The Top 5 Things Our Dealers Ask Us About Digital Advertising (& Our Experts’ Answers!)

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” — Voltaire
At TRFFK, we count ourselves lucky to have some of the smartest, most savvy dealers in the market as our customers. Do you know how we know that? Because they ask all the right questions! In fact, when our team put their heads together to see what kinds of questions dealers are asking us, we realized that the same key topics come up over and again…and they are all poignantly relevant to understanding the ins and outs of a digital advertising campaign.

We figured that if these are the questions keeping our dealers’ wheels spinning we would share them with everyone, along with our experts’ answers to them. If they happen to be your questions too, then we’re glad we could answer them. And, if you’ve got something else you’d love to ask our team of experts, simply hit us up in the comments.

Knowledge is power, after all!

1. HOW SHOULD I SPLIT MY ADVERTISING BUDGET?

Let’s take a step back and ask another question first: What are your business goals? Because there is no point arbitrarily splitting any digital advertising budget if you haven’t first determined what you are looking to achieve from that spend. Are you looking to sell more new cars? Or more used cars? Maybe you want to drive more people into the service… Once we are aligned on those goals, we can help you decide how to split your budget based on several factors. For example, we will determine your used car advertising based on your inventory. Depending on your overall business goals (sell more new cars, drive more service orders, etc.) the digital channel mix will adapt. Within each channel there are specific strategies as well. For instance, Facebook can drive brand awareness, promote specific VINs or drive service leads directly. Display advertising is a great method for promoting new and used cars by visually showing your ads to targeted shoppers.

2) HOW DO I KNOW MY CAMPAIGN IS SPENDING AS EFFICIENTLY AS POSSIBLE?

Remember point 1? Goals! We continuously measure against the goals we set at the start of your campaign to ensure all your digital ads are performing well. Let’s say your goal was to sell more new cars, then we would measure success against how many people we are driving to your New Car VDPs, and the impact of each New Car ad that’s served up, on every channel, throughout the process. We also review each channel’s performance to determine which audience (a targeted group of in-market shoppers) performs best on which channels and readjust your budgets continuously to yield the best performance. And because we are all visual beings, we provide you with real-time dashboards, weekly reports, and monthly performance reviews to showcase our progress against your desired results.

3) WHEN AND WHERE ARE MY ADS SHOWN?

The short answer? To the right people at the right time! With the help of advanced technologies that optimize your ads in real-time, we are able to show them to highly targeted in-market consumers at the most effective moments. Where will they see them? Across all the major digital channels, including Google and Facebook, but also across local, quality publishing networks through our premier channel management partnerships in the Quebec market. That means your ads will show up to people who are engaged with local content!

4) HOW CAN I MAKE SURE MY AD CAMPAIGNS TARGET THE MOST RELEVANT PEOPLE?

We know the majority of people on autoTRADER.ca intend to buy in the next two months, and we know that people visiting your dealership website have moved into the final stage of their car shopping journey. By combining these two pathways together, we are targeting the most relevant audience in Canada!

In fact, our years spent accumulating and analyzing millions of interactions on autoTRADER.ca has given our team a unique understanding of consumer behaviour to precisely model purchase intent and power effective data-driven advertising solutions for dealers. It’s more than just placing ads on Google and Facebook… It’s about optimizing ads across a multitude of locations catered specifically to an intended audience of in-market shoppers.

5) WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAY YOU “OPTIMIZE” MY CAMPAIGN?

One of the most critical things we do after the initial setup is to regularly monitor campaign performance and optimize accordingly. What does that mean exactly? Look at it like this: if we see an ad isn’t getting enough views or clicks, we check who we are targeting in the adscheck the targeting or re-write the ad copy and closely monitor performance. Or if we notice consistent variances in how campaigns perform, we consider investing your budget elsewhere to maximize your return on ad spend.

It’s also important to analyze the performance of these campaigns from start to finish, which means we look at everything from the ad to the landing page on your website. This ensures that consumers receive a consistent experience that aligns your content with the needs/questions that lead them to your site in the first place.

With TRFFK, you can target consumers based on how they shop and what they are shopping for. What’s more? You’ll have real-time access to a versatile team of marketing and auto industry experts who are ready to optimize and collaborate with you — and answer your questions — every step of the way.

TRFFK powered by autoTRADER.ca is the all-in-one digital advertising solution designed exclusively for the automotive sector in Quebec.