Building effective specials pages is one of the oldest problems car dealers face every month. Why? It’s time-consuming, it’s hard to keep up with the OEM offers and they simply don’t have the tools to do it efficiently. So, dealers are forced to use dead-end tactics that don’t help car buyers find what they’re looking for.

Are your new car incentives and offers as frightening as the pages I found? Check out these five examples of new car specials pages that will haunt these dealers long after Halloween.

Search #1

In this example, I searched for Chrysler 300 lease deals.

Unfortunately, the search results page didn’t show a link to the specials page, only the home page. It took me four clicks to get to this page.

There were only four or five specials listed and they didn’t include the different trim levels.

It does show one lease price, not sure if this is with money down or zero down.

No APR/finance rate or payment example is shown.

Only shows stock photos (and someone is taking the time to manually build these banner images)

No additional vehicle info or model landing pages. (Additional vehicle info can be found, but I had to start my search over and go into the search results pages. Doesn’t have to be this hard to find the info)

I’ll give them points for adding the text disclaimer, unfortunately, it’s not enough to help optimize the page to rank for any relevant searches.

Only five specials, limited payment offers, and this page were hard to find on mobile.

Search #2

In this example, I searched for Ford F150 prices.

Again, the specials pages didn’t show up in the search results. Multiple clicks to find this page.

No paid search ad displayed, only third-party listings.

I got exactly what I was looking for – the price. And just one price. $40,890. No payments, no APR’s and no lease options.

The “More Info” CTA button took me to a generic contact us form which defaulted to a used car dept. lead.

The lead form requires my zip code.

Finance payments, rate and lease offer isn’t displayed.

Search #3

In this example, I searched for Grand Cherokee lease prices.

Yet again, the specials page didn’t rank on page one of the search results.

This page is one large image. (Google needs more signals regarding the context of the page, a single image doesn’t provide those signals)

The page isn’t mobile-friendly. Pinching and zooming didn’t help and I left this page quickly.

The prices and specials displayed only show the discount off the MSRP. No payments. (At least none that I could see, they may have been there but just not visible.)

If there are payments on this page, they can’t be seen.

Search #4

In this example, I searched for Nissan Maxima Finance Offers.

No finance offers on the home page for this dealer. A paid search ad which took me to their Featured New Vehicles results page for Nissan Altimas. Yes, Altimas.

The paid search ad didn’t include relevant offer info. Plain vanilla ad.

Three more clicks and I found the page below. Another giant image. And no relevant page copy.

I needed to dive into the fine print to determine if these were zero down or money down leases.

No finance rate or payment info. Just a lease offer. (Which isn’t what I initially set out to find)

This page is a dead-end. No primary call to action. Yes, there is a standard click to call icon at the top, the chat icon on the left and the contact us links buried at the bottom of the page (which are for the College Grad, Military, and VPP programs) Shoppers need to be directed to the next step if you want deeper engagement.

Search #5

In this example, I searched for Toyota Camry Lease Deals.

There were two results on page one: a paid search ad and an organic result for the home page.

Neither result included any relevant information regarding lease deals – the paid ad text was simply, “Toyota Camrys in stock – knowledgeable well-trained staff.”

The paid search ad linked to the page below – 14 vehicles with the MSRP listed with a strikethrough and a link instructing me to sign in to view the pricing.

I played along and clicked. The instructions described their “upfront and honest” approach to offering a “hassle-free pricing system” and requires users to sign up and log in. Squeeze pages are the opposite of hassle-free and very difficult to pull off successfully.

Several additional clicks took me deeper into the automated incentives page. This showed five different choices of 1.9% APR or either 36-60 months – with no payment examples, just choices for the length of the loan.

Dealers Need Better Marketing Tools

I understand the processes and tools dealers use to create, distribute and manage their new vehicle offers are broken. It’s safe to say the majority of dealers face these issues every month. The previous five results are not unique.

Common problems dealers experience managing specials

Specials pages aren’t optimized properly and don’t rank organically on page one for long-tail or local branded search terms.

Paid search ads are not relevant, don’t include current pricing info and drive shoppers to pages that still don’t give the offer info.

Home pages often don’t provide quick links to effective specials pages. (Pages showing aged inventory are not specials pages – they should just be called “Older vehicles we’re trying to sell quickly”)

Specials listed don’t provide enough relevance. Items such as discounts from MSRP’s, APR’s and multiple lease offers aren’t displayed.

Offers are usually for one trim level. What if buyers are interested in something different?

Landing pages don’t have direct, a simple call to actions specific to the individual offers (forms or click to call)

None of the sites I visited had model-specific landing pages with additional information about the

The marketing process should resemble an omnichannel approach. Offers and incentives need to be consistent when they’re distributed to your organic, paid and even your email marketing channels.

Landing pages need to be mobile-friendly. PDF images and static pages which prevent easy viewing even without zooming are frustrating and cause shoppers to bounce quickly.

Users remember poor mobile experiences and often don’t return!

DealerTeamwork fixed all of these problems

How? We built the industry’s first MPOP® – a Merchandising, Personalization and Optimization Platform.

Yes, that’s a mouthful. It’s really quite simple. Launch Control helps make digital marketing easy to understand and use. How? By turning transactional data into your competitive advantage.

From one central spot, dealers can create, distribute, and manage relevant vehicles marketing campaigns easier than ever. What typically took up to 20 hours per rooftop now takes minutes per vehicle. And, it ensures your offers are up-to-date and seen by more in-market shoppers looking to buy.

The live visual editor lets you instantly publish multiple offers to your:

Specials page

Responsive, model-specific landing pages

Email campaigns

Paid search campaigns

The end result? Mobile-friendly, conversion-optimized pages filled with highly relevant content. And it takes considerably less time to do it effectively.

Plus, model-specific pages help drive higher quality traffic and creates higher engagement.

Manage your offers and content in real-time!

Stop scaring car shoppers away. Irrelevant pages, missing offers, and ineffective campaigns only create missed sales opportunities for your dealership.

Request a Launch Control demo and see how easy it is to change the way you manage your dealership’s digital marketing.

Contact DealerTeamwork for a demo.