6 Reasons Why Manufacturers Should Advertise on Google or Bing With Paid Search Ads

Why advertise on Google: If you’re in the automotive specialty equipment industry, learn about digital advertising for manufacturers. Here are 6 important reasons to advertise on Google or Bing right now. Paid search, or pay per click (PPC) advertising, is a cost-effective way to reach consumers on the Internet when they’re making buying decisions. Today more than 4 out of 5 automotive consumers turn to search engines first when deciding what to buy.

Reason #1 to advertise on Google or Bing: Take control of your brand.

If you’re an aftermarket manufacturer, you probably ‘Googled’ your brand name before. Chances are you found dozens or hundreds of listings for retailers selling your products. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But think about it: if you’re not advertising online then what nearly every shopper learns is completely out of your control. If a shopper is looking for your products, they may be learning about your competitors first!

Advertise on Google or Bing to promote your own brand. It’s simple: your ads appear when someone searches for your brand name. It’s a great offensive and defensive move at the same time.

If you are primarily concerned with branding, it’s very powerful when you can have your ads appear anytime a consumer is on Google or Bing, searching for information on your brand. Advertise on Google or Bing and get control over your brand message and your brand perception, and it also puts you a step ahead of any competitors.

Google search traffic for “intake manifolds” (blue line) and a well-known intake manifold brand (red line), since January 2009. Traffic for “intake manifold” steadily increased while traffic for the brand name dropped by as much as 40%. Any campaign for just the brand name would have missed a lot of consumers.

Reason #2 to advertise on Google or Bing: Take control of your product category.

What if a consumer is shopping for your type of products but doesn’t know which brand to buy? If you only advertise your brand name but not for your product types you miss a lot of consumers.

The graph at right is a real-world example of how that can happen.

Here are actual search traffic results from Google: this compares searches for “intake manifold” vs. searches for a well-known intake manifold brand. Since January 2009 search traffic for “intake manifold” grew while search traffic for this brand name dropped as much as 40%. Any online campaign that only included the brand name would have missed a lot of search traffic that could have gone to competing brands.

(We won’t reveal this manufacturer, but the fact that searches for this brand dropped as much as 40% is a huge concern by itself!)

Reason #3: Advertising on Google or Bing is controlled and cost-effective.

When you advertise on Google or Bing, you have complete control of your marketing budget. Want to spend $500 or $5,000 a month? No problem. You decide, there’s no lead time and you can make instant changes. You also have control over the exact keywords that will make your ads appear so you eliminate wasted advertising.

Of course, how much you spend will determine how much visibility you get. Spending $500 a month will not allow your ads to appear for many consumers. On the other hand, if online advertising is something new to your company starting with a $500 budget is a way to get started without breaking the bank. Set up an AdWords account and jump in!

Reason #4: Bring new products to market and create consumer demand by advertising online.

It’s a manufacturer’s dream: launch a new product and quickly get consumer awareness, demand and sales. When you advertise online you immediately put your message in front of consumers shopping for your types of products. Send traffic to specific pages on your website to get consumers excited about your new products. Then send them to buy online or locally from one of your dealers.

And here’s a free tip, especially if you’re a manufacturer displaying at the SEMA Show: starting in October every year, consumers start searching on terms like “SEMA new products” or “SEMA Show products” so if you want to give your new products a kick start, you can give that a try.

Reason #5: Online ads are completely measurable.

With paid search advertising you can track how many impressions you receive, how many visitors come to your website, what pages visitors look at and more. You see exactly what you paid for.

You can track what you’re spending by day, week or month. Google Adwords also lets you report the detail on how specific ads or keywords worked.

Reason #6: Manufacturers: your current product data already supports online advertising.

If you have an electronic product catalog managed by Direct Communications, Inc. (DCi), you already have the building blocks for even more cost-effective online ad campaigns. This is especially true if your product line has application-specific products. Using your own product data to build online ad campaigns lets you use part types or year/make/model descriptions to create perhaps thousands of keywords so your online ads can be found for thousands of very specific types of online searches. For example: let’s say you have a new product for 2012-13 Jeep Wranglers with 3.6L Pentastar engines. That’s pretty specific!

These “long tail” type searches are important. The majority of automotive consumers search on keyword phrases of three or more words and it’s a great way to be found for these searches. Using your own product data to build these keywords only makes sense.

Reason #7:

OK, our title says 6 reasons, but you read this far so here’s a freebie: Call us if you have any questions on online paid search advertising, how to advertise on Google or on Bing, and if you have any interest in giving it a try we’ll give you a free evaluation of your current online advertising, if any. We’ll also look at your site traffic and let you know what we see and recommend.

How to advertise on Google:

Give us a call!