Start Advertising Vehicles With Google Merchant Center for Dealerships

Introduction

If you’re in the automotive business, it’s important to start advertising vehicles on Google Merchant Center. This is where Google organizes all of its shopping ads, which means that your dealership has a better chance of being found when people search for cars online. Plus, by uploading product data into Merchant Center, you can start offering dynamic pricing — which means automatically adjusting what you charge based on supply and demand. If regular price isn’t enough to convince someone to buy right away, dynamic pricing might be just what they need to take the plunge!

It’s really important to start advertising vehicles on Google Merchant Center if you’re an auto dealership.

It’s really important to start advertising vehicles on Google Merchant Center if you’re an auto dealership. There is a new program by Google, which is Vehicle Ads. You’ve probably heard of the benefits of adding your inventory to Google Shopping, but did you know that the same tool can be used for vehicle advertising? By using the same platform to advertise both your cars and trucks, you can save time and money by not having to create separate campaigns for each.

You may have noticed that there are more ads popping up on Google than before—that’s because advertisers have started using the new way of targeting their ads through vehicle targeting. This means they can reach potential customers who have been searching specifically for a car or truck! That’s what makes it such an effective marketing strategy when working with dealerships: it allows them to make sure their product gets in front of people who are ready to buy today (or sometime soon).

The best part about this program is that Google will only show your ads to those within the radius of your dealership. You will not need to do anything to narrow down the radius, it is done automatically. If you own a dealership and you are not yet on Google Merchant Center, you will soon loose a lot of business to competitors who are on the platform.

Activate Vehicle Ads

In order to start advertising your vehicles, you will need to contact Google first and they will activate the program for you. You can not do it yourself. Please follow the link below to contact Google:

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/11189169?hl=en

Google Merchant Center is a tool that helps you upload your product inventory to Google Ads. You can find more information about what it is and how to activate vehicle ads in the help center.

A product inventory feed contains all the information about each of your products, such as its name and image, where they’re sold and how much they cost. You need this file so that when someone searches for one of your products on Google (for example: “Ford F-150”) our search engine knows which ads are most relevant for that search query (in this case, “Ford F-150”).

Sign up for a Google Business profile

Car dealerships must have a Google Business profile. If you don’t have one, you can create one. It is easy and free. You will need to connect your Google Merchant Center and Google Business Profile within your GMC account. This step is important, because when you add feeds to your account, you will need to add the attribute called “store code” and if your accounts are not linked, it will return error, which in turn will not allow you to start your campaign.

Verify your website property ownership

You need to verify that you own the website that you are submitting as a part of your Google Merchant Center account. You can do this by creating a Google Webmaster Tools account and then setting up your site in it. You can also use one of the many third party tools available on the market today.

Upload your product inventory feed

The product feed is a CSV file, XML or Content API that contains the data about your inventory. You can also use “website crawl” function, but if you decide to use that function, you will need to familiarize yourself with setting up feed rules for your feed. Without feed rules, website crawl feed quality will not be up to par with Google’s standards. This should include all of the information you’ll need to set up your ads in Google Merchant Center, including:

• Name, model number, and other identifiers for each vehicle
• The year (e.g., 2019)
• The make (e.g., Toyota)
• The model name (e.g., Tacoma)
• Price
• Description
• Store code – the location where vehicle can be purchased
• link
• link template – important for Vehicle Ads program
• Image and Additional Images

Once you have completed all the steps above, you will need to wait for Google to review your website, your feed, and all the other information you have submitted to them. The process sometimes can take up to 2 weeks. While they review your account, your products will be in pending status and that is normal. After your account has been approved, you can go ahead and start a campaign within Google Ads to start showing up at the top of search ads whenever someone searches for a vehicle you have in stock.

Link your Google Ads account to make sure your product inventory is available to be advertised on Google Shopping.

Once you’ve linked your Google Merchant Center account, it’s time to set up your ad campaigns.

• Create a new Shopping campaign in Google Ads. This is the same process you would use to set up a Search Network or Display Network campaign, with one exception: You’ll select “Google Shopping” as the network when creating the campaign.

Conclusion

If you’re an auto dealership, it’s important to start advertising vehicles on Google Merchant Center. If you have any questions about how this works or just want a free consultation, don’t hesitate to reach out!