Today’s car shoppers are inundated with advertisements. In order to break through this clutter, it’s important for your campaigns to reflect your brand and deliver a consistent and captivating message across every customer touch point – whether you’re retargeting shoppers with display ads or designing website pages. This not only helps your dealership steer shoppers toward high converting pages (such as landing pages or vehicle details pages), but also reinforces shoppers’ confidence that they’ve arrived at the right digital location.
Integrated campaigns should comprise the following four creative elements:
1. Homepage Slides
Homepage slides are the most visible area of a website. Shoppers visiting your website directly or through general search engine results page listings are exposed to these slides at onset. They’re the first digital impression shoppers have of your business.
Because of this positioning, homepage slides are often the most effective place to begin campaign messaging. Along with a high impression rate, they can easily link to interior pages of your website. Whether you’re looking to promote current incentives, highlight department specials, or inform visitors of an upcoming event, customized homepage slides are influential in determining your shoppers’ experience – and their likelihood to convert – online.
2. Campaign Landing Pages and BannersÂ
Campaign landing pages and banners often go hand-in-hand. These custom-designed pages provide additional details for upcoming/ongoing dealership events or incentives, and can house all relevant information and detail unable to fit on homepage slides or display ads. Banners can be used on landing pages or other interior website pages to highlight important information and offer a strong call to action, all styled to match the look and feel of the campaign.
3. Specials
Specials pages attract shoppers looking to find the best deal. Specials should be generated for all of your profit centers and link directly to relevant inventory. By aligning the creative look and feel from homepage slides, banners, and campaign landing pages, you can display all pertinent offers for that profit center in a way that reflects the rest of the campaigns on the site.
4. Display Advertising Creative
Display advertising creative delivers dealership campaigns beyond your website. Effective display ads need to feature the same creative styling, messaging and links as the rest of the campaign assets on the website, while also reaching a relevant audience that might be interested in the first place.
Creating effective campaign assets is a very important part of the advertising process, especially if you consider the work involved in OEM approval. By aligning all creative elements within a campaign – whether on a homepage slide, a landing page, a specials page, or a display ad – you can provide a consistent and effective message, which, if done well, will deliver increased opportunities.
This article was co-written by Erica Danford, Dealer.com Vice President – Managed Services, and Andrew Lane, Dealer.com Senior Manager, Content & Creative – Managed Services.