DealerCenter Online Ad Post Standard User Guide
Online Ad Post - Standard The Online Ad Post Standard product provides DealerCenter users with an improved, easy-to-use interface for managing their online advertising needs. The Online Ad Post Standard product includes numerous enhancements to the previous Web Ad Upload product, including a simple and effective tool for creating online classified listings on Craigslist and ebay Motors. 2 Online Ad Post Standard includes the following features: Template structure to support easy posting of vehicle copy and images to online classified sites like Craigslist and ebay Motors Automatic publishing of DealerCenter inventory and images to your DealerCenter Dealer Website and your AutoTrader and Cars.com accounts Enhanced photo management capabilities for your vehicle listings Special pricing rules so you can change prices on vehicles for selected date ranges Automatic removal of vehicles marked as sold in DealerCenter from your Dealer Website and AutoTrader and Cars.com accounts
Inventory Posting Options One of the new features of Online Ad Post Standard 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 3rd Party Sites: Dealers subscribed to the Online Ad Post Deluxe product can 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. 3
Special Pricing Another new feature in the Online Ad Post Standard 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. 4 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 Standard, the same vehicle description copy is reused everywhere 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. 5 Featured Vehicles: Enabling this setting will cause the vehicle to appear in the Featured Vehicles section on the homepage of your DealerCenter Dealer Website. Publish Autocheck: Enabling this setting will allow consumers to view the Autocheck Vehicle History report on your DealerCenter Dealer Website. This requires that an Autocheck report be run for this vehicle. 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 - Standard 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. 6
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 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. 7
Editing Vehicle Photos To help you create the most attractive advertisements possible, Online Ad Post Standard 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 selector Crop 8 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 9
Editing Vehicle Photo (continued) Click the Rotate button to adjust the orientation of the image and click Save 10
Using Image Ad Templates One of the most exciting new features in Online Ad Post - Standard 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. 11 Click on the Classified Ad Template button in the tab to Open the Classified Ad Template selector
Using Image Ad Templates (continued) 12 To preview the Image Template, select the Image Template by marking the box next to the template name and click the preview button
Using Image Ad Templates (continued) After selecting the image template. Click the Create Images button to save the images to your computer Upon Save, a Zip File with the vehicle s stock number will be created on your computer 13
Using HTML Ad Templates Another new feature included in Online Ad Post Standard is HTML Classified Ad Templates. Instead of manually typing and adding pictures to your vehicle listings for online classified sites like Craigslist and ebay Motors, Online Ad Post Standard provides easy to create HTML templates that can be copied and pasted into the classified listing for quick creation. 14 Click on the Classified Ad Template button in the tab to Open the Classified Ad Template selector
Using HTML Ad Templates (continued) 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 15
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. 16 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 17