We know that selling parts and accessories is crucial to your bottom line, especially as automobile sales dip periodically and fixed profit centers like parts and service keep the cash flowing. We also know, as you do, that marketing and sales of auto parts and accessories have gone online—with vengeance—bringing a whole layer of added complexity to your business.
But with almost 90 percent of customers beginning their shopping journey with an online search, there is where you have to be—along with the competition, of course. (U.S. online sales of new auto parts and accessories are expected to grow about 16% this year, reaching $12.3 billion.)
The quickest way for winning your share of customers searching for auto parts and accessories online, and resulting website visits and sales, is through automotive pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, a specialty of OEM Interactive. Auto parts PPC advertising is one of the most powerful tools for auto parts eCommerce companies because it allows you to immediately get in front of potential customers, the results are easy to measure and track, it provides a wealth of useful user data, and has amazing targeting options.
We understand that many dealers are too busy handling the day-to-day operations in the parts department to take on the whole new specialty that automotive PPC advertising has become. But we want to urge you not to let the daily press of business persuade you to pass up the huge potential of PPC to catalyze your marketing of auto parts and accessories sales online. Having an agency handle your PPC marketing that knows the online auto parts industry and specializes in auto parts PPC advertising, can be the difference in tens and in some cases (depending on advertising budget), hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly sales.
Auto parts and accessories online
It is simply a fact that auto parts and accessories are one of the product categories that lend themselves to online marketing and sales. Ease of specifying make and model, durability in shipping, and flexibility of scheduling a purchase: These and many other factors make purchasing parts online popular for consumers, and lucrative for businesses.
Shoppers intending to buy at the local level, in person, also search, of course. While more specialized parts may have fewer local vendors, many other parts and accessories are available at a considerable variety of types of outlets. And that means that winning the local search game is crucial, too.
Let’s look at some of the notable marketing strengths of PPC advertising—and a few of the challenges.
Immediacy
As soon as your PPC ad campaign goes live—whether on Google Ads, Bing Ads, or another venue you choose—the customer search traffic immediately starts arriving at your website’s landing page. Your concern in crafting your PPC ad campaign should be less on the number of visitors attracted to your sales pages and more on their quality.
That introduces a concept familiar to almost all of us: “keywords” or search terms.” Here, the professional business of creating optimal PPC ad campaigns come to the fore. You will want to identify precise terms to describe your products and your “value proposition.” If same-day-shipping of parts is a benefit that distinguishes you from competitors, for example, it needs to be stated precisely. If your inventory is outstandingly large and varied among vendors, then that should be stated.
Like all successful advertising, PPC begins with careful identification and definition of your customers and what you offer them.
Potency of targeting
It is best to avoid thinking in terms of a single search ad. Think in terms of an ad campaign. That means a cluster of ads that target different types of customers and perhaps emphasize different products. For example, a search by a repair shop manager may be unlike a search by an end-consumer seeking a one-time purchase. Your ad campaign can target clicks by those different customer segments. In the same way, the end customer’s searching for accessories probably will be different from the repair shop that needs the right part ASAP.
Additionally, the campaign structures that work best for selling Porsche accessories likely won’t be as effective marketed to truck or jeep enthusiasts. It’s important that your PPC manager understands the difference—this is why hiring an auto parts marketing agency to manage your campaigns is a good idea. If you aren’t precise with your ad targeting, you will chew through your budget quickly and have a horrible return on ad spend (ROAS).
Strong budget control
Whether you are just entering the arena of PPC advertising or considering a push to optimize and energize your current efforts, it is reassuring that PPC advertising has powerful built-in cost-management features. For example, you can start at virtually any size, and any budget, and be guided by initial results. We have clients who have a $1,000/month PPC budget and others in the tens of thousands—it all depends on your individual dealerships unique goals. When working with OEM Interactive, you will receive immediate, real-time data on your PPC campaigns performance. This includes, how much budget you’ve spent month-to-date, which ads are performing the best and the amount of conversions received.
Choices
When you search online yourself, you probably use the Google search engine, at least some of the time. And most marketers use Google Ads for their PPC search ad campaigns. Google, which derives almost 90 percent of its multi-billion-dollar annual revenue from PPC ads and related digital marketing, provides a huge search audience, of course. But it also offers impressive tools for shaping your keyword usage, placement of ads (not only on search engines, but specific websites and networks of websites), and the always crucial tracking of results to yield an array of data to guide further ad spending. This is not the place to explore the complexities of the Google Ads PPC system or the multitude of options it offers businesses, but the upshot is almost unlimited potential for those with the knowledge and experience to take advantage of it.
At the same, though, there are other potent platforms, with different advantages and pricing. Bing is perhaps the second largest player in the PPC Ad business, but you also can opt for special advantages of PPC ads that are welcomed by Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Each has strengths and advantages to consider in view of your target customers, product types, emphasis on online or local sales (of, of course, both), and price.
From extended experience with every aspect of PPC marketing and sales, the team at OEM Interactive understands the multiple, often complex choices that you as a business owner will encounter in PPC marketing and the wider field of digital sales.
Getting it promptly, getting it right
In a sense, you face two conflicting challenges. The first is to get your PPC ad campaign online and working for you as quickly as possible. The other is to ensure that each step in creating and launching your campaign is fully informed and professionally competitive. Customer targeting and search-term identification…campaign structure and the choice of an online vendor—budget control and tracking of results: You want each component of the campaign to have the same quality that you demand in other aspects of your business.
At OEM Interactive, we always work with you because your knowledge of your business, market, and customers indispensable to success. Our role, whether we assist with a particular (step such as keyword research) or take responsibility for your PPC campaign, is to be as committed to excellence in our business as you are in yours.
Arrange a call to talk about your experiences, plans, and expectations for next steps.
