Car Dealer Advertising Agency Digital Marketing

An average car dealer business should spend between $5,550,000 and $11,100,000 a year on marketing and advertising expenses, or roughly 7.5% – 15% of annual gross revenue. The total amount may be higher if you are in a highly competitive industry, want accelerated growth, or your business generates high income during the holiday shopping season. 

Car Dealer Business owners are often heavily involved with the day-to-day operations of their business. Some of the most common challenges for a car dealer business include: 

1. Digital Transformation and Online Competition: With the rise of online platforms offering direct sales, traditional car dealerships are feeling the pressure. Consumers can now research, compare, and even purchase vehicles online, bypassing the need for physical showrooms. Adapting to this digital shift is crucial for automotive dealers if they want to maintain their market share.
2. Evolving Consumer Preferences: The market is seeing an increasing shift towards sustainable options like electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids. Car dealers need to constantly update their inventory to reflect these changes. However, doing so requires considerable investment in infrastructure, training, and inventory management.
3. Regulatory Challenges: Strict emission standards, safety regulations, and varying regional laws can pose significant challenges. Car dealers must ensure that their offerings comply with local regulations, which can often mean added costs and frequent inventory adjustments.
4. Economic Fluctuations: The automotive industry is particularly sensitive to economic trends. Recessions or economic downturns can lead to a decrease in consumer spending, making it challenging for car dealers to maintain sales volumes. Additionally, fluctuating interest rates can impact the financing options that dealers provide, affecting their overall profitability.
5. Brand Loyalty and Trust: With numerous scandals and recalls in recent years, consumers have become wary. Car Dealers must now work harder to gain consumer trust. Ensuring transparent dealings, honoring warranties, and providing top-notch after-sales services are just a few ways automotive dealers can build and maintain trust.

Because car dealer businesses are so focused on these challenges, it often becomes very efficient to bring in outside experts to help manage and ensure specific tasks are done correctly. Marketing and advertising are two of the most commonly outsourced areas businesses use because they are critical to their success. 

Car Dealer Lead Generation 

Many car dealer companies are focused on generating leads. This can include building an internal email list for marketing purposes or generating high-value leads that can be quickly contacted to grow revenue. Lead generation typically involves creating a specific incentive, offer, or informational guide and then driving prospects to a landing page to collect their information. You can also manage the prospects’ information on a lead form hosted by the ad platform. Both options can be connected with your CRM or email marketing system so automatic calls, emails, and SMS messages are sent directly to your new prospect. If you want to help set up a lead generation for your automotive dealer office, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Increasing Car Dealer Sales 

The most popular of all advertising objectives for automotive dealer companies is sales. Increasing revenue is essential for every car dealer company to succeed. Many ad platforms have new tools that allow you to pass through values for each customer, which means they associate more weight towards the customers spending the most. This will enable them to find more customers like your top spenders. If you want to help grow your automotive dealer, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Car Dealer App Installs

Perfect for any car dealer business that has a mobile app. The mobile app objective allows you to run ads for new app installs or for app events, which are specific events set up inside your app, such as account creation, payment method added, or transaction completion. It can also monitor usage inside the app or if users reach a particular area. This allows you to display highly targeted ads relevant to each user who sees your ads. The most common types of apps are games, utilities, or informational mobile apps. If you want to help grow sales or usage from your car dealer mobile app, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options.  

Car Dealer Local Traffic 

Many automotive dealer companies have locations they are looking to drive local foot traffic to. This can be for a special event, promotion, grand opening, or daily usage. Local ads can be targeted down to a single zip code or a 1-mile radius around a spot on a map. This ensures you can reach the individuals close to your car dealer location and get your ads in front of them. If you want to increase foot traffic for your automotive dealer location,  please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Car Dealer Brand Awareness 

As your car dealer company grows, it will become essential that you stay ahead of your competition. This is generally done by Brand Awareness campaigns, which focus on reaching a vast number of targeted users consistently over a long period. This ensures that your automotive dealer company stays at the top of mind for your consumers, who continue to purchase your products and services. If you want to increase your Brand Awareness, please contact the team at AdvertiseMint to discuss your options. 

Content marketing revolves around creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content. The aim? Attracting and retaining a defined audience, ultimately leading to profitable customer action. For automotive dealers, this doesn’t just mean reaching out to potential customers but engaging them in meaningful ways.

1. Building Trust through Valuable Content: Consumers are inundated with sales pitches every day. It’s no longer about who shouts the loudest, but who provides the most value. Automotive dealers can create blogs or videos explaining car maintenance tips, safety features of specific models, or the benefits of electric vehicles. This not only showcases their expertise but also builds trust with their audience.
2. Engaging Visual Content: A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the automotive industry, this couldn’t be more accurate. High-quality photos and videos of vehicles, showcasing their features, can be more compelling than any sales pitch. 360-degree views, virtual test drives, or behind-the-scenes looks into vehicle technology can set car dealers apart in the crowded market.
3. Leveraging User-Generated Content: Happy customers are the best advertisers. Encouraging satisfied clients to share their stories, post photos of their new vehicles, or even provide video testimonials can be gold for automotive dealers. It adds a personal touch and reinforces trust among potential buyers.
4. Educational Content for Informed Decisions: Car buying is a significant decision. Consumers often research extensively before making a choice. By offering detailed buying guides, comparisons between models, or breaking down financing options, car dealers position themselves as industry leaders, guiding customers through their purchasing journey.
5. SEO Benefits: Content marketing isn’t just about the immediate interaction. Quality content can improve a dealer’s search engine ranking. When potential buyers type in queries like “best car dealers near me” or “latest SUV models,” a strong content strategy ensures that the automotive dealer’s website appears at the top of these search results, drawing organic traffic.

The world has changed for car dealer, looking to increase their marketing and advertising efforts using AI. Various new tools enable automation and AI to be used in areas like sales, graphic design, video production, content creation, voiceovers, spokesperson, video creation, blog writing, and more. 

The current average cost per click (CPC) on Google ads for the term “Online Car Dealership” is $10.30 and is expected to increase over time. SEO generates these same clicks from targeted keywords for free. SEO has tremendous value as you can generate a high traffic volume for your critical business segments. However, SEO is a long-term investment. We recommend that automotive dealer companies should be willing to plan for 6-12 months of SEO services before expecting an increase in results from these efforts. Please know that with SEO, the work is foundational, which means each task builds on top of each other. Each action adds more credibility to your website in the eyes of Google and other search engines. AdvertiseMint only believes in high-quality SEO, or long-game efforts, when building SEO. Most SEO tricks or gimmicks often work for a bit but later hurt your car dealer company when updates are made to the search engines. The only way to move forward regarding SEO is by doing a lot of the right things and doing them faster than your competitors. Automotive dealer SEO involves three main areas. The first is onsite optimization, which means the pages of your website contain content and are optimized for the search engines. The second step is to build more topical authority around your business to help Google understand that you are an expert in the car dealer area. This is done by writing consistent blogs between 500-2000 words on core topics relating to your business. The final area is off-site linking, meaning other websites link back to your site and use specific anchor text. This can be achieved by public relations, outreach, and building relationships with other websites. When these three are done together, the result is that your automotive dealer SEO will improve, and your organic ranking will start to increase, thus sending more traffic to your website. If you are looking to improve your SEO, please contact AdvertiseMint. 

Yes. Every car dealer should have email marketing and SMS marketing for their company. Email marketing has continually been proven to be one of the most profitable marketing channels for automotive dealer companies. Email marketing allows you to reach your prospects and customers with specific messaging based on their location in your customer journey. These “flows” can be set up so that every person experiences the same informational process regardless of when they join. This ensures your company communicates 24/7 with the people most interested in your car dealer services and products. SMS messaging is also becoming highly profitable for breaking through all the noise and reaching your most valuable prospects via text. There are many rules regarding SMS marketing and how to add and remove people from your automotive dealer SMS marketing. If you want to learn more about optimizing your Email and SMS marketing for your car dealer company, AdvertiseMint is here and ready to help. 

In the world of automotive commerce, car dealerships, often referred to as car dealers are pivotal. They bridge the gap between manufacturers and customers, offering a wide range of vehicles for consumers to choose from. However, with this pivotal role comes a set of advertising restrictions and guidelines they must adhere to. Here’s a closer look:

1. Truth in Advertising: One of the foremost rules for automotive dealers is ensuring that advertisements are not misleading. This means that any claims made about a vehicle’s features, price, or financing options must be accurate. False or deceptive advertising can lead to legal penalties and tarnish the reputation of car dealers.
2. Financing and Credit Offers: When automotive dealers advertise financing options, they must also disclose any associated terms and conditions. This includes interest rates, down payments required, and any other fees or penalties. It’s essential to be transparent to avoid accusations of hidden costs or misleading promotional rates.
3. Environmental Claims: If car dealers advertise a vehicle as “green” or “eco-friendly,” they need to be cautious. Such claims should be backed by tangible evidence. Misleading consumers about the environmental impact or benefits of a vehicle can be grounds for legal action.
4. Used Cars and “Lemon Laws”: Many jurisdictions have “lemon laws” to protect consumers from being sold defective vehicles. Automotive dealers must be upfront about any known issues with a used vehicle and provide any required disclosures. Some regions may also have specific requirements for advertising used vehicles, such as mandatory inspections or warranties.
5. Comparative Advertising: While comparing one’s offerings with competitors is common, car dealers must ensure that these comparisons are factual, fair, and can be substantiated. Misleading comparative ads can lead to legal issues and damage trust.
6. Endorsements and Testimonials: If automotive dealers use customer testimonials or endorsements in their advertising, these must reflect those individuals’ genuine opinions and experiences. Any compensation or incentive provided for such endorsements should also be disclosed.

You can find examples of car dealer competitor ads online in several places. Here are the instructions for how to view competitor ads running on Facebook, Google, and TikTok ad platforms. 

View Car Dealer Competitor Facebook Ads 

1. Go to Facebook Ad Library 
2. Select the country where the ad appeared. 
3. Select ad category (All, Politics, Housing, Employment, Credit).
4. Search by keyword or advertiser.
5. Review Facebook ads.

View Automotive Dealer Competitor Google Ads 

1. Go to Google Ads Keyword Planner
2. Sign into Google Ads.
3. Click ‘Tools and settings’ in the top nav.
4. Click ‘Keyword Planner’ under the ‘Planning’ heading.
5. Click ‘Discover new keywords’
6. Type a relevant keyword into the box.
7. Click ‘Get Results’
8. Review Top of page bid and Google ads. 

View Car Dealer Competitor TikTok Ads 

1. Go go TikTok Ad Library 
2. Select ad target country 
3. Select ad type.
4. Select ad published date.
5. Enter in the desired keyword or advertiser.
6. Hit search. 
7. Review TikTok ads. 

For most companies, revenue is the KPI (key performance indicator) we monitor when determining whether marketing and advertising efforts are successful. The revenue can be used to determine the ROI or ROAS for your campaigns over a set time. ROI (Return on Investment) is calculated by subtracting the initial cost of the investment from the final value, then dividing this new number by the cost of the investment, and finally, multiplying it by 100. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is determined by dividing the total revenue by the actual ad spend for a specific time. 

In addition to revenue, other companies may use metrics such as CPL (Cost Per Lead), CPA (Cost per Acquisition), or CPI (Cost per Installs) for mobile apps. Monitoring these costs over time can help understand factors increasing or decreasing these numbers. They can be affected by various factors, such as landing page optimization, time of the year, and competitors. 

Many digital ad platforms offer a tool called the brand lift study for companies interested in branding and spending over $100,000 on advertising. This study is used to measure the impact on the perception of your brand when running ads. A brand lift study splits a specific audience into two groups. The first group is shown your ads over a particular time; the second group sees none of your ads. At the end of the study, users in both groups were shown a survey by the ad platform. The difference between the first and second groups is called the brand lift, or the increased consumer awareness of your brand due to running advertising.