It’s a question I hear from automotive dealers on a regular basis: “What are the pros and cons of inventory-based search marketing campaigns online?”

After all, when you look out your windows at a sea of new and used vehicles in need of buyers, it’s natural to look for ways to attract buyers to specific makes and models to turn online awareness into offline sales.

I wrote this thought leadership piece for a national automotive dealer magazine to be useful to GMs and Internet managers who are investigating one of the hottest new tactics for digital dealers: Inventory-based search marketing.

Adding this tactic to your existing digital marketing mix can, if done improperly, add too much complexity, squander your limited budget - or worse - compromise your Quality Score leading to higher CPCs and lower CTRs over the long run.

With several schools of thought out there on this topic, here are my do’s and don’ts of running a dynamic inventory search campaign on Google.

DON’T start attacking this opportunity before carefully review your goals and marketing budget. If you have a limited budget, you won’t be able to run a campaign that’s loaded with a higher volume of detailed keywords that capture more general searches for specific makes and models.

DO try Dynamic Search Ads. This newer type of campaign will pull keywords directly from specific inventory pages on your website, so your campaign will stay current on a daily basis. This means you won’t need to constantly update your campaign as your inventory changes, saving you time and money.

You can tell Google to select specific inventory pages to advertise dynamically based on URL, Page Title, Page Content, or Category. For instance, if your site has pages with titles like “Used Honda” the Page Title setting would fire successfully. And remember, Google will crawl your pages daily to keep your campaign current.

Best of all, clicks in your dynamic ads will take shoppers to specific vehicle landing pages, leading qualified buyers to the perfect vehicle.

Useful tactic (via Dealer Communications magazine):
6 Do’s & Don’ts of Dynamic Inventory Campaigns