Your Automotive Marketing Specialists

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Your Automotive Marketing Specialists

  • Call us toll free! 877-958-4524
Digital to Dealer Direct

Category Archives: SPECIALIST CTA

OEM Requirements

3 min read

Auto OEMs or “Original Equipment Manufacturers” are the official and genuine parts created directly by the vehicle’s maker; however, some in the automotive industry have taken to referring to car companies themselves as OEMs. Like any company, each OEM has their own guidelines they must follow from start to finish. Sometimes following these requirements will make or break your dealership when looking to receive co-op funds from your OEM. Read on to learn more about some of the most common OEM requirements.

 Websites

The first place you will usually find information about a dealer is on their website. Did you know that many OEMs require their dealers to use a particular website or a short list of websites for their digital storefront? From here, OEMs can link in and automatically update manufacture information seamlessly and your advertising agency can then update your dealership’s individual campaigns. One of the most common websites used by OEMs is dealer.com. Users can customize their websites based on templates, upload their inventory and more. These OEM selected websites ensure that brands stay within their digital storefront requirements.

Creative

Like any big-named company, OEMs are particular about sticking to their manufacturers’ style guides to ensure consistency within their brand, while strengthening brand image. The most important areas for OEMs usually include the use of logos, fonts, color pallets, and like you just read about – websites. To help ensure advertising is compliant within requirements, many OEMs have a pre-approval process which enables dealers to submit before they run any creative or campaigns. If what is submitted meets the OEM requires, the dealership then receives their co-op funds. Brands like Cadillac even provide website audit questionnaires to ensure a Cadillac dealer’s website meets all the requirements they look for on the dealer’s website to be compliant.

Campaigns

You’ve seen the Summer or Holiday sales event campaigns that run throughout the year, while these campaigns change often, some OEMs, like Nissan, require you to use their manufacturer campaign in order to receive co-op funds. While other brands, like Chevrolet and GMC, will release campaigns, but not require you to use them. You also come upon situations with OEMs, like Stellantis, that will develop an umbrella campaign combined for all their brands in addition to individual brand campaigns. When this happens, they usually only require you to use one or the other, but rarely both. To find if your OEM is requiring a particular event each month, you can visit the manufacture’s asset website and download assets from there.

 Vehicle Pricing Programs

A dealership is ultimately a business that has the right to sell a company’s product while also using the company’s name. Somewhere along the buying process, OEMs must find a way to ensure dealers don’t take advantage of customers and eliminate unfair vehicle pricing. Many OEMs have developed programs that require dealerships to submit pricing before they’re allowed to advertise a vehicle. Nissan has their “Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Guidelines” to create consistency in pricing their vehicles. If these guidelines are not followed, dealers will receive strikes against them and risk the loss of funds or even be subject to chargebacks.

While it’s no surprise that OEMs have requirements when it comes to advertising, the level of severity varies from one manufacturer to another. The areas we discussed above are the most common areas you’ll find requirements for, but always check with your OEM beforehand. Not sure where to start? Digital to Dealer Direct has years of experience with OEMs across the board. If you have any questions about what you read or are looking for more assistance in your advertising, contact us today!

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Campaign Maintenance

3 min read

Are you or your automotive advertising agency currently running a campaign that isn’t performing up to your standards? Campaign maintenance is just as important as the initial build of the campaign. Once your campaign is live and begins to collect data, the algorithm starts to fine tune your settings to gravitate towards users that are ideal for your set targeting. However, we cannot rely entirely on technology. Understanding the data and key performance indicators (KPIs) that are coming out of your campaign, as well as how to make the necessary optimizations to improve those numbers, is the key to running a successful campaign.

Platform Changes

One need for campaign optimizations may be due to platform changes and updates. Although Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. changes are beyond our control, ignoring them can be detrimental to your campaign’s health. One example of this is Google’s transition to using Responsive Search Ads. Search campaigns that are not currently using the Responsive Search Ad format will continue to run, but edits are not going to be able to be made; therefore, restricting future campaign maintenance. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are constantly changing their targeting methods. A big part of campaign maintenance is understanding the changes made in the digital world and staying up to date with digital marketing trends. As changes are made, we as marketers need to adapt our strategies and campaign settings to meet those new requirements.

Paying Attention to Budget

Budget should be a key focus during regular campaign maintenance. Monitoring how your ads are performing, by tracking how much they are spending can let you know if you allocated too much budget to a designated campaign or not enough. If a campaign is consistently underspending, try some of the below suggestions to enhance performance, or reallocate some of that budget to another campaign. Additionally, setting an ad schedule may be beneficial to your campaign as ads would only run during selected times in order to provide more budget to the campaign on your busiest days.

Finding the Ideal Target Audience

Before a campaign is built, a target audience is developed. Your ideal customer is out there; however, with data privacy restrictions it is becoming harder than ever to find them. Patience is so important when investigating your campaign’s targeting. If performance is low, it is possible that the geography needs to be widened or there are too few people in your designated audience. Using first party data and excluding users that are irrelevant can refine your audience to get closer to your “perfect” customer.

Creative

Creative is the key to getting clicks for display campaigns and social media campaigns. Eye catching ads that offer customers great deals are the steppingstones to up-keeping a healthy campaign; however, campaigns can not be created and forgotten. Creative needs to be updated consistently, especially with dealership offers and incentives. Staying up to date with your promotions gives you the best bang for your buck! Although not visually creative, it is just as important to refresh your search ads and ad copy. Users see multiple online advertisements during their consideration phase in searching for a car and it would be counterproductive to repeatedly show a user the same creative with the same ad copy. Creative updates are arguably one of the most important steps in campaign maintenance because it is representation of your brand. Being outdated could waste ad dollars and lose potential customers.

Setting up an advertising campaign is the first step in a long process of ensuring that your ads are optimized for peak performance. Once a campaign is up and running, it is important to regularly check in on your campaign’s KPIs, budget, targeting, and creative as well as stay up to date with platform updates. Campaigns requires routine maintenance and optimization to run their best for weeks, months, and even years! If you are looking for assistance in maintaining your Google, social and traditional media campaigns, contact us today.

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Digital Dealer Conference Tampa May 2022 Recap

3 min read

From May 9th – 11th dealers from around the country gathered at the Tampa Convention Center to network, learn, and grow at the Digital Dealer Conference. From keynote speakers, breakout sessions and meetings with exhibitors, there is a wide spectrum of knowledge to break down. A variety of topics from previous Digital Dealer and NADA shows were discussed, including first party data, electric vehicles and so much more! So, what information should you share with your team? Keep reading to see our biggest takeaways.

COVID Lessons

In many parts of the country, life seems to be going back to “normal;” however, the past couple years were anything but normal! As a result of dealerships being forced to close, a new concern for cleanliness arose. Of course, the chip shortage also placed a major hurdle throughout the industry. Those obstacles were not overcome without alterations in processes and adaptation of new strategies.

When we were all home during the pandemic, much of our professional and personal lives were online. From Zoom calls to shopping, we seemed to be moving deeper into the digital world. We see new technologies emerge (as you will find out if you keep reading), but also see a major focus on understanding that traditional media is not dead. Companies like Carvana disrupted the automotive industry and did so with simple, clean billboards, relatable television commercials and even radio ads. Although it feels like all eyes are on smartphones, if we look up, we can still see how present traditional media is in our everyday lives.

Another major lesson learned was the importance of used car acquisition. Focusing on buying cars off the street led many dealerships to develop a separate department entirely devoted to acquiring used vehicles. Once new car inventory comes back up to pre-COVID levels, it is important not to forget how significant used car acquisition was to dealerships’ inventory and sales during the pandemic.

Dealership Processes

Automotive processes have become automated using digital retailing tools. Digital retailing tools were slowly emerging before COVID but were in high demand during the pandemic. After implementation of digital retailing tools, dealerships had to retrain employees to coexist with their website’s new functionality. For many, this proved beneficial and has become a crucial part of everyday business. The ability for users to shop from home, initially due to safety, and now due to comfort and convenience are the way of the future.

It is more important now, than ever before, to provide an easy online user experience on your dealership’s website to compete with Carvana and CarMax. These industry giants make buying and selling a very competitive game by offering at home delivery and pick up, 100% online buying experience, and one clean website that provides all needed information. Dealerships must adapt to meet the customer’s where they are, both in their buying experience and physically, with customer satisfaction placed in a high priority.

As we move forward, dealerships need to continue to modify strategies to stay up to date with the latest tools and processes. As technology continues to evolve, keeping structure in how your dealership operates will be crucial.

New Technology

In addition to dealership processes, we need to understand the world of Google is ever changing. With Universal Analytics sunsetting next summer, GA4 is on the horizon. Additionally, Google has launched new products, such as vehicle ads linked to your specific VPDs and business messaging which allows you to add a widget on products such as GMB and Google Maps.

In addition to Google, the Metaverse is making a splash in the automotive industry with OEMs like Hyundai already appearing in this space. Having virtual test drives and walk arounds of a car, that is not in your show room, is the future of sales. Start educating yourself now because before we know it the technology of our dreams will be our reality.

These highlights just scratch the surface of the wealth of knowledge obtained at Digital Dealer this year. To learn more about how to implement these and other digital marketing strategies, contact us today. Our team stays up to date with the latest industry trends so that you can focus on your dealership’s success!

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How To Boost Your Social Media Engagement

3 min read

Social media has taken the front seat in the marketing world for most businesses and has a large impact on how others view said company. When it comes to social media, not only do you want to increase the size of your following, but you also want to increase engagement as well. Building engagement is a great way to turn followers into customers and that’s every company’s goal, right? Have I mentioned that you can also do this for FREE? Continue reading for 5 ways to increase your social media engagement.

1. Post Engaging Content

In order to increase engagement on your social media you need to start with content that is worthy of engaging in. Topics that allow you to take a poll, ask the audience questions or even something that people can relate to. You want to select content that would have a positive reaction from followers. Think about topics that you enjoy engaging in and use that as inspiration. For your dealership it could be taking a poll on your follower’s favorite vehicle, their favorite place to road trip or even a fun video or photo of a dog in a car. Who doesn’t love dogs? Just remember to avoid sensitive or controversial topics as you don’t want to turn anyone away.

2. Respond to All Comments

When it comes to social media, it’s always good to show that someone is actively on the page reading and engaging with their followers. If you want more engagement on your page, that does mean you need to engage as well. When someone sends a message or leaves a comment, this is the perfect opportunity to open the conversation. The more you engage the more people will engage back. When it comes to responding, you want to be sure to engage whether its positive or negative. This is a great chance to show appreciation if someone is left something positive or the perfect time to solve an issue if it’s negative. Responding to a negative comment, although we hope no one has a negative experience, can be a great way to show you care about your customers and that you want to make everyone’s experience at your dealership, the best experience. 

3. Share Content That’s Relevant to Your Audience

When you’re deciding on post topics, you want to start with figuring out who your audience is. What are they interested in? What might they want to read about? This may take some experimenting at first to see what your followers engage with most, but this is an important factor in your dealership’s social engagement. A good start might be posting positive reviews from happy customers, hot topics about new vehicles or new features in a vehicle or even how your dealership is involved with the community. Try out graphics vs videos. It’s always good to put a little bit of variety in there.

4. Post Consistently and Often

This is a big one! To increase your dealership’s social media engagement, you’ll need to make sure that you post regularly and often. The suggested rate would be 2-3 times a day, per platform, to help you build an engaged audience. You want to be sure to avoid posting too often where it annoys your followers but enough where it’s something your followers come to expect. Your two posts could be a daily happy customer review then a daily topic. You could do “Meet the Team Mondays.” “Throwback Thursdays.,” or even “What’s New Wednesday’s.” Have fun with it and see what works best for your audience. If you don’t have anyone on staff who has the time it takes to post consistently, consider hiring an automotive marketing agency like D2D to handle your social media!

5. Use an Image in Every Post

“A picture is worth a thousand words” and isn’t that the truth! While scrolling through social media your image will be the first thing that stops someone from scrolling to read what you have to say. Make sure you include engaging and eye-catching photos to go along with your post. This will be the first chance you get to pull them in and hopefully engage with your page. It’s important to make sure that your photos are clear and crisp. There’s nothing worse than scrolling and seeing a blurry image. Some programs that can help with this would be Canva, an online software that allows you to develop images for all your social media.

What steps has your dealership taken to increase your social media engagement? If you’re just starting out, we hope these 5 tips help point you in the right direction to get started. If you’ve already been plugging away at this, we hope these tips can help spark some new ideas to get those followers engaged! Looking for more help? Let our Digital to Dealer Automotive Reputation Management team help you! For more information, contact us today!

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What is Reputation & Reputation Management?

3 min read

Your reputation is how people view you and your brand. This is prompted by your online presence and your online reviews. This is how the internet interprets you and your dealership. A lot of different components go into what makes up your reputation. 

Reputation management is the effort to influence how people view you.

DEFINE: REPUTATION MANAGEMENT:

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT IS THE PRACTICE OF INFLUENCING STAKEHOLDER PERCEPTIONS AND PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS ABOUT AN ORGANIZATION AND ITS BRANDS. IT INCLUDES MONITORING PERCEPTIONS AND CONVERSATIONS, RESPONDING TO REPUTATION THREATS, AND PROACTIVELY SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES TO BOOST REPUTATION.

Reputation Management includes protecting your online image by overseeing review websites, social media, and Google. It is a daily process of building a relationship with your customers through different platforms. 

WHY IS YOUR REPUTATION IMPORTANT FOR BUSINESS?

    • A dealership’s success needs to have good customer feedback and an online presence. A large part of your reputation will focus on your online presence. With the digital world, we live in today – it is key to have good reviews, a user-friendly website, social media, and contact information with easy access. Many people will jump over to reviews to get an idea of who they will be doing business with. In the automotive industry, another way to build up your reputation is by word of mouth. Referrals go a long way and accumulate more sales. 

    • According to Brightlocal’s Local Consumer Review Survery at least 81% of customers have used google reviews to evaluate local businesses in the past 12 months with almost a 20% increase from the year prior. Having positive Google reviews will bring in more customers. 43% of customers within automotive services say online reviews are very important, and 38% say it’s important. A total of 86% agree on how important reviews are when customers are deciding to use your dealership and services.

    • Your reputation can affect sales and marketing – it influences everything about your brand. If you don’t have support from your customers, it is going to be much more difficult to sell. When it comes to dealership reputation, what your clients say about your dealership can drastically impact what others think. There is large competition for dealerships, but a dealer with a solid support system will sell more cars. Loyalty goes a very long way in this industry. You can sell to generations of the family if you build a strong relationship. 

HOW TO OVERSEE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT?


There are many different platforms for managing your online reputation. You have to learn what strategy is effective for your dealership. It is vital to have social media accounts, as well as a Google business page. Some review sites that benefit dealerships are CarGurus, DealerRater, CarFax, and more. 
 

HOW TO START?

You have control. When reviews start circling in, make sure to address them from a more personal standpoint and respond accurately. When a negative review comes through, you can make it right. Answering these publicly to fix the issue show a lot to reviewers. The actions you make while maintaining your reputation management can shape your online presence. 

    • Analyze your online presence. Go through all your Google reviews, social media platforms reviews, automotive review sites, and any additional websites you are receiving reviews on. Make sure all current reviews are responded to, especially any that are negative. 

    • Continue to oversee your reviews. Monitor these websites at least 3-5x a week. It is more beneficial to answer the reviews as they come in so none are sitting without a response. 

    • Personalize your responses. It builds a deeper connection with your customers if you personalize your reviews. Highlight things they said in their review if they provide information and address their names when responding. 

    • Be transparent. This is your brand and making sure that you are being truthful and open to customers helps build your credibility. Customers are going to address things they liked as well as disliked during their experience. Your brand is the backbone of everything, so making sure to respond accordingly is very important. 

Reputation Management and Reputation Revival are two services offered at Digital 2 Dealer Direct that will change your entire online presence for the better. If your reputation needs some help, Reputation Revival will benefit you the most. It is a program designed to increase positive reviews and promote an improved reputation online. Our Reputation Management service will actively overlook all reviews and respond accordingly. For more information contact us today!

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Marketing Consistency

3 min read

People are creatures of habit and thrive on consistency which includes advertisements, commercials, brands, and products. You may be asking what this has to do with your dealership, but this makes a huge impact on how you present your dealership. Customers want to be able to recognize your dealership which shows dependability through advertisements and encourages them to be able to go to your dealership. With this recognizable quality with your dealership gives you an edge on the competitive market that often surrounds your dealership.

Branding

Now I know we have touched about this previously in other blogs, but it is important to reiterate the importance of this. Having your dealership stick and remain on brand is such a valuable aspect of band recognition. Whether it’s through colors, your dealership logos and visual tendencies in your advertising this makes it all recognizable. Making sure your dealerships logo is on everything that you advertise creates a connection between viewers of your advertisements and your dealership. Seeing constant advertisements, logos, and offers creates a subconscious imprint for potential customers.

Now I’m not saying that you can’t refresh your dealerships logo or the look of their advertising once in a while. However, with that said you don’t want to overhaul everything because potential customers won’t be able to recognize your dealership and brand. To read more about this topic read our previous blog, Automotive Advertising Creative, to understand about all that goes into an effective automotive advertisement.

Competition

Let’s be real, we all know that each dealership is fighting against one another to get customers in their doors and win that sale. Often times dealerships are all lined up in a row and with so many offers, variety in brands and promotions, customers will often dealership hop. This can create confusion for customers while they shop because there are a variety of options. If your dealership is consistent in their advertisement presence versus your competition that’s all over the place the customers will automatically recognize you and opt to stick with you because you are familiar.

Customers also want to feel welcome and secure that their decision is a smart one. Showing a sense of stability within your advertising shows that your dealership is confident in their offers. Also, having relatively consistent vehicle specials shows customers that your dealership is financially responsible and reliable. If your vehicle specials are super low one month and the next month they jump up, customers won’t be able to trust if they received a good deal. However, there are certain times, such as holiday seasons when dealerships can have a little more freedom to offer an extra special offer.

Consistency is Key

Marketing consistency should surround your dealership inside and outside of the showroom. How you portray your dealership through its branding making it recognizable to customers. This makes them feel more comfortable knowing you are a reliable dealership with quality offers that are consistent that they know what to expect. This can really make your dealership stand out from the competition because people love what they are comfortable with. D2D has managed everything from websites, video production and placement, conventional marketing and so much more. If you need help making sure your dealership stands out against your competition, contact us today!

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Writing a Blog for Dealership

3 min read

A blog, in 2022? Even though you’re reading one now, I’m sure you’re thinking that this sounds so 2000’s but hear us out! Your digital marketing is flowing, your website looks great, your digital ads are performing well. I’m sure the last thing you want to do is add another step into your marketing plan, however, blogs can be a tremendous digital marketing tool and a great way to build upon your existing brand. We at D2D have put together 5 reasons why you should consider a blog for your dealership and what it can do for you!

1. Establish Your Dealership as an Industry Expert

While your website may already contain a large source of useful information, a blog is a great way to show that your dealership is knowledgeable, informed and up-to date on the latest and greatest in the automotive industry, without being too salesy. This can build customer confidence in your dealership and increase the likelihood of a sale. What better way to get news out there while building customer trust than putting together a few short paragraphs about a topic you’re already pros at.

2. A Source for New Leads

Of course, the point of a marketing plan is to generate new leads and bring in new customers to your dealership to ultimately sell more vehicles. With product specific posts, you can give customers valuable information about a vehicle they be interested in or possible upgrades they can expect with newer models. By providing this information, your dealership can really attract those actively looking in the market and doing their research on a particular vehicle.

3. Rich Source of SEO-Related Content

While you’re already spending money on your existing marketing plan, blogs are a great way to increase your organic SEO and site traffic. Blogging allows you to go into more detail and creates a large, helpful, and informative catalog for your automotive niche. Google indexed pages and fresh content will alert search engines that they should be continuously checking your site for new content, and as a result, increases the opportunity of climbing the ranks in search engines and help your website stand out among others.

4. Convert Your Website Traffic

As part of our Website Watchdog program, we manage a lot of dealership websites. Even though every dealership wants more website traffic to convert, a blog is often the last thing on the list. Not only can blogging boost your website traffic but it’s a great way to increase the opportunity of converting that traffic into a lead. A potential customer reads your blog and likes the information you’ve provided, by providing proper call-to-actions on each post, they will be more inclined to reach out and explore what your dealership has to offer. These CTAs could include: “Check out our new inventory” or “Get Your Instant Cash Offer” and link to a landing page that gathers the potential customers information and alerts the dealership.

5. Achieve Results with Minimal Spend

Blogs are a great inexpensive way to promote your already existing marketing plan, and achieve all the points above, forever! Like pretty much anything on the internet, once it’s out there, it’s very difficult to get rid of it. The upside to that is you may get many leads, initially, but it can also continue to bring in leads and traffic for years to come.

A blog on your dealership’s website might not be something you’ve ever thought of before OR it may never have struck you as an asset to your marketing efforts. However, blogs are indeed the best way to create original, relevant, and engaging content which in turn could help your dealership sell more cars. If your dealership is looking to build a blog or for new digital advertising ideas, our team at Digital to Dealer Direct can help you accomplish your goals. Call us today 877-958-4524 or visit our website to learn about the many automotive marketing services we provide.

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Benefits Of Hiring a Digital Agency

3 min read

Ultimate Resources 

If you’re in charge of marketing at a dealership, you might be struggling with the decision to hire various vendors vs. one agency. There can certainly be benefits to both, but being an automotive digital marketing agency, we are going to provide you with some of the key benefits to hiring an agency.

Hiring a digital marketing agency is giving you access to the ultimate resources – all in one. You are not relying on just one marketing expert, but a full of them. As a digital marketing agency that is fully focused on the automotive industry, we provide valuable intake for your dealership. With our clients being in the automotive field, we have a strong understanding of what is and is not working. This allows an agency to fully understand your needs as a dealership. We have worked on digital campaigns throughout the years and have data to show what is beneficial for a company. 

Agencies bring a lot to the table. Digital marketing has a range of specialties, but some forms include search engine optimization, email blasts, content marketing, social media, and more. These forms of marketing will help build up your brand and generate leads. Living in a digital world allows businesses to succeed on another level. Marketing software will provide all intel your need on your customer’s activity. From how many people view your campaigns/website, to how long they stay, if there were any clicks throughs, what links were most impactful. This information is very valuable, but if you don’t know how to understand it and apply it to your campaigns, it is useless. 

Digital to Dealer Direct provides a turn-key custom automotive marketing plan. Our services include Advanced Retargeting, BDC Support, Conventional Media, Database Marketing, Digital Catalog, Email Campaigns, Facebook Lead Ads, Facebook Marketplace, ID Retargeting, Mobile GEO-Tracking, Reputation Revival, Ringless Voicemail, Search Engine Marketing, Targeting Service Campaigns, Video Production, and Website Watchdog. As an agency, we can help your company grow in many ways. 

 A good marketing agency can adapt your marketing strategies under any unforeseen circumstances and pull through with success. They can also provide unbiased marketing consulting while removing overlapping marketing. If a dealership is working with multiple vendors, it could be tough to know if everyone isn’t targeting the same people. Using a full-service agency can ensure that the correct marketing is reaching the target audience. 

Builds A Partnership

It could take time to find the right agency for you, but when the time comes that you have found a trusted agency, it will feel like a business partner. You will become a team that shares the same interests and goals. Sharing the same wants means sharing success on both sides. An agency will dramatically decrease your workload. Marketing is very time-consuming if you want to get it right, and since campaigns are always changing, there is not much downtime. Giving an agency some of those tasks, or challenges will ensure your time is used beneficially.

Fresh Perspective and Curated Creativity

Bringing an agency on board brings in all new perspectives from experts within the field. Having this partnership provides access to a creative art department. Sometimes it may be hard to let go of certain aspects of your company to trust other perspectives. Having a fully integrated team of creative individuals makes it is easy to let go. An automotive marketing agency will bring a fresh directive to the space and create what you are looking for. Staying up to date is very important in this field. An agency will have access to the latest trends and keep your campaigns relevant. 

 Cost-Effectiveness

Surprisingly a huge benefit of hiring a marketing agency is that it is more cost-effective. It will save you time and money in the long term. Having a successful marketing department requires a team. The salaries of a manager, web designer, graphic designer, social media manager, and more will be costly. A marketing team in-house could go into the high six digits compared to hiring a full-time marketing agency. It also gives you access to a team of experts within the fields of marketing you are looking for at a much more reasonable price. You won’t have to cover the salaries, payroll taxes, or benefits for a full in-house marketing team.

Being able to save money on the cost of marketing professionals will give you a better opportunity to put that extra money into the marketing campaigns. This will increase the results of the campaign which will benefit your company in the long run. It will increase traffic, brand awareness, and sales.

If you’re interested in learning more about an agency, or how D2D can help you, give us a call at 877-958-4524 or contact us online today!

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Digital Marketing Trends 2022

3 min read

Can you believe it…2022 is just around the corner! With all the changes in the digital marketing world in 2021, we can only expect that we will continue to be adapting as we move into the new year. As we take a look back at this past year, Apple IOS updated their privacy settings to allow users to opt out of cross app tracking, Google got rid of their broad match modifier keywords, replacing them with phrase match keywords, and Facebook is no longer allowing advertisers to target users under 18 by interests or activity.

As we look towards next year, we have already been made aware of a couple new changes that will be instated. The digital world is constantly evolving and as marketers, businesses, and users of social media, we need to learn to adapt.

Extended Search Ads will be Retired

As of June 30, 2022, Google will not be allowing new extended search ads to be created. Campaigns that already have extended search ads implemented will be allowed to continue to run, pause, or remove those ads however, no additional ads in this category can be created or edited. Rather, Google is prioritizing responsive search ads as their go to ad format. Responsive search ads allow users to input multiple unique headlines and descriptions and Google randomly mixes and matches to find ideal combinations. This leaves more automation and optimization up to Google and less autonomy for the ads manager.

Although June 2022 seems like a long way away, it is important to consider this change now as campaigns created in the next 6 months may be impacted. If you are a fond user of extended search ads, it would be ideal to create any needed ads for the future sooner than later, as the ability to add and edit them will disappear. Alternatively, if you are already a responsive search ad user, nothing will be changing in the set up and run of these types of ads.

Removal of Google Cookies

Google is following suit with many other service providers including Safari, Firefox, and most recently Apple IOS by removing their cookie tracking. These changes are to provide the user with more control of their privacy settings and can choose to opt out of tracking across apps and websites. On the other hand, users can opt in to be tracked and therefore their cookie data will be available to utilize. If your business has or will be affected by the privacy updates that have taken effect in the last year, reach out to us or check out our latest blog to learn more about the cookie-less future! We can help you create campaigns to reach the right people in your area, while still abiding by audience preference for privacy.

Digital Retailing is the Future

It is not new that businesses had to learn to adapt to selling more inventory online during the pandemic. Evidently, this has changed the future of e-commerce and shopping across all sectors. In the automotive industry, dealerships are adapting and innovating to allow shoppers to skip or spend less time in the dealership by completing the car buying experience online. With companies like WebBuy, who are integrating digital retailing directly into a dealership’s current website, it is hard to pass up the opportunity to ease the experience for customers.

As we move into the new year, there will be more changes that arise, and as a digital society we will need to adapt to those changes. At Digital to Dealer Direct, we have a team of intelligent and diligent marketers who are learning and understanding the digital changes that are occurring in our world. We are on top of the 2022 digital marketing trends to provide you with the best advertising experience and success as possible. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how these and other trends will impact your business in the future, contact us today!

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Digital Dealer Conference | Las Vegas 2021 Recap

4 min read

The Digital Dealer Conference in Las Vegas last week was a great reminder of an industry coming together to learn and grow like it hasn’t been able to in years. If you were in attendance, you might agree the primary focus was to align dealerships with an even faster changing industry of shortages, advertising limitations and digital retailing. This automotive world that we know is arguably facing one of the toughest eras, but many dealers are coming out ahead.

Dealerships, marketing professionals, and vendors from all over the country headed to Vegas October 11-14th to take some time to reflect on this era, brainstorm the challenges and triumphs it has presented and acquire some tools for moving forward. Here is one instance where what happens in Vegas should definitely NOT stay in Vegas. Read this recap to get everything you missed!

Automotive Inventory Shortages

I know… I know, you certainly didn’t miss this memo and no, of course, you didn’t have to go to the conference to learn this. However, given this new world where we have no chips and cars are being assembled with nowhere to go until they just aren’t being assembled anymore, it’s time to do something about it. Here are the solutions: digital retailing to sell your in transit inventory and sell it to a much broader market area. Merchandising your used car inventory like never before. Did you know that 40+ images per vehicle have a 75% higher chance of conversion?

Where have all the Cookies Gone?

As if we aren’t dealing with enough right now, the internet has served up another challenge that has actually been ongoing over the past couple of years but could prove to hit it toughest point for advertising in the next year. Cookies – not the delicious chocolate chip kind, but the kind that lets us track online behaviors and target to those individuals have slowly been disappearing since 2017. If you’re an Apple user, or if your digital marketing agency has given you the heads up, one of the latest IOS updates eliminated cookies for these users following Safari in 2017 and Firefox in 2019. Looking ahead, Chrome plans to do the same in 2022 and all cookies are expected to be eliminated by 2023. Since this has been part of the mix slowly for a few years now, we have been handling the situation quietly and helping our clients understand what this means and what we can do, and it seems the information coming from the conference was right in line with what we’ve been saying for years.

Right now, this doesn’t necessarily mean a true disappearance of cookies. I’m sure you’ve gone online whether on your computer, tablet or phone and seen the little screen that pops up prompting you to accept the cookies for the website you’re visiting. The truth is most people DO accept these cookies. Here’s what studies have found over the last few years: people are willing to receive targeted ads relevant to what they want and like. So, the pool of users is still there it will just be a lot smaller. You’ll now get your pool of users from 1st and 2nd party data. Our company has been combing and collecting 1st party data for our clients for quite some time now. Our ID Retargeting program allows you to see the actual people coming in to your website and market to them within minutes. This matches clicks with real people and can even tell you what car they have in their driveway right now. Your 2nd party data will take a little leg work to obtain. You’ll have to partner with another company who collects their own 1st party data and purchase it from them.

Show me the Money

Contrary to our winnings at the tables in Vegas, the money is flowing right now. Profits are up and reaching record levels for some dealers and manufacturers. This is one spot (and perhaps the most important) where this tough era is proving to be not so bad. Another more “tried and true” profit center is the service center. Our fixed ops digital marketing tactics have proven successful over the last few years, but there is always room for improvement and learning. Here a few quick tips we picked up at the conference:

  • Add specific services to drop menu (popular services like oil change, warranty & recalls, etc.)
  • Create a separate Fixed Ops YouTube channel
  • Service Market Page > Service Details Page > Appointment page
  • 70% of all ROs come from within 10 miles – local campaigns are important!!
  • GMB categories – minimum of 10 and no overlapping categories

HELP WANTED

If you’ve been struggling to hire it might be time to consider an automated BDC tool. With plenty of vendors to choose from at the conference here are some highlights that might help you make the move. An automated BDC tool, or AI lead tool can help the sales team you do have eliminate a lot of wasted time. These tools with move leads through the funnel piping them in to your CRM as “hot leads” when they are ready and have requested to be contacted in return. This allows your team to spend less time digging through the trenches that can be that first lead alert and cut right to the good stuff.

For more information on anything you might have missed at Digital Dealer 2021, or for a little help tackling some of these tools above, contact us today!

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