Artificial intelligence was a stand-alone technology thirty years ago, but its applications are now extensive in many aspects of marketing and sales.
According to the Gartner report, the adoption of artificial intelligence during 2018-2019 increased from 4% to 15%, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Artificial Intelligence has taken over the business world because of its ability to improve precision, deliver accurate results and increase job efficiency.
Moreover, practical algorithms can enhance the capabilities of gadgets like GPS tracking devices, voice assistance, and home automation systems, helping them adapt to new input via progressive machine learning techniques. On the other hand, AI-powered applications also automate corporate operations, personalize service delivery, and provide company-specific insights.
All in all, artificial intelligence has changed the world due to its extraordinary capacity to evaluate and learn from data. Medical, finance and marketing are just a few areas that have a strong demand for AI skills.
Artificial Intelligence has forever altered the way we identify digital marketing trends, thanks to excellent data analysis and its capacity to react to the input. Brands and marketers also use AI-led digital marketing to save time and resources through automation.
Here is how artificial intelligence helps digital marketers:
As AI becomes more widely available, marketers can now use it to analyze data, predict future trends, and enhance the quality of their brand. As a result, the way a brand conducts digital marketing has also evolved.
But, what does this mean for the year 2021?
First, businesses must adopt a more customer-centric approach and reinvent their marketing models to incorporate AI.
Artificial intelligence already automates manual and repetitive tasks, and the chances are that it will soon supplement human decisions as well. Furthermore, its growth will generate many good jobs while also altering the way current jobs are performed.
Digital marketers are looking for ways to use AI to satisfy the ever-evolving customers’ expectations. This is particularly the case for established businesses that have relied on traditional marketing methods for a very long time.
It is essential to realize that technological solutions are growing smarter, but so are your customers. They are knowledgeable and favor quick response platforms and search engines.
Artificial intelligence is being widely used in digital marketing, but why?
Let’s discuss some of its advantages.
38% of consumers believe that customer service can be improved by using AI. Artificial intelligence and big data solutions can evaluate user search trends and assist digital marketers in identifying important areas where they should focus their efforts.
AI enables digital marketers to create innovative advertising campaigns across social media sites where the targeted audience spends their time.
Marketing automation is similar to refueling traditional marketing businesses with several new technologies. Using AI, all manual digital marketing tasks will be automated.
Digital marketers can use AI tools to utilize the data and target the right audience at the right time. Marketing teams can use artificial intelligence tools and solutions in digital marketing to find potential buys and send personalized content that meets their needs.
Retaining customers was a difficult task for digital marketers earlier. However, they can now effectively serve, delight, and engage them with AI-powered customer service Chatbots. As a result, more than half of digital marketing firms rely on customer service bots to increase conversion rates.
One of the most significant advantages of using artificial intelligence in digital marketing is that it analyzes competitors’ moves and helps you generate more revenue than before. Moreover, AI assists marketers in identifying patterns that are likely to harm the future of the marketing business.
As the world has shifted to digital marketing, AI plays an essential role in optimizing and rationalizing marketing campaigns. There are several artificial intelligence digital marketing tools that the world uses to eliminate errors and to promote their business efficiently.
Here is a list of AI tools for digital marketing that can help you boost your business:
Let’s explore these in detail.
With the use of artificial intelligence, Phrasee helps you write email subject lines creatively. In addition, Phrasee’s AI-powered NLG technology generates several human-sounding copy variations to fit your overall brand identity.
Moreover, It employs customized language standards for all consumers to guarantee that each delivered copy is accurate for them. And the algorithm is persistent, which means that when you send the outcomes to Phrasee, it analyzes the consumer behavior for the future.
Key Features
This artificial intelligence (AI) technology determines the items and services that your audience prefers at any particular time. The tool employs a formula to determine the best interests of each contact, which are constantly updated based on their search history.
Moreover, it provides the data you require to build focused marketing and sales efforts that boost response rate, conversion rates, and client preference.
Key Features
HubSpot SEO is a crucial AI tool for people in the content department. Machine learning is used to evaluate how searchers perceive and classify your content as HubSpot SEO assists you in outranking your competition by improving your search engine ranks.
Websites that arrange their material around key themes or topics are rewarded by search engines. HubSpot SEO assists you in discovering and ranking for the subjects that are important to your consumers and organization.
Key Features
Acrolinx is a platform for content alignment that helps companies scale and improve the standards of content.
Acronlinx uses artificial intelligence to assess existing material from your brand and ensure that it adheres to your brand guidelines. Afterward, it examines your available content to determine what works and where it may be improved.
Moreover, the tool gives real-time feedback and ideas to help you improve your writing and strengthen unconvincing pages.
Key Features
MarketMuse employs an AI-powered assistant to aid marketers in developing a content strategy.
The tool tells you the appropriate keywords to use in specific subject categories and advises target keywords for your content. Moreover, it identifies gaps and possibilities for additional material and ranks them based on their likelihood of impacting your results.
The AI analyses your work and compares it to hundreds of publications on a similar subject, and tells you what is missing on your website.
Key Features:
ChatFuel uses an intelligent bot to automate Facebook Messenger chats. It is a famous AI chat solution, powering 46 percent of all Messenger automation solutions. Furthermore, it lets you automate FAQs and sales discussions and links customers to sales professionals in a live chat.
Key Features
Albert AI is a software that produces marketing promotions for your company automatically. It analyzes massive quantities of documents and utilizes them to conduct self-optimized ads.
Albert allows you to feed in your targeted consumer and creative content and leverages information from its database to identify the essential qualities of a loyal customer. The company then finds potential consumers with those characteristics, conducts sample campaigns on fewer customers, improves the promotion, and posts it on a broader scale.
Moreover, Albert integrates with your current marketing technology stack, allowing you to continue using your accounts, advertising, social, search, and other tools.
Key Features
Running a business is a full-time job in and of itself. It might be challenging to keep track of your rivals’ activity.
Crayon is a popular intelligence tool that allows you to follow what your competitors do and avoid on their websites. It will enable you to track any competitor’s entire digital presence, capturing everything from new hiring, pricing, and products.
Key Features
Automated bidding eliminates the uncertainty and heavy lifting associated with creating bids to fulfill your performance objective. Unlike CPC bidding, there is no need to change bids for individual ad groups or keywords manually.
Google Ads automatically sets bids for your ads based on the chance of that ad resulting in a click or conversion that helps you reach a specified business objective.
Various automated bidding techniques can assist you in increasing conversions, clicks, and visibility.
Key Features:
Social media marketers understand that communication with customers is key to building genuine relationships. However, it can be a bit challenging to do it online. For that, digital marketers use Persado.
This marketing language tool employs AI and machine learning to generate language most appealing to any particular audience, sector, or person.
By evaluating previous campaign reactions, Persado generates emotional profiles for each consumer category. It may then tailor material for your target while incorporating your brand’s voice.
Key Features:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already widely used in various industries, including healthcare, finance, retail, and e-commerce. It has created several chances for firms to get engaged in digital marketing.
Marketers have adopted artificial intelligence (AI) for their digital marketing strategies since it assists them in tracking client preferences and behaviors.
In digital marketing, AI delivers more significant customer insights and provides exceptional service to its clients. However, the use of a successful marketing plan has been a source of consternation for marketers. With the help of artificial technology digital marketing tools, you can get the necessary insight, reducing the requirement for human operations in deep learning.
Throughout his extensive 10+ year journey as a digital marketer, Sam has left an indelible mark on both small businesses and Fortune 500 enterprises alike. His portfolio boasts collaborations with esteemed entities such as NASDAQ OMX, eBay, Duncan Hines, Drew Barrymore, Price Benowitz LLP, a prominent law firm based in Washington, DC, and the esteemed human rights organization Amnesty International. In his role as a technical SEO and digital marketing strategist, Sam takes the helm of all paid and organic operations teams, steering client SEO services, link building initiatives, and white label digital marketing partnerships to unparalleled success. An esteemed thought leader in the industry, Sam is a recurring speaker at the esteemed Search Marketing Expo conference series and has graced the TEDx stage with his insights. Today, he channels his expertise into direct collaboration with high-end clients spanning diverse verticals, where he meticulously crafts strategies to optimize on and off-site SEO ROI through the seamless integration of content marketing and link building.
Throughout his extensive 10+ year journey as a digital marketer, Sam has left an indelible mark on both small businesses and Fortune 500 enterprises alike. His portfolio boasts collaborations with esteemed entities such as NASDAQ OMX, eBay, Duncan Hines, Drew Barrymore, Price Benowitz LLP, a prominent law firm based in Washington, DC, and the esteemed human rights organization Amnesty International. In his role as a technical SEO and digital marketing strategist, Sam takes the helm of all paid and organic operations teams, steering client SEO services, link building initiatives, and white label digital marketing partnerships to unparalleled success. An esteemed thought leader in the industry, Sam is a recurring speaker at the esteemed Search Marketing Expo conference series and has graced the TEDx stage with his insights. Today, he channels his expertise into direct collaboration with high-end clients spanning diverse verticals, where he meticulously crafts strategies to optimize on and off-site SEO ROI through the seamless integration of content marketing and link building.
Pay-per-click (PPC) remains one of the fastest paths to pipeline, but the economics vary widely by industry and are shifting as AI reshapes the SERP. CPCs are up versus prior years, conversion rates have improved in many categories, and lead quality is increasingly a function of how well advertisers feed first-party data into bidding models.
The table below summarizes 2025 search-PPC benchmarks by sector—CPC, conversion rate (CVR), and cost per lead (CPL)—so you can compare what “good” looks like in your niche and calibrate ROI assumptions.
Use these numbers as directional guardrails, then layer in your own close rates and LTV to get to the only metric that matters: profitable growth.
Sector | CPC (2025) | CVR (2025) | CPL (2025) | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Attorneys & Legal | $8.58 | 5.09% | $131.63 | Intake speed drives ROI. |
Home Services | $7.85 | 7.33% | $90.92 | Strong local intent. |
Healthcare (Physicians & Surgeons) | $5.00 | 11.62% | $56.83 | Appointment UX boosts CVR. |
Real Estate | $2.53 | 3.28% | ~$100.48 | Lean on LSAs/retargeting. |
B2B / Business Services | $5.58 | 5.14% | $103.54 | Optimize to qualified pipeline. |
Restaurants & Food | $2.05 | 7.09% | $30.27 | Fast payback with ordering. |
Automotive – Repair/Service | $3.90 | 14.67% | $28.50 | Top-tier CVR locally. |
In short, AI is changing the way PPC campaign management is occurring, and it's happening FAST.
ROI ≈ (Close-Rate × Avg Customer LTV ÷ CPL) − 1
Example (legal): if close-rate 12% and LTV $6,000 on CPL $132 → ROI ≈ (0.12×6000 / 132) −1 ≈ 4.45x (345% net). Improve any one input (faster intake bumps close-rate; better routing lowers CPL) and ROI jumps. Benchmarks for CPL/CVR above provide solid starting points. LocaliQ
PPC will keep paying when two things are true:
(1) you can convert and qualify leads quickly, and
(2) your bidding models are trained on the outcomes that actually make you money.
As AI compresses differences in targeting, the edge shifts to first-party data, creative velocity, and value-based bidding.
Treat the benchmarks above as starting points, then rebuild your ROI math from the ground up: ROI ≈ (Close Rate × LTV ÷ CPL).
Contact us today for your customized PPC audit to see how we can improve your search engine marketing ad spend.
When you’re running pay-per-click (PPC) ads, it’s easy to assume clicks mean genuine interest, but most car shoppers are just kicking tires online. Seeing your inventory once doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy anytime soon or even at all. If you want to reach the portion of clicks that come from serious buyers, you need to use retargeting.
The reality is that even prospects who intend to buy a car will bounce before contacting you or visiting your lot in person. And if you don’t have a way to keep them aware of your business, when they’re ready to buy, they’ll buy from a competitor. Running retargeted ads will keep your dealership in their awareness even after they bounce.
According to a 2022 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Study, the average person spends more than 14 hours searching for a new car, which includes visiting around 5 websites before making a purchase decision. The sites they visit include automakers, dealers, third-party sites, and pre-owned car lots with online inventory. Your prospects aren’t going to buy right away, so to get the sale you need to reel them back in. If you’re not using retargeting – also called remarketing – in your PPC campaign, you’re missing out on hot leads.
Buying a car isn’t a small decision. People compare makes, models, and deals and look for dealerships with great reputations. Getting a single click from a potential car buyer isn’t enough to make the sale. And when they bounce, there’s no guarantee they’ll remember you exist. You’re paying for all those initial clicks, and if potential leads never come back you’ve wasted your ad spend. When you use retargeting, you’ll have another chance to turn their curiosity into a conversation, and that’s why remarketing is an essential component in every PPC ad campaign.
PPC ad retargeting for car dealerships shows your ads to people who have already clicked on an ad or visited your website. When implemented strategically, it keeps your dealership visible across multiple platforms and follows those people across the web. For example, when you run retargeted ads on the Google Display Network, your display ads will show up on the blogs, news sites, and apps your prospects frequent.
You can also run retargeting campaigns on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. As long as your prospects scroll through their daily feed, your ads will show up for them if they’ve already interacted with you. YouTube also offers retargeting options with video ads that play right before the content. In fact, don’t underestimate the power of YouTube video advertising. According to data from Wyzowl, video ads convince 84% of people to buy a product or service.
Not everyone searching for a new car will respond to the same bland, boilerplate message. For example, someone browsing luxury SUVs isn’t going to click on an ad that says, “Low APR on all models!” That’s where remarketing shines. It lets you tailor your message to what each user actually wants, which increases response rates.
With retargeting, you can segment your audience based on their interests and behavior. For example, someone comparing financing terms won’t be swayed by flashy sports car imagery. With retargeting, you can show truck shoppers truck ads and sports car shoppers sports car ads. It sounds simple, but it’s one of the most powerful marketing methods of all time. People are far more responsive to messages that feel personal. You may have caught their attention with a general ad at first, but once they start browsing those SUVs on your website, you can retarget them with SUV ads.
When you use retargeting, you can provide different calls to action (CTAs) to users based on how they’ve engaged with your web pages. A visitor who spent a lot of time on your truck inventory pages can be served ads for your latest truck deals. Someone who checked out your lease specials can be hit with ads that talk about financing offers. It’s deceptively simple and brutally effective. Relevance is everything. When your ads reflect what the prospect was already thinking about, it feels personal and resonates.
A next-level tactic is using engagement depth to determine how strong your call to action should be. For instance:
· Multi-page viewers and long dwell times. These are warm leads and can be retargeted with stronger CTAs like “Book a test drive” and “Get a quote today.” They’re close to converting and just need a little push.
· Single-page bouncers. These are people who just peeked at your site. They can be re-engaged with lighter touchpoints like a general promotion or model comparison guide to reel them back in.
· Abandoned lead forms. If someone started filling out a form but didn’t finish, retarget them with a reminder and a stronger offer to sweeten the deal (e.g., “Complete your form for $500 off!”).
This level of nuance turns retargeting into a conversion machine and allows you to show the customer exactly what they want to see.
People don’t buy cars from whatever dealer they find first. That’s too risky. They buy from dealerships they trust and that feel familiar. You can build that sense of familiarity and trust through retargeting. For example:
· Consistent branding across ads. Using consistent branding, design, and messaging throughout your ads reinforces your dealership’s identity.
· Frequency builds familiarity. People need to see a brand between 5-7 times before they’ll remember it. Retargeting puts your dealership in front of people over and over again. Even if they don’t click right away, it’s helping to establish your credibility.
· Social proof works. When you use social proof like customer testimonials or awards in your ads it builds trust with your prospects.
Trust is earned over time, and retargeting will help you get it.
If you’re not using retargeting, your competitors definitely are. Car dealerships operate in one of the most brutally competitive markets out there, with national chains and franchise giants dominating search results and flooding ad channels with endless budgets. If you’re not showing up again and again, your competitors will, and they’ll scoop up all your leads.
The good news is you don’t need a massive marketing budget to get results. Retargeting allows smaller, local dealerships to play smart rather than trying to play big. When you focus on local PPC with hyper-targeted remarketing, you can reach a smaller, more qualified audience – people who are actually in your area, browsing your inventory, and likely to buy soon.
And unlike those cookie-cutter campaigns from national dealers, you can make your messaging feel personal and specific to your local community. That’s an edge big budgets don’t have.
Every visitor who leaves your website without converting is a potential sale but not necessarily lost. With smart retargeting, you can bring them back into your funnel and stay top-of-mind while your competitors waste money shouting into the void. Persistence wins the sale and retargeting is how you stay on the map.
To be blunt, search ads can get expensive fast, especially when clicks can cost a couple dollars per click. Pouring money into cold traffic is gambling on people who may not be ready to engage. Retargeting changes everything.
Display retargeting clicks typically cost a fraction of what you’d pay for search ads using competitive keywords. You’re no longer paying top dollar to get someone’s attention from scratch – you’re nudging people who already know who you are, and those people are more likely to respond. This makes retargeting one of the most cost-effective ways to use your advertising budget.
· Lower CPC, higher intent. Retargeting costs less per click, but you’re targeting people who already visited your site and showed interest.
· Better conversion rates. Familiarity breeds trust. Retargeted visitors are statistically more likely to convert than new users who just clicked an ad out of curiosity.
· Higher ROI. Since retargeting reaches warm leads, the cost of acquiring a lead is usually lower, which means your overall cost per lead is lower and you get better ROI.
If you’re skipping remarketing because you think it’s just something “extra” that doesn’t make a difference, you’re not saving money – you’re losing easy wins. Instead of perpetually chasing new, cold traffic, invest in converting the traffic you’re already getting. That’s exactly what remarketing does.
Generic ads are fine for first impressions, but once someone has browsed your inventory it’s time to get specific with dynamic retargeting. Here’s how it works:
When a prospect views a specific vehicle on your site, you can use retargeting ads to show them the exact vehicles they viewed and others like it down to the year, color, trim, and mileage. For example, if they looked at a black 2005 BMW 535i, that’s exactly what they’ll see in the ad – the same photos, same specs, all across sites like YouTube, Facebook, news platforms, and more. This reminds your prospects of exactly what they want.
Dynamic retargeting works by integrating your live inventory feed with your ad platform, like Google Ads or Meta. This means the vehicles displayed in your ads will always be up to date and won’t feature cars you sold last week.
Beyond personalization, dynamic ads are an incredible tool for creating a sense of urgency:
· Leverage scarcity. With these ads, you can leverage the power of scarcity by stating that your inventory won’t last. Using messages like “Only 1 left” or “Recently reduced” signals that the opportunity won’t last.
· Show what’s popular. If a particular model is getting a lot of views, let your prosects know. People don’t want to miss out on a good deal.
· Trigger action with FOMO. Fear of missing out is real, and when people see the car they want again – with a reminder that it might sell soon – they’re more likely to come in for a test drive.
By using retargeted ads, you can increase conversion rates by up to 200% compared to standard display ads. These ads feel more like a helpful reminder than an outright advertisement.
If you’ve never run paid ads before, it’s easy to assume your only options are basic keyword targeting and generic follow-up ads. But today’s ad platforms give you a buffet of hyper-specific targeting capabilities to fine-tune exactly who sees your ads, where, when, and how.
One of the most effective PPC retargeting tactics for car dealerships is location-based targeting. With radius targeting, you can serve ads to people within a specified distance from your dealership, like within 10-15 miles. These will be prospects who are not only likely to visit your site but could realistically walk into your showroom today. Don’t waste ad spend on clicks from people three states away.
Then there are device-specific campaigns. If your analytics show that 75% or your traffic comes from mobile (this is common), you can launch a mobile-only retargeting campaign with click-to-call buttons, mobile-optimized landing pages, and a map and directions built right into your ads. This will improve the user experience and increase conversion rates.
Timing also matters. When you schedule your ads you can control when they appear. Run them during lunch breaks, in the evenings, or on weekends when people have more time to browse car listings and are more likely to make big purchase decisions.
Other strategic targeting elements include:
· Demographic targeting. You can tailor your messages based on age, income level, and household status. A 25-year-old college grad and a 45-year-old parent are not shopping for the same reasons even though they might buy the same car.
· Behavioral triggers. You can create audiences for your retargeted ads based on repeat visits, clicks, video views, or interaction with a specific feature like a trade-in calculator.
· Lookalike audiences. Build new audiences that resemble your best customers. Platforms like Meta and Google are really good at identifying similar users based on their behavior online.
The bottom line is that retargeting doesn’t have to be broad. With the right strategy, it becomes a smart, cost-effective system for reaching the right prospects at the right time.
Have a sale, lease offer, or year-end clearance? Retargeting can amplify the urgency to act now. By offering short-term discounts and financing deals, you can tap into the urgency people feel when presented with time-sensitive offers. Emphasize the end date using a countdown timer or final deadline to create FOMO (fear of missing out).
With this type of retargeting, you can align your ads with your email messaging to increase conversions even more. For example, if you sent out a promotion to your email list, they’re likely to see your retargeted ads and be reminded of the deal you’re offering.
Retargeting is the PPC secret weapon most car dealerships don’t take advantage of. Using this strategy can make the difference between a one-time curious visitor and a buyer ready to schedule a test drive. If you’re spending money on clicks without retargeting your visitors, you’re wasting your ad spend.
At PPC.co, we specialize in high-performance white label PPC campaigns that include smart retargeting from day one. Whether you’re launching your first campaign or looking to tighten up your existing ad strategy, we can help you capture more leads, drive more traffic, and move cars off your lot. Let’s turn those clicks into closed deals – contact us now to get started.
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