The new general manager of Digipurple, Chris Smith, told GoAutoNews Premium that other digital advertising agencies would be envious of the relationship because Digipurple has access to great information in real time that allows Digipurple to optimise dealer campaigns and perform better.

Mr Smith said the relationship between Digipurple and Dealer Solutions was fundamental to the agency’s business model.

For example, when a dealer adds a car for sale to its inventory feed, which Dealer Solutions manages online, Digipurple is able to automatically purchase keyword search terms on Google for that vehicle’s make, model, variant, year, colour, body style, etc.

“Because Dealer Solutions manages the online inventory, the search terms are automatically triggered by the taking of stock into inventory. Our inventory-based campaigns are automatically marketing vehicles once they hit the DMS feed,” he said.

“This is pumped into Google, Instagram and Facebook so we are using the inventory feeds from the dealers as real-time advertising data and constantly updating and improving the campaigns.”

Mr Smith said Digipurple could monitor the results in real-time.

“How much did their calls and enquiries increase? We can track that through the website because Dealer Solutions is one platform with analytics at our fingertips,” he said.

“I know that when we can access and control the inventory on the website, the website pages and traffic analytics, we can help the dealership with the marketing and sales. We can pull lots of different levers, see direct responses on our actions because we have access to everything that is going on so that we can perform well for our clients.”

Mr Smith said that Digipurple could see:

• “If inventory is increasing or decreasing; whether dealers are using all their stock; this can inform our campaign”
• “Watch through Google Analytics and our own customised dashboards, we can see real-time traffic; are our campaigns driving quality traffic? We can test for that and make adjustments.”
• “Where that traffic is going and what is it doing; is the traffic we are driving generating a phone call or an online chat or an enquiry?”

“So that is really helping our clients because they don’t have to call us up and tell us what’s working, we can see that at our end, and make adjustments,” he said.

“The other thing is that when you have access to all this information in real time we can summarise all this information and have really good consultative calls with our dealers. At a minimum we do it once a month but normally every week and we tell them what things we are doing and moving budgets to do this and that.

“We get to the point with our clients where they trust us and we really become an extension of their own marketing team.

“We also believe that SEO is a fundamental building block to any digital strategy that, as a dealer, you have to invest in.

“There is no magic silver bullet to SEO. It is just work. It is posting content. It is linking that content. It is doing the things that need to be done to index your website so that you show up in an organic way that is credible and establishes domain authority.

“So I believe we are providing services that help dealers’ brands stand out on their own and sell cars. We know it works because we test it and prove out the results.

“I know the one thing that Digipurple can do is drive qualified traffic to their websites and do it in a transparent and fair manner. As long as we do that we will have long-term customers who trust us and get great value.

“There are some well-established heavy hitters in this industry that serve a purpose but they have been around for a while and the world is changing. I am not going to bet against Google and Facebook who are really good at listening to their customers and providing them with good services.

“If we can leverage those sites to get more car sales then that is going to be a road we are going to want to go down.”

Mr Smith said Digipurple has doubled its client list in just two months and continues to innovate in the dealer advertising arena.

By John Mellor