For dealers who have found themselves grappling with limited ad dollars, mirroring OEM ad spending during seasonal events is a strategy that can help maximize campaign efforts throughout the rest of the year.

“Digital marketing has increased substantially over the past couple of years, all dealers are struggling to find ways to be competitive in their market,” James Grace, senior director of analytics products at Cox Automotive, said in a phone interview with Auto Remarketing.

“I think one of the most effective ways of them being competitive is really paying attention to what the OEMs are doing and where they are putting national ad dollars.”

As OEMs push lease incentives, financing deals, and cash-back offers during holiday weekends such as President's Day last month, dealers should follow the lead of automakers, says Grace.

Following the Super Bowl ad madness in January or early February, President’s Day weekend usually stimulates auto sales for the month.

During this President’s Day weekend, the dealership network for Dealer.com — a Cox Automotive company based in Burlington, Vt. — saw website engagement go up significantly compared to the first six weekends of the year, according to Grace.

“In this particular case around President’s Day, from a dealer website perspective, it was a record weekend,” said Grace.

There was a 19-percent increase in both visits and quality visits that weekend, compared to the first six weekends of the year and a 30-percent increase in average search attributed visits.

“The data continues to suggest that where there’s a higher level of coordination, communication and alignment, the results are better in terms of activity we see on websites as well as sales,” Grace said.

“We’re seeing a couple of interesting trends. One is around incentives and ad spend, where if we look across all of the different OEMs, in some cases there’s a positive correlation. Roughly two-thirds of the time there’s a positive correlation between OEM incentives and digital ad spend by dealers.”

Consumer web traffic, which is a sign that consumers are shopping for cars on dealers’ sites, demonstrates the power of a coordinating with OEM activities, he explained.

“As we’re tracking more and more of these seasonal events, whether it’s President’s Day, the Super Bowl or anything else, we’re definitely seeing an increase in the trend of additional traffic being driven by those events,” Grace said.

“Ultimately, I think dealers need to pay more attention to what the cadence is around them — from OEMS, companies like us and other places where there’s this kind of seasonal ad spend,” added Grace. “When you sort of pour a little a bit of dealer focused advertising into that mix the return you get for that dealer focused advertising is multiplied in the context of these larger national efforts.”

Jessica Stafford, vice president of marketing for Cox Automotive, agrees with Grace.

She saw a similar increase in web traffic following ad campaigns launched during NBA All-Star weekend.

“I think the combination of this specific ad campaign as well as the normal behavior that we see for weekends is why we want dealers to spend a little bit more thought around what their mobile strategy is, specifically around advertising and other ways of capitalizing on theses sort of seasonal trends that we see,” she said. 

On the night of the game, Feb. 19, Cox Automotive's Autotrader brand had its highest mobile traffic day ever. The site reached an estimated 677,000 mobile sessions and 2.5 million mobile vehicle detail page views.

“The idea of leveraging the strength and the buying volume that’s out there from the bigger national advertisers is key,” Stafford said. “We see these trends and try to leverage them in order to drive even more consumers to their client’s listing.”