understand your audience and show potential customers specific vehicle attributes in your ads to draw them in. This is where ad automation comes into play.

With data and automation tools from ACV MAX, you can create ads that draw on your dealership data to automatically update with new information about the vehicles on your lot. That way, you don’t have to waste time manually rewriting or updating your ads when your inventory changes. You still get specific, appealing ads for your dealership, just without the hassle and time investment of constantly updating them yourself.

Put an emphasis on the vehicle itself by leveraging a library of vehicle attributes, including OEM build data. The next-generation inventory features available through ACV MAX even help keep all vehicle information consistent across third-party sites, CRM systems, and dealer management systems (DMS). Any changes made in the main system are reflected across the board. This helps efficiently syndicate vehicle listings across hundreds of sites.

Because today’s shoppers are searching for details that will fuel buying decisions, it is your responsibility to provide vehicle details that extend to as many listing sites as possible. Not only that, but you also need to ensure the information is accurate and up to date.

Types of Data in Car Dealership Marketing

There are several types of data you can use to enhance your car dealership marketing, such as:

OEM Build Data: Share each vehicle’s specific components, options, and other specifications from the OEMs to help customers find exactly what they’re looking for.
First-Party Data: If you have CRM and DMS systems, then you already collect consumer data, like purchase history, interactions on your dealership website, and customer demographics. You can use this first-party data to create more tailored ads.
Third-Party Data: Third-party data is customer data compiled and sold by aggregators who do not have direct relationships with these customers. You may find third-party data useful to better understand market trends and consumer behavior.

With the right tools, you can easily unlock this data to create more modern, effective marketing campaigns that have much higher conversion rates.

And your campaigns don’t have to simply focus on generating new customer leads, either. You can use your customer data to help craft well-timed maintenance reminder ads and retarget customers who showed interest but didn’t buy a vehicle to entice them onto your lot. You can also use data-driven ads to push cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

Upgrade Your Car Dealership Marketing With a Data-Rich Merchandising Tool

The key to taking your dealership’s marketing to the next level is leveraging data and tools like ACV MAX. With ACV MAX, you gain access to all the data you need for effective, modern automotive marketing. You’ll get build data from all major OEMs to create better vehicle descriptions. The detailed vehicle data will make everyone on your sales team an instant expert on your inventory. You can also integrate ACV MAX with your other merchandising software like DMS and CRM systems to seamlessly bring in your first-party data.

Schedule your FREE demo today to see how ACV MAX can upgrade your dealership’s marketing.

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