Cobalt Releases New Auto Search Campaigns

SEATTLE — Cobalt, the leading provider of marketing services to the retail automotive industry, announced the release of three new targeted paid search campaigns designed specifically to help dealers leverage consumer search behavior in the current economic climate. Cobalt’s brand-new campaigns are designed to generate awareness for multiple profit centers within the dealership and to extend dealers’ reach to specific consumers shopping online.

According to Google, while the total number of U.S. online in-market new vehicle shoppers declined by 16% between March 2007 and March 2008, there was a 35% growth in people visiting parts and service sites during the same time period. Cobalt has designed new search campaigns for its PowerSearch customers that focus specifically on parts and service. Cobalt has developed a package of service and parts keywords, and a bidding strategy that will optimize search results placement and local-market opportunities for dealerships. In addition, ad copy will leverage a dealership’s business name and custom “tag-line” to improve click-through rates.

Cobalt has also introduced new finance and special finance campaigns to allow dealers to respond to evolving consumer needs for lease programs, financing options and preferred payment methods. According to Automotive News, the average new-car loan now stands at 64 months, a significant increase from the average 61-month loan in 2003. These campaigns are designed to target the payment-driven consumer, whose focus is matching a monthly budget to a monthly car payment.

Cobalt’s extensive research and testing has shown very high email and phone conversion rates, demonstrating that these campaigns drive high-quality, ready-to-buy consumers to dealers’ websites.

“Cobalt is responding to our customers’ desire to generate more business for their fixed operations and financial centers,” said Max Steckler, Executive Director of Advertising Products at Cobalt. “These new campaigns help drive the right customers into the highest profit centers of their business.”

The core value proposition of Cobalt’s new search campaigns is flexibility for dealerships in how they target specific online consumers, coupled with the right ad copy messages to pull those consumers through to a dealer’s website for conversion. Only Cobalt’s search campaigns deliver this type of flexibility and address all of a dealership’s profit centers.

To learn more about these new search campaigns visit http://www.cobalt.com/cashcow.