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Tips for Success: Auto Parts Sellers

Make the most of AdWords with customized tips designed to help auto parts sellers boost traffic, increase sales, and improve return on investment.


In this tips section you'll learn how to:


Organize your account

Think of your website's menu or sitemap as a blueprint for your AdWords account. If your account mirrors your website, you'll have an easier time making changes, locating specific keywords, monitoring your success, ensuring that your entire inventory is covered, and allocating your budget effectively. For instance, if you sell exhaust products on your website, you might create a separate "Exhaust" campaign. You could then create ad groups for "Mufflers" and "Exhaust Kits."

Once you have determined your campaign and ad groups, it's time to start thinking about keywords. With all AdWords campaigns, the general rule of thumb is to group keywords based on the same product, service, or location into the same ad group. Returning to our campaign example, let's take a look at how we might organize ad groups and keywords.





Bring in the right traffic

Your ads are generating clicks and impressions and users are converting on your site, but what about those clicks that never result in sales? To avoid "curiosity clicks," consider using negative keywords to restrict irrelevant traffic to your site. Your ad will be blocked when a user's search query includes one of your negative keywords. This way you don't "give away" clicks to users who are interested in parts you don't sell. For example, if you only sell new parts, your negative keywords might include used, rebuilt, and remanufactured. Similarly, negative keywords can help curb traffic from visitors at earlier stages in the buying cycle. Include negative keywords like ratings, reviews, and comparison so that uncommitted window shoppers won't click on your ad.

Spruce up your ad text

Use clear and explicit language to describe the parts you offer. If users don't know what they can find on your site, they will be less likely to click on your ad. Help users make the connection by placing your highest-traffic keywords front and center in your ad text. Keep in mind that any keywords you use in any part of your ad text are automatically highlighted in bold type when a user enters them as part of their query, so be sure to select specific keywords that are most likely to convert.



In your ad, tell users what you would like them to do once they land on your site. Calls to action are motivating phrases you can incorporate in each of your ad variations. Simply adding "Order Today!" or "Buy Online Now" can do wonders to improve CTR (clickthrough rate) and may even boost conversions.

Test your success

Create multiple ad variations for each of your ad groups. Each variation can highlight a different incentive, such as free shipping, a low price guarantee, or maybe a fitment guide. Optimized ad serving will do the work for you: ads with higher historic CTRs (clickthrough rates) and Quality Scores will enter the ad auction more often than other ads within the ad group. This way you can experiment with different messages in your ad text until you find the one that gets the most customers to your site.


Reach the browsers and buyers

A great way to expand your reach while still promoting your services to a targeted audience is with Google's content network, an extensive network of high-quality news pages, industry-specific websites, and blogs. It's a cost-effective way to show your ads on a wide variety of sites that automotive customers visit each day. By showing your ads on both search and content pages, you'll reach people at all points of the buying cycle, from creating awareness of your products to closing the cycle with a conversion. And with the range of available ad formats – text, image, Flash, and video – you can appeal to potential customers in a unique and eye-catching way.





It's a good idea to create a separate, content network-only campaign for the ads you want to show on the content network. This way, you can allocate your budget with more precision and test out new ideas without affecting your search campaigns. AdWords looks at the overall theme of your ad group to determine if your ad relates to a particular site, so be sure that each of your content network ad groups focuses on a specific topic and audience.

Get more optimization tips for the content network.

Target your audience

With a placement-targeted campaign, you can handpick your audience by selecting specific places in Google's content network to display your ads. Try showing your ads in places related to a particular issue or need for which your auto products are a solution. For example, if you offer tires, you might place your ads on websites related to improving car mileage or off-road vehicles. You can also show your ads in places that will be seen by your target audience. Think about websites that your potential customers are likely to visit, such as PopularMechanics.com and MotorTrend.com. Then, use the Placement Tool in your account to find available placements on similar websites and add these to your placement-targeted campaign.





Learn more about selecting placements for a placement-targeted campaign. Find auto-related sites available in Google's content network.

Analyze the results

Use Placement Performance reports to learn where your contextually targeted ads are showing on Google's content network, and get site-by-site performance data, such as clicks, impressions, cost, and conversions, for all your ads running on the content network. Using the Report Center in your AdWords account, run a Placement Performance report to learn which individual sites generate the most conversions. You can then target these top-performing sites in a placement-targeted campaign.

Learn more about the content network, targeting options, tools, and more at the content network website.

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