Brooks Automotive Advertising Ideas

If you’re not doing Facebook advertising for your dealership, then you must be getting a 40 frequency on your TV and radio buys then, right? I didn’t think so. If you’re not advertising on Facebook, you’re not only missing the boat, you’re missing an entire fleet of cruise ships. Let me explain.

Here’s what the Facebook world looks like in a little town you may have heard of…Santa Barbara, CA:

Santa Barbara County has an estimated 18+ population of 329,976.

Facebook users 18+ in Santa Barbara County: 238,100.

72% of the population are active Facebook users.

In case you’re curious about the other demographics, here they are. I laugh when my clients tell me only young people use Facebook.

Facebook users 18-34: 141,880 people

Facebook users 35-49: 48,540 people

Facebook users 50-64: 33,700 people

Facebook users 65+: 13,960 people

Male Facebook users 18+: 110,340 people

Male Facebook users 18-34: 69,240 people

Male Facebook users 35-49: 21,420 people

Male Facebook users 50-64: 13,440 people

Male Facebook users 65+: 6,280 people

Female Facebook users 18+: 124,820 people

Female Facebook users 18-34: 71,320 people

Female Facebook users 35-49: 26,480 people

Female Facebook users 50-64: 19,620 people

Female Facebook users 65+: 7,420 people

Roughly the same percentages exist across the country. About 70% of the world are active Facebook users. There is no other medium in which you can reach 70% of the market for a few thousand dollars a month an average of 40 TIMES! It doesn’t exist. Facebook has an algorithm that tells us who is in the market for a car called “Auto Intenders” that performs really well and has much higher response rate than regular ads. In this market, at this time, there are 1700 auto intenders, and you could serve them all ads for pennies. There’s so much versatility with Facebook Ads. You can target specific ads to groups based on their specific behaviors: vans for soccer moms, trucks for blue collar workers, parents who have 16 year old kids. You name it, you can target them. You have the option to do cost per click [CPC] or cost per thousand [CPM] so you can get millions of impressions for free and only pay a few dollars per click! It’s a no brainer! And although only 9-10% of the world is in the market for a car at any given time, we can reach all Facebook users 30-40 times per week for less money than one TV spot in Monday Night Football. The average American spends 7.3 hours per month on Facebook. That means, with the frequency you can achieve with your ads, you’re darn tootin’ they’ll remember you come car buying time. Think of it as your 401K. What are you doing to market your dealership to the 90% of the population who will not be in the market for a car until 12 months from now? What can you do TODAY to attract prospects to your dealership 12 months from now? Lots of options exist, but not too many as efficient and inexpensive as Facebook Advertising.

1. Retargeting Pixel – plop a pixel onto the computer of everyone who visits your website, and your ads will chase them everywhere they go! Then you can get them back. This is the easiest group and the lowest hanging “fruit” ripe for the picking. These ads have the highest click through rate…but people won’t necessarily come back until you serve them ads and give them a reason to click! It’s very affordable, too, depending on your traffic counts. If your site has 10-15,000 unique visitors, you could retarget all of them for a few hundred dollars a week.
2. Behavioral Targeting –Speaking of ads that chase you everywhere you want to go…you ever notice that as soon as you start searching for something online and reading articles and visiting websites, the same ads follow you, no matter what site you’re visiting? That’s Behavioral Targeting.  We gather up data and identify people in the market for what you have to sell. We know they’re in the market for a car based on their online behaviors, such as their searches and visits to Edmunds and KBB.com, etc. Then we serve up ads and get them to YOUR site and not someone else’s. Rich media banners allow you to have different tabs in the banner ad itself so they can choose which option they’d like to explore,  such as your Facebook page or directly to your used inventory, and this also increases your click-through rates.
3. Video Pre-Roll – This one makes the most sense if you already have a TV campaign and/or video as part of your advertising strategy (I hope you do). Video pre-roll gets a much higher click-through rate than regular banner ads. Pre-rolls run right before news stories, video blogs, or hundreds of thousands of different videos consumers watch over a network of millions of websites. Americans prefer to watch rather than read, so let’s give them what they want.

The beauty of digital automotive advertising is that you can target those who are in the market, serve up ads to each specific group based on the behaviors they display, and you can track everything. Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and video pre-roll are three easy and inexpensive ways to attract new buyers to your website that may have not found you otherwise.

If you haven’t tried emailing to prospects, here are a few reasons why you might want to give it a whirl:

-You can get really targeted and really specific about the lists and target only the consumers that are looking to buy a vehicle that live around your dealership.

-The list price is so inexpensive – from 7-9 cents a name, you could cap your budget at $2000 a month and reach 22,000 people.

-We all know that frequency is the key with any marketing. While direct mail is a viable medium, it is cost prohibitive to reach the same list multiple times. With email, you can reach a customer 3 times and still pay less than the price of postage on one piece of mail.

-The creative costs are almost nothing – about $150.

-It’s relatively risk-free, and you can cancel any time.

Sweeney Chevy sold 31 units in two months while working with a $1900 per month budget and emailing twice a month.

If you’re in a small market like my Honda dealership in the Central Coast, there are less than 5000 names available, so he can email everyone in his area for less than $500 each blast.

Targeted email campaigns are one of the most inexpensive ways to get your automotive advertising message to the people who are in the market and live close to your dealership.

When’s the last time someone searched your make in your market and the entire page was filled with your videos like this?

Probably never, right? What does it look like when you search the town of your biggest competitor? Do you have any listings that show up on the page at all? What would make potential customers click on any of those listings?

Let me tell you why it’s so crucial to incorporate ongoing video campaigns as a huge part of your SEO strategy to get traffic to your dealership:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no longer only related to tags and text content, it’s a complicated algorithm based on many things…one of the highest “weighted” things is relevant and recent video content. Video is very important to people searching for vehicles and dealerships on Google…they prefer watching video to reading text if given the choice. Listings with video thumbnails have a much higher click-through rate. It’s not a mystery why YouTube just hit 4 Billion Videos viewed DAILY!

Google will always reward (rank higher) companies with video content for 2 reasons:

1. They own YouTube

2. They will always serve what people what want

Yahoo and Bing are the same way…they just represents a small percentage of searchers, and unfortunately don’t own YouTube.

These are stats from May 2012:

-181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 37 billion online videos last month. The average viewer watched 21.8 hours of online video content.

-71.6% of U.S. Web users overall watch online video content in a typical week

-39% of all viewers spend between one and five hours per week watching online video

-50% of US mobile consumers have smartphones, an estimated 150 million, meaning that video marketers need to use formats compatible with smartphones to reach larger markets.

When you do a search, you’ll only be served the sites that have the most RECENTLY POSTED content, and the sites with the most recently posted videos will be ranked higher. Google doesn’t want your old news, and neither do your prospects. If your nearest competitor has more recent and relevant content, guess where your website is going to pop up? On page 2…where no one will see it.

What does that mean to you? Should you have people take videos at the dealership and upload them to YouTube? Sure, but a few (even a few dozen) videos won’t help much because they probably won’t show up in most searches. Everything you posted last month is already old news and buried. So what do you do? You’re going to get the most traffic by dominating the entire search page for the most popular keywords so your competitors don’t even show up. I take videos for my clients, and I’ve partnered with a company that can take 1 video, format it into 5 different formats, optimize it to appear in hundreds of different searches, and then systematically, DAILY, upload it onto a network of hundreds of video websites, turning one video into 1100 videos… and is the only reason why McDavid Honda dominates the search page.

Here’s another example:

The only thing that appears on the page besides Don Davis Nissan is cars.com with his cars, and a couple paid ads.

Automotive advertising is changing every day. Every day Search engines change the algorithms to keep us all on our toes. Right here, right now, if you want to compete, you have to incorporate videos into your dealership advertising strategy before your competition does.

I’m sure you’ve searched your dealership hundreds of times over the years to find out what people are saying about you. You all have those lovely reviews from 2005 when you outraged one customer who has nothing but time to blast you all over the internet, and that’s the only review that shows up no matter what search you do. You’ve all been to classes at Digital Dealer about why your positive reviews are so important to searchers. You may have already put in place an internal system where you ask customers to share reviews online.

But as you know, in this automotive advertising world we live in, things change every day. You might have had a great rating with Google until 3 weeks ago, and now you’re scratching your head wondering why you have a poor rating.

Big Brother changed the rules. They can take down all your good reviews they want, they can leave nothing but all the bad reviews live, and they can let all your prospects read only the negative crap that one guy from 7 years ago posted.

All of that is true. So are you going to just sit there and let all your prospects who search for you see that your Google rating is 15 out of 30 and you are considered “Poor” to do business with? I wouldn’t.

Did you know that 20% of your SEO ranking depends on your business rating? Google rewards companies that have good ratings. Did you know that in order to post a review on Google now, you have to have a Google Plus Account? Do you know what the process for posting a review for Google would be if you don’t have a Google Plus account? Tell me which one of your customers would go through the following steps in order to post a positive review for you:

1. Go to Google plus, set up another social media website for yourself by putting in your personal information, including a valid phone number
2. Wait a few minutes, wait until they send you a text message to validate your phone number
3. Go back to Google Plus to finalize your account
4. Find your dealership site on Google places
5. Then type in the review

How many of your customers will do this for you? No very many, right? Right.

A man who works at a digital ad agency said (yelled) to me last week “If someone tells you they can post reviews for you online then they are a CROOK and they are stealing your money!” He might want to do a little research before he screams at colleagues, but that’s just my opinion. I know how to help. I know how to put an incredibly easy and automatic system in place and get positive reviews posted all day, every day.

Would it be grand if when someone searches your make in your area and this is what they see?

Spring Dodge has 189 Google Reviews [so you know it’s not just the owners and their mothers doing the reviews] and a 26 score out of 30. When you hover over their numerical score, it shows you “Extraordinary to Perfection” I don’t know about you, but THAT’S who I’d want to do business with if I was in the market for a car.

What if you have 3 horrible reviews and your nearest competitor was Spring Dodge? Guess where that prospect is going…

There’s a solution! Don’t let your horrible reviews keep you up at night! Bury them so that before anyone would find them, they’ll first read 100 other awesome reviews and the one ugly review will be meaningless. Call me or email me, and we’ll set up a time to show you the program. You’ll be glad you did! I’ve never seen anything like it.

Everyone does ad words, everyone does SEO, everyone does Digital advertising…I get calls from digital advertising vendors more than I do my own mother. Instead of doing digital in house, I rely on my partner Josh Barsch at Straightforward Interactive, who, quite frankly, was teaching Google how to do Google advertising before anyone know how to do it. I asked him to give me the top mistakes advertisers make so we can avoid them, not spend a cent more than we need to, and get the best results. Here’s what he said:

MISTAKE #1: Using all broad-match keywords.

When you want to target people who are searching for an exact phrase — let’s say, “used cars” — then you have to use “exact-match” and “phrase-match” keywords to target those people. A little-known fact among Adwords amateurs is that using broad-match keywords allows Google to associate a lot of other, “related” keywords with your ads — and sometimes those keywords, in reality, aren’t related at all.

Let’s say you’re a Honda dealer and you have broad-match keywords containing the word “Honda” in your Adwords account. Did you know that Google is probably showing your ad for searches related to Honda ATVs and watercraft as well? Probably not — but you’re paying for all those irrelevant searches if you rely on broad match keywords only.

MISTAKE #2: Running the same ads for Google’s Search and Display Networks.

Google Adwords allows you to run two kinds of ads: those targeted to search-engine users and those targeted to browsers of content-rich websites. And while Google makes it very easy for you to run the same to both audiences — you shouldn’t.

Searchers and browsers are two very different audiences and thus require different marketing messages. Searchers are looking for specific information right now, and your search ads should be tailored specifically to their queries. Visitors to content sites are not searchers — they’re browsers. You don’t have their attention like you do a searcher’s. Thus, your ad needs to attract their attention away from the articles they’re reading in a subtle and general, yet attractive way.

MISTAKE #3: Setting it and forgetting it. Google Adwords is indeed a self-serve advertising medium on which you can get up and running fast. But don’t be lulled into the siren song of “set it and forget it” — some of which even comes from Google itself.

Are you split-testing often? Regular split-testing of your ads is essential for top performance. Remember: if you aren’t split-testing, the other guys are, and they’ll eventually conquer your ad positions if that’s the case.

Are you checking your Search Query reports every week in order to harvest new keywords that people are using to find you (and eliminate irrelevant terms that are triggering your ads)? Regularly running and examining these reports are essential for a top-performing campaign that spends your ad dollars as efficiently as possible.

Find Josh at http://www.straightforwardmedia.com joshb@straightforwardmedia.com

My most important job is being the most efficient with every dollar, every medium, every day, and this can help you get more results for less money! Thanks Josh! Karen@brooksadv.com

Being a car dealer and doing a “Major Blowout Sale” every week can be a little…underwhelming…to say the least. We all know we have to have promotions, and we have to have great offers to get customers to take action. The question remains: Is there perhaps a way to do this, get results, and not HATE your commercials? Isn’t there a way to brand your dealership, drive traffic, and leave customers with a positive “vibe?” (there just isn’t a word more fitting). Chris Zikakis, owner of Lompoc Honda in Lompoc, CA, came to us last year and asked us these same questions.   The answer is a resounding “YES! You can!”

And then…Sally Civic was born.

Why choosing a cartoon animated “spokes car” might be a good idea for branding and refreshing your dealership:

1.       She’s unique, and out of the 5 other car commercials people will see in the same program, chances are, none of them will be cartoon animation.

2.       People buy from businesses they LIKE! She exudes positive! We’re all naturally drawn to cartoons as they remind us of our childhood Saturday mornings on the couch with a bowl of Lucky Charms.

3.      You can bring that positive into the store! The character you choose can serve in so many different ways! Use it around the dealership in your POP material, on a poster reminding customers to sign up for your newsletter, on your window stickers, [show the photo of the window sticker] or have a large standup cutout as they enter the showroom welcoming them in! She allows you to create an overall friendly atmosphere EXTERNALLY in your ads and then to bring that INTERNALLY to the store.

4.       What is she SAYING??? We know price sells cars – show lots of inventory, lowest prices, get them to your website, and close with your tagline. Ours happens to be “Shoppers who do their homework buy from us!” That pretty much says it all.

See her in action here!! Maybe she’s got the vibe you’d like your dealership to have.

Karen@brooksadv.com

Do you sometimes feel like you do the same thing every week, day in and day out, year after year? Being a car dealer and doing “Major Blowout Sale” every week can be a little…underwhelming…to say the least. We all know we have to have promotions, and we have to have great offers to get customers to take action. The question remains: Is there perhaps a way to do this, get results, and not HATE your commercials? Isn’t there a way to brand your dealership, drive traffic, and leave customers with a positive “vibe?” (there just isn’t a word more fitting). Chris Zikakis, owner of Lompoc Honda in Lompoc, CA, came to us a couple months ago and asked us these same questions.   The answer is a resounding “YES! You can!”

And then…Sally Civic was born. We chose a Civic as our new “spokescar” because it’s the #1 selling car in California and the biggest opportunity for sales. Plus, the 2012 just came out and is completely redesigned. If we want to be known for one thing – it’s that we are THE place to get a Civic. We named her after my sister Sally because…well, we’re big fans of alliteration. We’re using her to promote used vehicles on cable and they sold 80 used cars last month in a town with 42,000 people. Maybe we all need a little more “Sally”.

Why choosing a cartoon animated “spokes car” might be a good idea for branding and refreshing your dealership:

1. She’s unique, and out of the 5 other car commercials people will see in the same program, chances are, none of them will be cartoon animation.
2. People buy from businesses they LIKE! She exudes positive! We’re all naturally drawn to cartoons as they remind us of our childhood Saturday mornings on the couch with a bowl of Lucky Charms watching TV.
3. You can bring that positive into the store! The character you choose can serve in so many different ways! Use it around the dealership in your POP material, on a poster reminding customers to sign up for your newsletter, on your window stickers, or have a large standup cutout as they enter the showroom welcoming them in! She allows you to create an overall friendly atmosphere EXTERNALLY in your ads and then to bring that INTERNALLY to the store.

See her in action here!! Maybe she’s got the vibe you’d like your dealership to have.

Karen@brooksadv.com