Category: Internet Marketing

Connect with Users by Displaying Facebook Ads in Instagram Stories

Posted on by Andrew

Instagram AdvertisingSince its launch just six months ago, Instagram Stories have become wildly popular with users. Over 150 million people interact with Stories on a daily basis and now, you have the opportunity to display ads to this engaged audience. Capitalize off of Instagram and Facebook’s powerful connection by creating ads that reach users within Instagram Stories.

With Instagram Stories, people and businesses can share multiple photos and videos in a slideshow format without overloading their profiles. Photos and videos will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on their profile grid or in feed. Stories appear in a bar at the top of users’ feed from Instagram accounts that they follow. Your ad image or video can be placed between Instagram Stories.

How to Create Facebook Ads for Instagram Stories

After connecting your Instagram account with your Facebook ad account, it’s relatively easy to insert an ad. Within either Power Editor or Ads Manager, create a campaign using the reach objective, a strategy that delivers your ad to the most people your budget can afford. On the ad set level, you will see the option to create ads for Instagram Stories. The new format will allow for a single image or video (no longer than 15 seconds). There will be no standalone links or text, including titles, messages, or descriptions.

Benefits of Facebook Ads in Instagram Stories

You are somewhat limited with your ad because you can’t promote a link or text that would drive traffic back to your website. Instagram plans to allow links or call-to-action buttons in the future, but there isn’t that capability just yet. Although you can’t directly send traffic to your website, this ad format can still work for you. You can:

  • Increase awareness: Delivering ads using the reach objective displays your image or video to a large audience, increasing exposure and awareness of your business, products, and/or services.
  • Make a memorable impression: You are limited to a single image or a 15-second video, so your image or video needs to make a statement. Get creative and create a visual message that leaves a lasting impression.
  • Spark interest: Insert ads to spark interest in a new product, promotion, or incentive. Once you capture someone’s attention, you can follow up with more targeted advertising that links to your website, moving users down the purchase funnel.

Lear more about Facebook advertising here, or contact us today!

Dealership Sees Increased Sales After Going Digital

Posted on by Andrew

Digital AdvertisingDoes your dealership still rely heavily on traditional advertising methods to reach potential car buyers? TV, print, and radio ads may have been effective in the past, but now digital advertising is where it’s at. If you haven’t taken the plunge, consider going all-in with a digital campaign.

Google recently profiled a small-town Canadian car dealership that experienced huge results after abandoning their traditional marketing plans and launching a digital strategy. Recognizing that car buyers were spending more and more time online, the dealership decided to go all digital in 2014. Since then, they have experienced:

  • 50% increase in new car sales
  • 79% increase in website visitors
  • 67% increase in the dealership’s website page views

By advertising to an online audience, the dealership was able to deliver highly-relevant ads to a targeted market. In addition to increasing sales and online traffic, a digital campaign can deliver these three benefits:

Multiple tools: Digital advertising allows you to develop a proactive strategy with the flexibility to adjust as needed. Here are a few tactics that we implement to drive traffic to your dealership.

  • Paid search ads: By using targeted keyword lists that focus on purchase intent, our paid search campaigns put an ad for your business at the top of the search results pages, giving you increased visibility to local searchers.
  • Dynamic Facebook ads: After identifying the best audience and determining purchase intent, we serve the most relevant ad to that potential buyer. The ad pulls real-time inventory from your website’s data feed. We optimize the bid to bring the most potential traffic back to your site, generating the maximum amount of VDP views. Dealerships using our highly-targeted dynamic ads are achieving record sales. Compared to standard Facebook ads, dealerships experience increased time on website, increased page views per session, and improved vehicle search conversion rate.
  • YouTube video ads: Video gives you the opportunity to personalize your dealership and creatively advertise your current promotions and deals.

Increased Engagement Opportunities: Digital advertising offers multiple platforms to boost engagement, build brand awareness, and foster relationships. Through social media, email marketing campaigns, and your website, you can reward buyers with valuable information they need to make an informed decision.

Measurable results: It can be difficult to pinpoint the effectiveness of a TV or radio promotion. With digital, you can track many metrics such as emails, site visits, calls, and car sales. By being able to instantly measure your results, you can spend your ad budget on tactics that deliver the best ROI.

 

We specialize in digital auto ad campaigns. We have the expertise and experience to create a plan for your dealership that will deliver results. Contact us today to get started.

Five Strategies to Craft a Killer Call-to-Action

Posted on by Andrew

call-to-action

Your website is the go-to place that car buyers visit to learn more about your dealership. To drive qualified prospects to your website through paid search ads, you need to engage users with a strong call-to-action (CTA) that compels visitors to click and learn more. The key to an effective CTA strategy is getting the right message in front of the right person at the right time. Here are five tactics to consider when writing CTAs for your paid search ads.

  1. Use a strong action verb to start your CTA

Be clear, concise, and get straight to the point. With limited ad space, you don’t have many words to get your message across. Let your audience know exactly what you want them to do by starting the CTA with a strong action verb. Use words like “buy” or “test drive.” Instead of writing, “the 2017 models are now here,” move users to action by saying “test drive our brand-new 2017 models.” Creating informative, yet direct CTAs will improve your click-through rate.

  1. Give your audience a reason why they should act

How will your dealership offer value to potential buyers? Include language like “call today to schedule your free test drive!” or provide some sort of incentive to come into the dealership. You have stated the action you want the user to take, but you have also provided them with a valuable reason why they should take that action.

  1. Create a sense of urgency

Fear of missing out is an extremely effective motivator. When there is a sense of urgency, people are quick to jump at the opportunity for fear that it might not come around again. Promote a sale that is running for a three-day weekend or announce that you have a limited inventory of a particular model. Provoking fear of missing out in your CTA is sure to drive traffic to your site; it’s tough to ignore a time-sensitive prompt.

  1. Customize CTA for Mobile Ads

Consumers using mobile devices exhibit different behavior and search intent than desktop users. Users searching for something on their smartphones are often looking for a quick answer, so tailor your CTA to meet their need. Mobile searches are often spur of the moment and will also likely result in a phone call. For mobile CTAs, focus on generating more phone calls. You could try something like “call now to learn more” or add a call extension so they can easily click-to-call. Google allows you to set a mobile preference for your ads so you can designate certain ads to only appear for searches completed on mobile devices.

  1. Think Outside the Box

Keep your CTAs fresh and don’t be afraid to experiment with some creative content. Use A/B testing to identify which CTAs bring you clicks and which ones don’t generate traffic. You never really know how certain messages will perform until you try them. Test and refine your CTAs to see what brings the most success.

Did you find this blog post interesting? Comment below with your thoughts or questions. 

Personalized Digital Ads Deliver 3X Car Buyer Engagement

Posted on by Andrew

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When a consumer sees an ad for something they’ve expressed interest in previously, they’ll be more likely to click on it. It is no surprise that consumers respond better to ads that are uniquely tailored to their needs. A new study quantifies just how important it is to personalize ads to improve engagement.

The 2016 Jivox Benchmark Report finds that consumer engagement with online advertising increases by three times when ads are personalized versus standard display ads. The study analyzed performance data drawn from over a billion ad impressions looking to measure the impact of personalization on digital ad performance.

The report examined ad engagement on three key performance indicators (KPIs): click-through rate (CTR), engagement rate, and average length of time spent on your website. The ads Jivox evaluated performed higher than traditional ads on all three KPIs. On average, the personalized digital ads from the study delivered a CTR that was 230% higher than the Google display ad benchmark. The personalized ads from the study achieved an engagement rate 84% higher than the Google display ad benchmark. You can make this data work to your advantage by launching your own personalized campaign with dynamic ads.

Launch your own personalized campaign

We can help you experience this same high engagement and higher revenue streams by serving personalized ads to active, in-market car buyers. We serve ads with your inventory to qualified prospects who are already searching for a new car. With these dynamic ads, we drive traffic directly to vehicle description pages (VDPs) for cars at your dealership.

We identify the best audience with data from your customers and our own data segments, and deliver then the ad to your customer. Ads pull real-time inventory from your website’s data feed and we optimize the bid to bring the most possible traffic back to your site. A dynamic ad served to your target audience generates the maximum amount of VDP views. The ad is highly relevant, prompting users to click through to the website, right to VDPs for cars on your lot.

Personalization has the power to deliver campaigns that are three times as effective, maximizing your ad spend and reaching in-market consumers who are actively searching for the cars you are selling.

Add HouseHold Extensions to your Retargeting

Posted on by Andrew

The goal of every retargeting campaign is to convert the most sales for the least amount of money. We offer a variety of tools and techniques to help you achieve this, but we’ve just added a new element to our arsenal: Household Extension.

Household Extension broadens campaign reach while still delivering targeted impressions across multiple devices in one location, such as a home or a small office.

Household Targeting

How can this expanded capability benefit your campaign?

Multi-device retargeting

Household Extension allows you to expand targeting to every device on a user’s IP address. This capability allows you to reach a single user on multiple devices (think laptop, tablet, and mobile) and/or reach other users on the same IP address.

Retargeting expansion

Consider this hypothetical situation. John Smith, age 18, is excitedly looking to purchase his first car. He’s spent hours and hours eagerly researching this major purchase, but ultimately he will rely on the input of his parents before handing over his hard-earned money.

Let’s say you’re a car dealership that stocks a large inventory of used cars. John is diligently looking at what you have for sale in his price range. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mom and Dad were also exposed to the same advertising John was viewing?

Your dealership may come out on top of your competition because the right people (in this case, multiple people within the same family) are seeing your advertisement. Influence decision makers by reaching multiple household members through connected devices.

Additional Prospecting Opportunity

By reaching multiple people on a single IP address, you have the opportunity to capture new users prospecting information within your original retargeting landscape, most likely their circle of influence.

We can help you implement this feature in an existing retargeting campaign or we can start a new one! Reaching more people means increased opportunity for conversions at a reduced cost. Grow your business and prospect list without any additional effort with Household Extension.

Using Purchase Intent to Target Car Shoppers

Posted on by Andrew

We all know car shoppers spend the bulk of their buying cycle researching online. They use more than 11 different sources and visit countless websites comparing features, prices and reviews.

So what does this mean for car dealers? If you’re looking to connect with car shoppers, you need to do it online. Luckily we have a tool that lets you do that.

It’s called Pixel Targeting. What we do is measure the intent of car shoppers and deliver ads to them based on what they’re looking for.

So how do we measure intent?

We do it in a few different ways. By analyzing browsing history, search queries and page contexts we can get an accurate picture of what car shoppers are looking for and serve ads appropriately.

Take this shopper’s history for example. From this page we can see that this shopper is looking at buying a new Jeep. They’re looking in the for sale section of AutoTrader and are located in Kirkland, WA.

AutoTrader Intent

Since we know where this person is located and know what kind of vehicle they’re searching for, we can deliver a relevant ad to them.

The power of Pixel Targeting is being able to reach people who are looking for what you have to sell them. You’re not trying to break down barriers and convince these shoppers they should buy a Jeep — they’re already looking for one. You just need to get your ad in front of their eyes and give them a reason to pick you over your competitor.

Interested in Pixel Targeting? Contact us today for more information.

Search Campaigns Can be Used for Branding

Posted on by Andrew

Search advertising has long been used as a direct-response marketing strategy, but a new study from Google reveals it could be helpful in branding as well.

Throughout 2013, Google and Ipsos MediaCT conducted 61 search experiments to measure the impact of search ads on brand awareness. They measured both top-of-mind awareness and unaided brand awareness even when the consumer doesn’t click on the ad.

Overall, Google found that there was a positive impact on unaided brand awareness and top of mind awareness.

Top of mind awareness from search campaigns

This can add an interesting twist to your search campaigns. Rather than focusing solely on direct-response campaigns, you can include a search campaign for branding as well. This can help drive your direct-response campaigns by improving your mindshare of customers.

To learn more about getting your own search campaign up and running, contact us today.

Auto Dealers Spending More In Digital Advertising Than Ever

Posted on by Andrew

The auto industry is embracing digital advertising and marketing more than ever. In a new report from eMarketer, digital advertising spending for automotive is up 18.8% year-over-year.

This confirms what we already knew about digital. Your competitors are jumping into digital spending and you need to be as well. An effective digital marketing campaign can bring you new customers and help convert existing shoppers into buyers.

Digital Spend

Looking for a new way to bring people to your dealership? Check out our Conversion Drivers. Conversion Drivers will help you turn more of your online traffic into leads and sales. Competition is only going to increase as more dealers start improving their online presence.

Step beyond the TV buy with video pre-roll

Posted on by Andrew
Online Video Pre-Roll

It’s the era of the internet baby!

Yet we still have a hard time breaking from the habit of traditional media approaches. The principle still applies…PEOPLE REMEMBER 90% of WHAT THEY SEE!

The question is where will they see it?  Or perhaps better yet, “where will it be most effective?”

The “audience of one” is the feeling you get when we see your ads in the wild. A feeling of pride and assurance rushes over you, and you know you’ve been heard.  You hope that your potential customers were watching or listening at that time.  If that’s not the case, then the ad was lost in the noise.

Traditional media costs are hefty and time consuming. To get the most out of your traditional ads, invest in video pre-roll, the most intentional tool in re-purposing traditional media with an exponential punch!

Drop your 15 or 30 second video in the cue for display.  Throw in a pixel for retargeting and behavioral targeting andy you just launched a lethal combination of advertising both to your known audience and those who are actively looking.  This way you’re not just hoping that everyone is looking.  You can know (via analytics) what was displayed, what was seen and what the results were.

When its all said and done, it’s a fraction of the cost.  A mere 10% of an average cable commercial, or 1% of a prime time commercial.

Better yet, you can redo your whole mindset for shooting your traditional media with your target audience / medium in mind.  Shoot smarter not more!  Edit content for both mediums!

Top of mind awareness for your future customers’ sake takes on a whole new meaning when they are seeing you online — where they are spending most of their leisure time — instead of watching their DVR’d shows while skipping over the commercials.

Advertisers look to expand into online video advertising for 2014

Posted on by Andrew

Video advertising is poised to explode in 2014. The medium is gaining momentum across the board, and advertisers are jumping in head first.

Interested in video? Here are ten facts you should know.

  1. Video was the fastest-growing ad format in 2012.
  2. 90% of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process.
  3. 80% of users recall a video ad they’ve seen within the last 30 days.
  4. Video viewers retain 95% of a message, compared to 10% when reading it in text.
  5. Americans watched a total of almost 50 billion video ads in October 2013
  6. eMarketer found that businesses are pulling money from traditional budgets in order to allocate more to online video.
  7. You can target online audiences the same ways you target with your normal display advertising.
  8. One-third of all time spent online is watching video.
  9. More online video has been uploaded in the last 30 days than all three major T.V. networks combined have created in the last 30 years.
  10. According to NPD, mobile and tablet shoppers are three times as likely to view a video as laptop or desktop visitors.

Video advertising is the ability to repurpose your T.V. commercials for the Internet. Imagine being able to show your T.V. ad only to people who were in market for a car? With online video advertising that’s a reality.

We can take your video and put it in front of people who’ve been researching for a car online, and even to those who’ve visited your website.

Take it to the next level for 2014. Get started with some video pre-roll advertising for your business.