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As a marketing manager or salesman at a car dealership, you understand that being top of mind and center stage for individuals searching for cars is of the upmost importance. With that in mind, choosing to invest in pay per click advertising is an easy choice to achieving those goals.

Search Engine Marketing is a tactic many have ventured into, but capabilities and tactics constantly change which frequently leads to your PPC ads and extensions being a bit behind the curve. If you are looking for an upgrade on your campaigns or if you are jumping into paid search for the first time, here are some great ad extensions for dealerships that you need to be utilizing in your search ads.

Click to Call Extensions – This extension is debatably the most important to include across all campaigns whether it be branded or conquesting. With the ability to use different numbers within ad groups and recently up through the account level, calls can be directly linked back to the ROI of your investment with pay per click.  A few additional suggestions from our experience would be to also consider call source tracking such as Call rail or a dealer specific call source center like CallRevu. These companies will allow you to create redirecting numbers to track how many calls are coming from the public facing number, and offer the ability to record phone calls as well. The second suggestion would be to test through call only ads as these ad styles have grown in popularity within mobile device targeting.

Pricing Extensions – The newest extension of the bunch allows you to offer pricing right on the search engine listing. There are a few positives worth noting when using this extension. Our agency has recently implemented this extension and saw an increase in Click through rates by over 4% to ads utilizing this extension within a month-long test. The second positive to note, is the apparent search engine real estate that the pricing extension utilizes. In the example image, you will find that these pricing extensions have the capability of taking over nearly the whole mobile device screen. The last positive to note is removing the need to edit an ad throughout the month, which typically resets your ad stats. All ad extensions can be updated as many times as you want without losing out on Ad stats, which can keep those ad a/b tests running smoothly. The one word of caution for the Pricing extension is to monitor your websites display pricing to the pricing on your ad extensions. Make sure these are competitive sales points and your information is consistent across the landing pages and the extension. 

Click to Message Extensions – Much like click to call extensions, click to message allows users to text your designated phone numbers at the account through the ad group level for more information or questions that they have on models or vehicles that you have in stock. Although this opens up another possible line of communication between your dealership and the end buyer, this may be one of the most difficult extensions to manage. With multiple sales reps at your dealership, a manager will need to disperse the incoming leads in a quick and timely manner as end users such as millennials’ will want a quick reply from the same number while shopping for a vehicle. Here are some tips to remember when using the using the click to message extensions.

Directions Extensions – The last ad extension integrates with Google maps and provides users with GPS directions to your dealership. Although this may not be considered a direct lead or goal completion, this extension creates a stronger user experience and encourages individuals to visit your dealerships lot and view some inventory. This can lead to a possible test drive or touch point with a sales rep.

As a recap, these four selected extensions can play a pivotal role in your dealerships pay per click marketing and make a positive difference to the ROI of your campaigns, but they are not the only options available. Site links, structured snippets, reviews and callouts can also provide some content to increase your ads quality scores, but do not as easily portray a direct ROI.

For more information or question Pay per click campaigns, contact THAT Agency for consultation and educational resources.