As a business, car dealerships rely heavily on effective marketing strategies to maximize profits. To do this, they must create awareness about their products to generate and secure leads. Google Ads for car dealerships is a transformational advertising tool that is a boon to the advertising department of a dealership.
Google Ads as a platform provides flexible, affordable, and highly customizable strategies for advertisements and broadcasts them on its websites. With Google’s massive base of daily users, vehicle listings on Google get a ton of traction and exposure. Thus, car dealerships that do not use Google Ads are highly deficient in online advertising and are missing out on potential clients.
In fact, according to Google methodology, it’s estimated that for every $1 a business spends on an ad, it generates $8 in profit, which makes it a highly profitable marketing opportunity for used car dealerships that are looking to attract local customers in their region.
What are Google Ads for Car Dealerships?
Google Ads (previously Adwords) for cars is a form of advertising that helps car dealerships showcase their inventory to their relevant customer base on Google.Google Car Advertising helps dealerships immensely in reaching potential customers, promoting inventory, generating leads, and improving their brand awareness. These ads contain details about the car, including its technical information, pricing, and other contextual information. Google ads for car dealerships are primarily displayed to people who are actively searching for cars on Google.
Google Ads allows car dealers to showcase their whole car inventory to interested customers looking for vehicles on Google. These ads utilize a lower funnel performance focus format, which is immensely beneficial in finalizing a purchase.
Why Should Car Dealerships Use Google Ads?
Car dealerships require robust advertising to ensure they maintain their conversion rates and generate leads for their products. Car promotion assists dealers in driving sales by enhancing both online conversions (leads) and offline conversions (store visits). Google Ads is tailored towards low-funnel shoppers who are actively looking for vehicles that are in stock. Advertising through Google Ads can be a massive boon to car dealers as Google is a behemoth in terms of daily user visits and traffic. Car dealerships wanting to build awareness can utilize this enormous footfall to benefit. Google Vehicle Listings are provided on SERPs at the top to expose as much of the user base as possible.
High ROI is a significant factor that makes Google Automotive Ads one of the most affordable and effective forms of advertising. Google Ads only charges when an advertisement is clicked by the user, which makes it relatively inexpensive. However, its affordability is contingent on the bidding and budgeting strategies in place; if these strategies are well planned, Google Ads will have minimal economic impact on a dealership’s campaigning budget.
Google Ads and the Direct-to-Consumer Model
Google Ads relies on a Direct to Consumer (DTC) Model. Unlike traditional retail models, DTC models eliminate mediators between the product and the consumer. This model facilitates a more cohesive sales experience for the customer by making the product directly accessible.
This model affords an excellent level of efficiency to the dealership in transforming their advertising. This efficiency translates to better lead generation by garnering more interest in the product as well as boosting the conversion rate of potential customers.
Google Ads is also incredibly flexible. It allows advertisers to make changes to their campaigns on the fly as needed to regularly optimize their campaigns to maintain the quality of results. A practical car advertising strategy is paramount to driving sales.
Thus, Google Ads makes an incredibly positive case for itself. Google has a huge customer base that provides ample interest for car dealerships to target their advertising. These Ads are relatively easy to use and inexpensive, provided that the bidding and budgeting strategies are effective. They use a DTC model that makes the whole experience more cohesive.
Due to all these factors, ads also consistently return high ROI. Hence, Google Ads is the perfect advertising companion for car dealerships.
How Do Google Vehicle Ads Function?
There are different types of Google Ads; Google Ads has a separate format for advertising cars called Vehicle Ads. The Vehicle Ads format focuses on the automotive industry, thus differentiating it from standard Google Ads. The intention behind its design is to drive popularity and sales specifically for car dealerships. This employs a lower funnel advertisement format that targets shoppers looking for available cars and places the dealership’s current inventory feed at the top of their Google search results pages.
Google Vehicle Ads achieves this by focusing on the target audience while providing car dealerships with the locus of control of the demographic. This increases the overall effectiveness of vehicle advertising by making it more efficient and streamlining the process for the vehicle dealers that utilize this format.
The process of Vehicle Ads is instituted by the Google Merchant Center which is responsible for managing and organizing product information. Car dealers have to submit an extensive feed to the Merchant Center containing detailed information regarding their vehicles. The details include the vehicle’s price, make, year, model, and images among other details. These details are displayed on the VDP (vehicle details page). Google uses artificial intelligence to ascertain suitable placements for the google ads for car dealerships.
Google also matches the search queries made by potential clients to the respective dealers that it deems relevant. It makes these judgments based on parameters provided in the advertisement like make, model, price and so on.
Google also provides Performance Max campaigns that allow car dealers to target potential clients across multiple Google platforms while using a single campaign budget. Thus, Vehicle Ads are a really effective advertising format that should be highly considered by dealerships.
Top 10 Benefits of Using Google Ads for Car Dealerships
There are numerous benefits to car dealerships that make use of Google Ads for their vehicles. Google ads is a cost-effective tool that provides benefits like targeted advertising, increased online visibility, and flexible budgeting, among others.
Google Vehicle Listings Ads show customers vital information and images of the car to provide more qualified leads to the dealership. The immense benefits that Google Ads provides enable car dealerships to gain a competitive advantage in the industry.
1) Targeted Advertising
Google Vehicle Listing Ads functions by taking into consideration the interests of audiences. It chooses specific audiences based on their activities and behavior online. Dealers have the ability to customize ads to suit their preferred demographic by using different filters like age groups, genders, and income levels. For example, if a dealership wants to promote a coupe, they can target a younger audience for their ads and advertise only to that particular audience.
2) Cost-Effective Marketing
Google Ads for car dealerships employs an automotive PPC (pay-per-click) model that only charges when potential customers click the advertisement. This guarantees that the car dealership is investing in actual user engagement, which increases the efficiency of the campaign budget. Google Ads also allows tracking ROI to ensure that the budget is used effectively to create qualified leads.
3) Increased Online Visibility
Google Ads optimizes the dealership’s reach and presence in Google search results by ensuring that the dealership appears at the top. It also chooses prominent ad placements to make its advertising more noticeable, thus boosting effectiveness.
4) Lead Generation and Conversion
Google Ads specializes in lead generation and conversion by utilizing compelling calls to action and capture forms. These persuade users to take the next step while simultaneously capturing important information from potential leads. It also increases the chances of conversion by leading potential customers to optimized landing pages. Dealerships can also monitor and measure the effectiveness of their ads in propelling conversions.
5) Localized Campaigns
Google Ads for car dealerships can use features like Geo-targeting to show ads to potential clients based on their geographic location. This can be immensely helpful for car dealership advertising to reach customers in their local area, which can benefit the conversion rate as local customers are an easier demographic to attract due to convenience.
6) Performance Tracking and Analytics
The dealership can track campaign performance by using Google Analytics to assess the performance of advertisements and user interactions. Parameters such as click-through rate and conversion rate can be monitored to refine campaigning strategies and further improve advertisement performance.
7) Flexible Budgeting and Bidding
Car dealerships can choose between multiple bidding strategies to suit their campaigning needs. They can prepare daily budgets to modulate their spending and manage advertising costs. Automated Bidding is available for dealerships to augment and streamline their bids based on performance data. Bids can also be manually adjusted to target specific keywords/demographics.
8) Re-marketing Opportunities
Google Ads for car dealerships provide re-marketing opportunities through which car dealerships can re-target advertisements and re-engage with users who have shown interest but haven’t converted into potential customers. The dealership can show ads to previous visitors to its website to encourage repeat visits. These opportunities also aid in retaining potential leads through re-targeting advertising.
9) Showcasing Special Offers and Promotions
Google Ads also showcases special offers and promotions to entice potential leads. It employs limited-time offers, which create a sense of urgency and pressure the buyer, boosting conversion rates. The dealership can also use discounts, seasonal sales, and events to influence potential customers and seize timely appeal.
10) Brand Awareness and Recognition
Google Ads can increase dealership visibility and recognition by frequently showcasing the dealership and its products in advertisements. It employs automotive video advertising and displays advertising to create attractive content that boosts brand awareness. These techniques ensure brand recall and lead to convincing brand messaging throughout all advertising channels.
Should Dealerships Use Google Display Ads for Marketing?
Automotive digital marketing can be highly arduous; however, Google Ads has different features that aid used car dealerships. In the contemporary automotive market, dealerships should be able to use every available tool to entice and change a potential buyer.
Google Ads Vehicle Listing Ads provides an effective format for increasing leads and sales by supplying visually engaging ads targeted on Google Search Results. Google Ads has another format called Google Display Ads that is incredibly productive at increasing lead generation. At the same time, Google Search Ads are text-based, and Google Display Ads generally employ a wide range of visual and interactive elements. Both of them are characterized as Google Ads but differ in their purpose.
Google Search Ads are triggered by certain keywords related to the product being advertised. These ads target users who are highly likely to buy a particular product. Google places these advertisements on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), making them suitable for dealership advertising.
The following table explains the key differences exhaustively:-
| Feature | Google Search Ads | Google Display Ads |
| Trigger | Keywords related to product | User interest and behavior |
| Goal | Generates instant conversion | Generates product awareness and leads |
| Format | Usually utilizes text | Utilizes interactive elements |
| Placement | Google SERPs | Google Display Network |
| Intent | Last stage of buying process | Different stages of buying process |
Car Dealership Marketing can employ both Google Search Ads as well as Google Display Ads to not only target users that are highly interested in a particular product but also target users who are not aware of the product. Google Display Ads utilizes different visual and interactive elements and adheres to user behavior through the GDN (Google Display Network) to target users in different stages of the buying process. This leads to both increased reach as well as a boost in lead generation.
How To Run Google Ads For Car Dealerships?
Running Google Ads for car dealerships has proven to be profitable on many levels, increasing visibility, driving local traffic, and improving sales. One of the most effective ad types for car dealerships is Vehicle Listing Ads (VLAs), which showcase your vehicle inventory directly in the search results. However, it might seem complex to set these ads up. But, don’t worry – we are here to help you out!
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to run Google Ads for your used car dealership:
1. Set up your essential accounts
Before you can run Google Ads, you need to create a few key accounts:
- Google Merchant Center (GMC): This is where you will upload your vehicle inventory feeds. GMC serves as the platform that connects your product listings to Google Ads.
- Google Ads Account: If you don’t have one yet, you will need to create a Google Ads account. This will be the central place to manage your campaigns, budgets, and ad performance.
- Google Business Profile (GBP): With this, you can showcase the actual physical location of your dealership in ads, which will attract more people who are browsing locally to find you nearby.
You can skip linking your accounts if you have already established accounts for both Google Ads and Google Business Profile.
2. Google will Now Submit Your Interest
Once your accounts are set up, you’ll need to submit a request to Google to enable Vehicle Listing Ads for your dealership. This step involves filling out a form where you’ll provide details about your location and inventory. Google will review your submission to confirm that your dealership is eligible for VLAs. This process typically takes a few days, so be patient.
Once you get a confirmation message from Google, you are good to go to the next step.
3. Inventory Feeds Upload
The essence of running successful Vehicle Listing Ads is to ensure Google gets the right and correct inventory information. You must upload an inventory feed into Google Merchant Center. Ensure that the feed contains each vehicle in your dealership and the following details:
- Type of car, model, and year
- Price
- Mileage
- Color
- Vehicle descriptions
Use the same inventory feed on your own website’s vehicle listings to link the two platforms.
Setting up this process may require some technical knowledge, but your website’s third-party system can usually manage the inventories. After submitting the inventory feed, Google then reviews it, which sometimes takes a few days or a week.
4. Link Your Google Ads and Google Business Profile
When you are waiting for your feed to be approved, you can link both your Google Ads and Google Business Profile accounts to your Google Merchant Center account. This integration is crucial when running local ads that target potential buyers in your area.
Connecting Google Ads to Merchant Center: This will help Google to automatically use your live inventory for search and display ads. It also allows you to track ad performance and optimize your campaigns better.
Connecting Google Business Profile: With the connection of your Google Business Profile, you can show the location of your dealership in your ads and target customers who are near and interested in visiting your showroom.
5. Set Up Your First Vehicle Ad Campaign
With your accounts linked and inventory feed approved, now you’re all set to create your Google ads for car dealerships:
- Create a New Campaign in Google Ads: Select the “Performance Max Campaign” option in Google Ads. This type of campaign is optimized for driving conversions by showing your ads across multiple Google platforms, such as Search, YouTube, and Google Display Network.
- Use Your Google Merchant Center Feed: When setting up the campaign, make sure to select the inventory feed from your Google Merchant Center account. Google will automatically generate ads based on the vehicles in your inventory.
- Define Your Budget and Targeting: Set your budget and targeting preferences. For local dealerships, it’s important to focus on geographic targeting to ensure your ads reach the right audience.
6. Launch and Monitor Your Ads
Once your campaign is live, closely monitor its performance. Use tools like Google Analytics to track how many users click on your ads, view vehicle details, and ultimately visit your dealership or make inquiries.
You’ll likely need to make adjustments to your campaign over time. Here are a few tips for optimizing your Vehicle Listing Ads:
- Refine Your Keywords: Ensure that your ads are targeting the right search terms for your vehicles.
- Update Your Inventory Regularly: Keep your inventory feed updated to reflect the most current vehicles available for sale.
- Experiment with Ad Formats: Test different ad formats and messaging to see which resonates best with your target audience.
- Focus on Local SEO: Since car dealerships rely heavily on local customers, use location-based targeting to ensure your ads are reaching people near your dealership.
Running Google Ads for car dealerships, especially with Vehicle Listing Ads, is an excellent way to drive local traffic and improve your online visibility. Following these steps will ensure that your ads are targeting the right customers and showing off your inventory in the best possible light. After you have set up, keep monitoring and adjusting your campaigns to maximize your return on investment.
New Google Ads Features To Look Forward in 2025
2024 was the year of change, especially for Google. With news updates and innovation, Google Ads launched several new features to make advertising more effective and give advertisers more control. Here are the key updates:
AI-Powered Asset Creation: Google has added AI assistance to Performance Max campaigns, allowing for the automatic generation of headlines, visuals, and other assets. Dealerships can use this feature to streamline their creative process and enhance ad performance.
Enhanced Image Editing Tools: AI-powered image editing capabilities have been rolled out beyond Performance Max and are now available for Search, Display, and Demand Gen campaigns. Used car dealerships can now refine images by removing or adding objects, changing backgrounds, and cropping images to different formats.
Campaign-Level Negative Keywords: For further control of ad placements, Google Ads now enables the dealers to use campaign-level negative keywords for Performance Max campaigns. With this feature, dealers can eliminate irrelevant terms that could trigger their ads, leading to better overall performance and more efficient ad spending.
AI-Generated Search Summaries: Google introduced ads within its AI-generated search summaries, which are referred to as AI Overviews. The feature will have products appearing under a “sponsored” header in responses to queries with a “commercial angle,” thereby allowing users to quickly connect with relevant businesses and products. Dealerships can leverage this space to improve their local reach.
Transition from Discovery Ads to Demand Gen Campaigns: This will help dealerships and other businesses drive more qualified traffic to websites by enhancing product demand through different ad formats within one campaign. It is also expected to offer users more integrated tools for audience targeting and engagement.
Conclusion
Effective digital marketing for automotive dealers is essential to market their products and maximize their sales conversion rate. Google Ads for car dealerships plays a key role in improving the dealership’s online reach by targeting a vast user base, especially in their local geography, targeting and retargeting qualified audiences, and driving higher return on investment.
Moreover, it is cost-effective and allows to create vehicle pages – helping dealerships showcase their inventory to interested customers without having to drive them to their physical store.
