What Automotive Advertisers Can Do to Drive Campaign Performance

The automotive industry has experienced a recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, TrendForce predicts that global car sales are rebounding this year (2023), with a YoY growth of 3.8% to reach over 84 million vehicles. To stand out from the competition, it is important to understand the audience and tailor marketing strategies accordingly.

Digital Presence Matters

In today’s world, the mobile generation holds the main purchasing power. According to Google, 92% of customers research car information online before making a purchase decision. The abundant digital resources offer consumers various ways to experience vehicles before making purchasing decisions. However, this has also led to a complex customer journey involving digital touchpoints from various sources. Therefore, all touchpoints need to be properly connected to ensure conversions.

Dable found that readers of automotive content spend, on average, 1.5 times more time on native ads than on social ads. This suggests native advertising plays a crucial role in expanding ad campaign reach in this digital era. It seamlessly displays sponsored content on publisher sites to audiences who might engage further and discover real potential customers effectively.

Tips for Driving Campaign Performance

Creative and Compelling Content

Create multiple high-quality, visually appealing, and engaging content pieces. Dable’s Ad Title Generator leverages nascent generative AI technology to help marketers efficiently create various compelling ad titles that capture the audience’s attention. Moreover, creating multiple content pieces enables advertisers to conduct A/B tests to identify the most effective advertising creatives.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

Encourage customers to share their vehicle experiences or collaborate with influencers. UGC adds authenticity and social proof to your campaigns, as potential buyers are more likely to trust the opinions of their peers.

Multichannel Approach

In the upper marketing funnel, it is crucial to maximize your content’s reach to increase the chances of reaching potential customers where they spend their time. Then, optimize content display channels to reduce ad costs. Dable partners with over 3,000 premium sites worldwide. Additionally, the Dable system employs proprietary full-text semantic analysis technology that utilizes AI to compare the context of entire websites, analyzing user preferences and recommending appropriate ad content that individual users may be interested in.

Remarketing

Implement remarketing strategies to target users who have previously engaged with your brand. This keeps your brand top-of-mind and encourages users to take further action.

Data-Driven Insights

Since most car buyers rely on digital channels to research car brands and products, it is essential to install tracking scripts in ad campaigns. This can help you refine your campaigns, optimize your messaging, and make data-backed decisions for better performance. Dable scripts help marketers gain insights into customer behavior and preferences, allowing them to optimize campaign performance.

Best Campaigns for Automotive Marketing

On Dable’s network, ad spending by automotive advertisers has significantly increased since 2022. Below are some of the best performing ad campaigns and their strategies.

Taiwan’s success case: Japanese SUV

A premium Japanese automotive brand launched an ad campaign targeting the Taiwan market for its new SUV. The brand aimed to increase awareness of its new product and generate new leads at an effective cost.

Results

• Successfully introduced premium traffic. Traffic become stable during the second week of campaign
• Effectively reduced conversion cost by 79% compared to the first week of campaign

Approaches

• Audience Optimization: Created multiple campaigns with different content for different target audiences in order to find the most effective audience groups.
• Keyword Targeting: Include keywords related to competitor brand names and products to reach audience searching for car information
• Cost Optimization: Effectively reduced conversion costs by monitoring ad performance and optimizing content display channels throughout the campaign

Thailand’s success case: MW Motor One

As a representative of the top Scandinavian automotive brand in Thailand, the brand’s main challenge was to expand the audience pool and generate quality leads.

Results

• Increased lead quality with a 15% lower CPC compared to social media platforms
• Successfully acquired customers with a 65% lower total conversion cost compared to social media platforms.

Approaches

• Added lead forms to improve lead quality: This solution increased test drive requests and consulting inquiries for MW Motor One at a satisfying cost-per-lead. The lead form on the campaign’s landing page was convenient as it auto-optimized the campaign based on the collected user information.
• Optimized site performance: Improved lead quality by optimizing the website such as targeting at geo-provincial level, filtering out low-performing sites, and including call-to-action (CTA) keywords.

The automotive industry is competitive, and effective campaign performance requires a combination of creativity, data analysis, and a deep understanding of your target audience. Regularly measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies, and be prepared to adapt and iterate based on the results you achieve.

For more information, please contact us via ad@dable.io