Golf Cart Dealer Advertising: Where the Money Goes, and Where It Should

Golf cart dealer advertising works when the ad is for one cart, with a price, and it lands on a page for that exact cart that a buyer can shop from her phone. That is the whole test. Radio, billboards, print, mail, search and social all get judged by it. The ones that cannot pass run on faith.

Picture Thursday, 9:20 p.m. A woman twenty minutes from your store is on the couch with her phone. A lifted four-seater rolls through her feed with a price under it and your name on it. She was not shopping for a cart an hour ago. She taps.

If she lands on that cart, with that price, and a button to ask about it, the ad worked. If she lands on a homepage with a slideshow of the storefront, she is gone, and you paid either way.

What is golf cart dealer advertising?

Golf cart dealer advertising is every placement a dealership pays for to put a cart, or the store’s name, in front of someone who might buy. You rent the space. When the money stops, the ad stops.

That covers ads on Facebook and Instagram, search ads on Google, a paid spot on a listing site, the paper and the community newsletter, radio, billboards, postcards, sponsorships and show booths.

Here is what is not advertising, even though it sells carts:

• Your website and the page for each cart
• Your pin on the map
• Your reviews
• The posts and videos your team puts up without paying to push them

Those four are yours. Nobody sends a bill for them, and they do not turn off. They are also where every ad ends up. The buyer sees the ad, then checks the cart page, the map and the reviews before she messages anybody.

So golf cart advertising is the paid part, and it only works as well as the owned part it points to. Where it sits next to everything else is in golf cart dealer marketing.

Where should a golf cart dealer advertise?

Advertising for golf cart dealers comes down to eight paid places. If you have typed “where to advertise golf carts” into Google, this is the list, in the order to consider them, with what each one needs before it can sell a cart.

Facebook and Instagram. Consider these first. They can show the actual cart, the actual price and a tap that goes to that cart’s page, to people near your store who were not shopping yet. That is how a dealer creates demand instead of waiting for it. They need a real unit, a real price, a page for it, and someone answering messages the same evening. The angles are in golf cart Facebook ad examples.

Search ads. A buyer types “used six-seater near me” into Google and your ad is at the top. It is the one place where the buyer told you what she wanted before she saw you. It fits a dealer whose site has a page for every cart. Pointed at a brochure homepage, it fits nobody. The deeper version is in golf cart PPC, and which of the two to start with is in Facebook ads vs Google ads for golf cart dealers.

The listing sites you pay for. They put a cart in front of someone already looking, with your competitor’s carts one scroll away. They fit as a second window for your inventory, never as the only place your carts live.

Local print and the community newsletter. They fit when your buyers live in golf cart neighborhoods and read what lands in the driveway. They need one cart, one price and a short web address that goes to that cart. A photo of the building and a phone number ends right where the shopping should start.

Radio. It makes the name familiar to people driving to work. It cannot show a cart or a price, and it cannot be tapped. If you run it, give the listener one thing to remember: a short address for one cart, said twice, used nowhere else.

Billboards. Same deal, bigger. A sign fits a store that is hard to find from the highway, as directions to the lot. It does not sell the six-seater by the door, because nobody driving past knows which cart is on your lot this week.

Direct mail. A postcard can pass the test, if it carries one cart, one price and an address used nowhere else. When that is worth the stamp is in golf cart dealer direct mail.

Sponsorships and shows. The ball field banner and the charity tournament are goodwill. Do them because it is your town, and do not grade them by carts sold. A booth is different: carts and a salesperson in front of people for a weekend. It needs a plan for every name collected, which is in golf cart show booth. The people who send you buyers without a banner are in golf cart dealer local partnerships.

The further down the list, the more work the buyer has to do after the ad. Every step she has to take is a step she can skip.

What is the one rule that decides whether a golf cart ad works?

One cart. A price. A page a phone can shop.

Run every ad through three questions before it goes out.

1. Can you name the cart? Not “new arrivals.” The white four-seater with the rear seat, parked by the door.
2. Is the price in the ad? The same number that is on the windshield tag.
3. Does it land on that cart? The tap, the search or the typed address opens that unit, with a button to ask about it at 9:20 on a Thursday without calling anyone.

Three yeses and the ad can be judged. One no and it is a store ad wearing a cart’s photo.

An ad that cannot show her the cart, the price and a way to ask on one screen is asking her to come back later. Buyers do not come back later.

The rule also means the page comes before the ad. A dealer who runs ads first is paying to send people to a page that cannot close. Why that page loses buyers is in why golf cart buyers are not contacting your dealership.

What should every golf cart ad point to?

The cart’s own page. Not the homepage. Not an inventory page with forty thumbnails and no prices.

The page has to match the ad the second it opens:

• The same cart she tapped, with the same first photo
• The same price she saw
• Real photos of that unit, not the factory picture
• Seats, lift, battery, hours and color in text
• A way to ask about that cart that does not need a phone call

An ad nobody can tap still needs somewhere to go. A postcard, a newsletter ad or a radio spot gets a short address that opens the cart, or a small page of the carts like it. “Used four-seaters,” not “inventory.”

When the cart sells, the ad comes down that day or moves to the next unit like it.

What goes on that page, piece by piece, is in golf cart dealer landing page.

Why does golf cart dealership advertising fail when it sells the store?

Because nobody wakes up wanting a dealership. They want a cart.

“Family owned for twenty years.” “Largest selection in the tri-county area.” A drone shot of the lot. Those are store ads. They do not give a buyer a reason to tap today.

Now picture the same money on a cart ad. A used four-seater, the real one on your lot, at $8,900, four photos, “Delivery this week.” A price she can react to, a cart she can picture in her garage, and a reason to tap now, because somebody else can buy it by Saturday.

A store ad asks the buyer to want you. A cart ad shows her something she already wants and tells her you have it.

And a store ad cannot be judged. A cart ad on a cart page tells you which unit got looked at and who reached out. A store ad tells you a lot of people saw it. Seeing is not a number a dealership can cash.

What goes in a golf cart ad brief before any money is spent?

Seven lines on one sheet. The owner fills it in, or the ad does not run. Here is the template, filled in with a made-up cart.

• Which cart: the gray lifted four-seater, stock tag 118, parked by the service door.
• Which price: $9,600. The same number on the tag, the page and the ad.
• Which page: that cart’s own page, opened on a phone this morning to check it.
• Who it is for: people who live close enough to come see it or have it delivered.
• Where it runs: Facebook and Instagram.
• What counts as it working: buyers ask about this cart by name, and it sells.
• When you look: Friday at 4, with the week’s deals on the desk.

Then one name at the bottom: who answers the messages this ad brings in, Saturday night included.

The brief forces the cart and the price to be decided before anybody spends a dollar. On Friday it gives you something to hold the ad against. An ad with no brief cannot fail, which is why it never gets turned off.

If the ad is a video, a walk-around of that unit shot on a salesperson’s phone is enough. How to shoot it is in golf cart video marketing.

How much goes behind the ad is its own question. The store-wide number is in how much should a golf cart dealer spend on marketing, and the Facebook side is in golf cart Facebook ads budget.

How do you tell whether a golf cart ad worked without a reporting tool?

Ask every buyer. Write it on the deal. Count on Friday.

1. Ask the same question every time. “What got you to reach out about this one?” Every buyer, not the ones you remember to ask.
2. Write down her words, not a category. “Saw the gray four-seater on Facebook.” “Postcard.” “Drove by.” If she says “online,” ask one more: “Which cart were you looking at?”
3. Put it on the deal. Top corner of the deal sheet, in pen. Do the same for the buyer who asked about a cart and did not buy.
4. Count on Friday. One mark per answer. Hold the marks against each brief.

Judge an ad by conversations and sold carts. Not clicks, not reach, not likes. Say one ad gets a thousand likes and nobody asks about the cart. That is a popular photo. Say another gets eleven people asking and the cart sells that Saturday. That is advertising, because clicks do not pay the floor plan.

Then check how fast your team answered. Messages that sat in the inbox until Monday are zero conversations. And look at which units got asked about. That is your next month of ads.

If people are tapping and nobody is asking, the usual reasons are in golf cart Facebook ads not working.

The radio spot and the billboard get the same Friday. If no buyer has said either one out loud after a season of asking, you have your answer.

When should a golf cart dealer advertise: before the season, in it, or after it?

All three, with a different job each time.

Before the season. Advertise the units you expect to be asked about first. Use these weeks to get every cart page right, because the busy weeks are a bad time to find out a page has no price.

In the season. The lot changes fast, so the ads follow the lot. A cart sells, its ad comes down, the next unit goes up.

After the season. The aged units get their own ads. The six-seater that has been on the lot since spring. The trade-in nobody walks over to. Each one at the price it needs to move, because the other option is another month of floor plan and a wholesale call. A dealership selling about 24 carts a month sold 72 aged carts in 45 days, in winter. The online showroom was fixed first, then demand was turned on: 72 golf carts in 45 days.

A lake store and a beach store do not share a calendar. Set the three stretches by your own delivery log.

Which five ads should a golf cart dealer stop running?

Five, each with what to run in its place.

1. The logo ad. Your name, your slogan, your building. It tells people you exist. They knew. Run in its place: the same space with one cart, its price and the address of its page.
2. The new-arrivals post with no prices. Every comment is “how much” and every reply is “DM us,” which asks the buyer to do your job. Run in its place: one of those arrivals, by itself, with the price in the first line.
3. The banner on the listing site. Paying to be a banner next to your competitors’ carts is money handed to the competition with a bow on it. Run in its place: complete listings, with the same photos and price as your own cart page.
4. The search ad pointed at the homepage. A buyer who typed exactly what she wants, landing on a slideshow. Run in its place: the same ad pointed at the carts she searched for, or nothing until that page exists.
5. The billboard you cannot judge. If you cannot say how many carts the sign sold last year, and you cannot, it is a donation to the sign company. Run in its place: directions to the lot on the sign, and the selling money on cart ads.

None of these is a dumb ad. A smart dealer bought every one because that is what advertising looked like when he started. The buyer changed. The ad has to follow her to the couch.

What are the common golf cart advertising mistakes?

Seven, and every one of them happens at good stores.

1. Advertising a cart that already sold. It left on a trailer Tuesday and the ad ran through Sunday. When the stock tag comes off, the ad comes down.
2. Two prices for one cart. One in the ad, another on the page, a third on the windshield. The buyer assumes the highest one is real and the others are bait.
3. “Call for price.” She is on the couch at 9:20. She is not calling.
4. The factory photo. A catalog picture of a cart you may not have in that color. Use the unit on your lot, with your building behind it.
5. The whole lot in one ad. Twelve carts and no price is a store ad again. One cart per ad.
6. Nobody on the floor knows the ad is running. A buyer walks in Saturday and says “I saw the gray one on Facebook,” and the salesperson says “which gray one?” Tape the week’s briefs by the sales desk.
7. Messages that wait until Monday. The ad did its job Friday night. The reply showed up after she had messaged the dealer down the road.

What has to be in place before golf cart dealer advertising pays?

Three things, in this order: the online showroom, the map, and the reviews. Advertising comes fourth.

The online showroom first. Every cart on the lot gets its own page with photos, a price, the details in text, and a button to ask about it, kept current from a phone by your team. Without it, every ad above lands on nothing. This is what golf cart dealer websites are supposed to be. What that showroom does after hours is in golf cart online showroom.

The map second. The pin, the hours and the photos have to be right before you pay for a tap, because a buyer who sees your ad checks the map next.

Reviews third. The buyer who taps the cart ad scrolls down to see who she is about to message. Recent reviews that name a cart and a town close that gap. Six old ones open it.

Then advertise. Backwards, you decide that ads do not work for golf carts. The ad was not the problem. The page was. The other ways to fill the pipeline are in golf cart dealer lead generation.

Golf cart dealer advertising on one page

Tape this by the sales desk.

• One cart. A price. A page a phone can shop.
• One brief per ad, filled in before any money moves.
• Ask every buyer, write it on the deal, count on Friday.
• When the cart sells, the ad comes down.
• One name owns the messages, weekends included.

An ad for a cart, that lands on that cart, and gets answered before the buyer puts her phone down. Everything else is a sign on the bypass.

Where does Cart Launch fit?

We build the online showroom every ad should point to.

Every cart has its own page with real photos, a real price and the details in text. Your team keeps it current from a phone. You see which carts got looked at and who reached out, so Friday is about sold carts and not about reach. The domain and the content stay yours.

Cart Launch runs Facebook and Instagram ads for established dealers, only after the online showroom is ready to catch what the ad sends. We run Google search ads for dealers as well. We do not answer or follow up the leads. Your team does that. How the unit ads are built is in Facebook ads for golf cart dealers, and the search side is on Google Ads for golf cart dealers.

Between the owners there is 14+ years operating in 8-figure golf cart dealerships.

If your ads send buyers to a homepage and not to a cart, book a call. What it covers is laid out on the call.

Keep reading

• Golf cart dealer reviews strategy: how to get them and where they sell carts
• Golf cart lead follow-up: answer fast, sell the cart
• Golf cart dealership marketing ideas that sell carts