By Jon Torrey, Product Manager of Video Advertising, Dealer.com
Video advertising is a historically underpriced advertising channel and is so because there isn’t a large supply of advertisers…yet. This is due to multiple reasons ranging from lack of creative assets to the shortage of mature data to show the distinct connection between video advertising and sales. We know it’s there and have seen it, but there aren’t quite as many case studies yet as there are for channels like search advertising and Facebook advertising.
It’s a crucial time for dealerships to start asking themselves some questions to help decide if they are ready to jump on this opportunity. Here are eight questions to ask yourself to help determine if video advertising is an investment you should pursue:
- What am I doing for video advertising today? Television? Connected TV? YouTube?
- Why am I invested in those channels? Why am I not invested in those channels?
- How are those channels performing? What KPIs am I using? Are they different across those channels?
- Based on that performance, how am I making decisions to lower, increase, or keep my budget the same?
- Have I recently considered testing a new channel to compare performance using the same KPIs? Why? Why not?
- Am I showing my ads where my shoppers are? How do I know?
- What are the core and unique value propositions of my brand/dealership? Are those communicated in my marketing assets?
- Is there an owner of the dealership group that is partial to television advertising and doesn’t want to give that up?
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. They are simply meant to help you think a little deeper about your current investments. Conversations with well over 100 dealerships about digital video advertising, typically prompt the same five responses which correlate with a particular dealer persona.
The majority of dealerships want to do digital video, but don’t have assets. Some have never invested in TV because they might find it is too expensive, but digital video can be affordable and allows dealers to compete with television at a much lower price point. Others invest in television but haven’t really thought about why. Some large dealership groups attached to TV have since moved more of their advertising budgets over to digital video after tests revealed it to be more effective for customer engagement.
There is a strategy that will serve every dealer, whether big or small, and those who invest early will gain a distinct advantage over the competition that waits.
ARTICLE BY Jon Torrey
Jon Torrey is the Senior Product Manager of Video Advertising at Dealer.com, where he is responsible for bringing this digital product to life and helping car dealerships spend the same or less budget on digital advertising to get better results.