DealerCenter Online Ad Post User Guide Version 2.1
Online Ad Post The Online Ad Post product provides DealerCenter users with an improved, easy to use interface for managing their online advertising needs. Online Ad Post is a full-service solution that supports your online marketing efforts posting to free classified sites like Craigslist, Vast, Oodle, and ebay classifieds, as well as providing free exporting to your accounts with over 100 additional sites 2 Online Ad Post includes the following features: Choice of automated or manual creation of vehicle listings on Craigslist Reporting on automated Craigslist ad submission, ad view activity, ad status and email activity Pre-configured feeds to over 100 3rd- party online marketing sites Enhanced photo management capabilities for your vehicle listings Special Pricing Rules so you can changes prices on a vehicle for specified date ranges Automatic removal of vehicles marked sold in DealerCenter from your online marketing resources
Contents Online Ad Post...2 Contents...3 Inventory Posting Options...4 Configuration of Craigslist Feed...5 Configuration of Social Media Feeds...6 Configuration of 3rd Party Feeds...7 Special Pricing...8 Tab...9 Adding Vehicle Photos...10 Editing Vehicle Photos...12 Automated Ad Posting...15 Classified Reports...17 Email Leads Report...18 Ads Submitted Report...19 Using Image Ad Templates...20 Using HTML Ad Templates...23 3
Inventory Posting Options One of the new features of Online Ad Post is automatic publishing of your vehicles to selected online marketing resources. By enabling the automatic publishing settings, all new and updated vehicles are synced with your selected online marketing settings every time a vehicle record is saved in DealerCenter. Select your posting option preference on the tab, then click Apply, then click OK. Configure Upload to Craigslist: Follow this link to purchase posting credits for Craigslist and configure the settings for vehicle posts to Craigslist. Configure Upload to Social Media Sites: Follow this link to establish and configure the settings for vehicle posts to Facebook and YouTube. 4 Configure Upload to 3rd Party Sites: Follow this link to establish and configure vehicle feeds with over 100 online marketing sites. Auto-publish all In Stock Vehicles: This setting will publish every vehicle in your active inventory to all of your selected online marketing resources. Auto-publish vehicles with photos: This setting will only publish vehicles that have photos to all of your selected online marketing resources. Adding photos to a vehicle will cause it to be included in this group. Do not automatically post vehicles: This setting allows you to manually manage which vehicles are published and does not automatically post active inventory.
Configuration of Craigslist Feed Online Ad Post provides automated posts of your inventory to Craigslist. To configure and purchase credits for Craigslist postings, click on the Configure Upload to Craigslist link in the Tab of the Dealer Options Window. Select the number of Craigslist Credit that you wish to purchase. Upon clicking on the desired package, you will be taken to a secure page for processing the transaction. Select the Craigslist Market in which you would like your Craigslist ads to be listed (Multiple market selection coming soon). Select the ad template to be used for your Craigslist Ads. Contact your DealerCenter rep for examples of each template. 5
Configuration of Social Media Feeds Online Ad Post provides automated posts of your inventory to Facebook and YouTube. To enable vehicle posts to your social media outlets, click on the Configure Upload to Social Media Sites link in the Tab of the Dealer Options Window. Enter your YouTube user name and password to post your inventory to your Dealership s YouTube Page 6 Enter the URL for your Dealership s Facebook page and follow the displayed steps to post your inventory to your Dealership s Facebook page
Configuration of 3rd Party Feeds Online Ad Post provides automated upload to your accounts with over 100 3rd party marketing sites. To enable these upload feeds, click on the Configure Upload to 3rd Party Sites link in the Tab of the Dealer Options window. Active Upload Feeds: Displays the information pertaining to your active upload feeds. Click on the History link to view a detailed history for each of the sites. New Custom post: If one of your existing online marketing sites isn t available as a pre-configured feed, click the New Custom button to create an upload feed for almost any site on which you would like to upload/list your vehicles. 7 Active Upload Feeds: Displays a list of available, pre-configured feeds for online marketing sites made. Click the Sign Up link and enter your account/subscriber ID to establish the feed. Note: Posting to most 3rd party sites requires an existing active account with that provider to be able to upload your vehicle feed.
Special Pricing Another new feature in the Online Ad Post product is the ability to set a special price that will appear on your vehicle ad listings for a selected time range. The Special Pricing function is a handy way to manage sale pricing on your vehicles and have pricing automatically restored to Advertising Price upon your sale s end date. 8 To set the Special Price, click on the Special Price dropdown and enter in the Special Price amount and dates you would like the Special Price to appear on your ads. The ads for this vehicle will revert back to the Advertising Price once the Special Price End Date has passed.
Tab The tab, previously called the Web Ad Upload tab, streamlines the publishing of your vehicle ads. Users previously needed to individually enter a vehicle description for each online marketing resource, but now, with Online Ad Post, the same vehicle description copy is reused for all places the vehicle ad will be published and only needs to be entered once. Description: The vehicle description is the text that will be used in all of the online advertisements for this vehicle. Call for Price: Enabling this setting will display Call for Price on your ad instead of displaying the Advertising Price on your vehicle ads. Featured Vehicles: Enabling this setting will cause the vehicle to appear in the Featured Vehicles section on the homepage of your DealerCenter Dealer Website. 9 Publish Vehicle: Select the online marketing resources on which you would like to publish this vehicle and have your ad appear. Add Video Link: Dealers subscribed to the Dealer Website product can upload video files to be displayed within the vehicle listing.
Adding Vehicle Photos Online Ad Post greatly simplifies the process of managing vehicle photos by allowing a single photoset to be used for all online marketing efforts. Photos can be added to the vehicle record by dragging the files from your desktop into the photos container, or by clicking on the Add Photos button and selecting the desired images. 10
Add Vehicle Photo (continued) To Edit image Remove image from vehicle ad After adding the photos, you can change the order in which the images will be displayed by clicking in on an image and dragging it into the desired position. The image in the top left corner will be used as the primary, default photo in all vehicle ads. 11
Editing Vehicle Photos To help you create the most attractive advertisements possible, Online Ad Post supports basic editing of uploaded vehicle images. Click on the pencil icon to open the Image Viewer, allowing you to crop or rotate an uploaded photo Photo order Crop Crop selector 12 Photo name Drag to rearrage vehicle image order Rotate image to clockwise or Counter clockwise Previous image Next image
Editing Vehicle Photo (continued) From the Image Viewer, you can crop an image by clicking on the Crop Selector and setting the cropping area of the photo Select the area to be cropped and click the Crop button to complete the edit 13
Editing Vehicle Photo (continued) Click the Rotate button to adjust the orientation of the image and click Save. 14
Automated Ad Posting Online Ad Post allows you to easily post your inventory to Craigslist as well as a number of other 3rd Party listing service, including Cars.com and AutoTrader. In order to publish your inventory, simply select the sites on which you would list to post your vehicles and hit Save To create an ad for Cars.com, AutoTrader, or one of your 3rd Party Sites, select the desired options and click Save to initiate the post. The feeds to 3rd Party Sites can be configured in the Dealer Options window or in the Online Marketing Menu. To create a Craigslist ad, select the Craigslist option and click Save to initiate the post. Craigslist credits must be purchased through the Dealer Options window or in the Menu. 15
Automated Craigslist Ad Posting (continued) When potential customers viewing your Craigslist ads click on them, they re taken to a webpage with vehicle information and information to contact your dealership by phone or email. This creates the valuable lead you want and need with tracking so you can review the volume of leads your ads are generating. Email inquiries from the webpage will be directed to the email address set in the Craigslist settings page. 16
Classified Reports Online Ad Post provides reports to track the status and performance of your automatically published Craigslist ads, including an email leads report, Craigslist activity report, ads submitted report, and ads viewed report. To view reports select Classified Reports from the menu. 17
Email Leads Report The Email Leads report provides a daily and hourly recap of all email leads generated by your automatically posted Craigslist ad listings. Displays the number of email leads submitted per day for the selected month. 18 Displays the hours during which email leads are submitted throughout the day. Displays the vehicle information, contact information, and submission time for all email leads submitted during the selected month.
Ads Submitted Report The Ads Submitted report provides a recap of the submission date and status for all of your automatically posted Craigslist ads, as well as links to your live Craigslist listings. Displays the current status of the Craigslist listing. Displays the vehicle and submission date for the Craigslist listing. 19 Clickable links to the ad postings/listings for the vehicle on Craigslist. Clickable links to the search results page for the Craigslist listing.
Using Image Ad Templates One of the most exciting new features in Online Ad Post is the image based classified ad template. If you are listing your vehicles on sites that prohibit the use of externally referenced images and content, the Image Ad Template allows you to generate JPEG images containing your contact info, as well as the vehicle s information and equipment. The images created by the Image Ad template can be uploaded to your classified listings along with your other vehicle photos, saving you the time of manually entering the vehicle s information and ensuring that your customers will be able to contact you. 20 Click on the Classified Ad Template button in the tab to Open the Classified Ad Template selector.
Using Image Ad Templates (continued) To preview the Image Template, select the Image Template by marking the box next to the template name and click the preview button. 21
Using Image Ad Templates (continued) After selecting the image template. Click the Create Images button to save the images to your computer. 22 Upon Save, a Zip File with the vehicle s stock number will be created on your computer.
Using HTML Ad Templates Another new feature included Online Ad Post is the support of manual creation of HTML advertising templates that can be copied and pasted into online advertising sites that are capable of rendering HTML content. This can be a handy tool to supplement the automated posting efforts to test limited posting in new regional markets or to manually post to ad sites that don t support automated uploads/feeds. Click on the Classified Ad Template button in the tab to Open the Classified Ad Template selector. 23
Using HTML Ad Templates (continued) 24 To preview what the vehicle listing looks like in a template style option, select a template style by marking the box next to the template name and click the Preview button.
Using HTML Ad Templates (continued) After selecting the template that you would like to use for the vehicle listing, click the Copy HTML button to add this information to your computer s clipboard. 25 Navigate to the classified site on which you would like to list your vehicle and paste the HTML content into the Posting Description. You will see a block of HTML code, but this code will be fully rendered as the previously previewed ad once the post is created. Because the HTML ad contains all of the images that have been uploaded to this vehicle, there is no need to add separate images to the posting and you can skip this step and click Done with Images.
Using HTML Ad Templates (continued) The fully-rendered ad listing will be live and available for your review. For subscribers to the DealerCenter Dealer Website product, clicking on this listing will link back to your DealerCenter website, allowing consumers to submit credit applications and live leads regarding this vehicle 26