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If you’re an auto dealership trying to establish an online presence, or trying to improve on your existing internet foothold, you’re probably thinking about internet marketing. If you’re not, get thinking, because the internet is just like anything else – he who markets most effectively, wins.

The internet has a couple of huge advantages over the rest of the advertising mediums you’re already familiar with—television, radio, newspaper, billboard, side of a bus. While these traditional methods are fine for building brand awareness and reinforcing purchase satisfaction, they are expensive. They are also typically not well targeted– there’s just no way of knowing if the people watching a particular show are in the market for a new car.

It’s on those two points that internet marketing blows all other mediums out of the water. For starters, if you are smart about your online strategy (or work with people like Dealer Impact Search Marketing who get paid to be smart about online marketing strategies) the internet is a cheap, cheap place to advertise. Running an ad on Google or Yahoo (the search engines are, after all, where the vast majority of people begin their purchasing research) doesn’t cost anything unless someone is interested enough to click on your ad—and even then, it’s typically only around $0.50-$2.00 per click. Not a high price to pay to send an interested lead to your website.

What’s more, online advertising is highly targeted—your ads only show up when people search for something related to your dealership or your inventory. Worried that your money will be wasted if your ads show up for people who aren’t in your city? Search engine advertising is so effective that it actually figures out where the searcher is located, and only shows ads relevant to that location. And if you use an online marketing company that builds your advertising campaign on an adaptive platform like the Dealer Impact Search Advertising platform, your campaign will become more targeted over time – only showing your ads for searches that have the best conversion rates.

These smart platforms also have the added advantage of detailed tracking. You can find out how many people have clicked on ads, for what keywords, what forms they filled out on your site, and even find out who’s called your dealership. Some have the added benefit of recording those phone calls and adding them to your online report.

What does this all mean to the average car dealership? Basically, if you move a chunk of your marketing budget online, and then spend those online dollars correctly, you can decrease your total budget while bringing more qualified leads to your site and increasing your sales. The online marketing arena is effective and cost-effective, so stop wasting money with those newspaper ads and get online today!

Jamie Wilson
Search Engine Marketing Specialist
DealerImpact.com