CHICAGO -

 In an effort to offer dealers the ability to drive potential customers shopping on independent automotive sites directly to a dealership’s website, marketing company Automotive Internet Media has released a new product.

The company contends that its new offering — CarClicks — will help drive more auto shoppers to listings on dealership websites in a simple, easy fashion.

Here’s how it works.

First, dealership inventory is displayed with priority placement on a network of automotive shopping sites.

Next, when shoppers click on the dealership’s listing, they are taken directly to the vehicle detail page on the dealership’s website, officials explained.

“We believe that CarClicks will quickly become one of the most effective and efficient marketing programs in the automotive industry,” said Tony French, president of Automotive Internet Media.

“Dealers market their inventory to millions of online shoppers, and they only pay a small fee when an actual shoppers in interested in their vehicle,” he added.

Delving deeper into the new program, AIM noted that CarClicks works like a form of pay-per-click advertising but only targets auto shoppers who are “deep in the purchasing funnel interested in a specific vehicle.”

When a customer is knee-deep in car specs and have narrowed the search results to his or her ZIP code, if he or she wants to find out even more about a particular car, the shoppper can click into the vehicle detail page; "but instead of landing the consumer on shopping site’s page, we drive the consumer directly to the dealership website,” AIM explained.

“When the consumer clicks on a specific car, the dealerships is charged a very small fee. It’s very efficient in buying targeted and quality traffic,” the company added.

And once the shopper is on the dealership site, they can can communicate with the dealership based on the conversion tools on their site (i.e., phone, chat, lead form, etc.).

“It‘s known that dealer websites are far better at converting sales when compared to 3rd party lead forms and other marketing efforts. CarClicks’ objective is to drive the online shopper directly to the dealership website,” company officials stressed.

And also similar to Pay-Per-Click programs, AIM’s offering allows dealerships the ability to set a daily ad budget.

Once the budget is met, the company will continue to promote the vehicle through the 3rd party sites, but it will no longer drive the consumer to the dealership’s website.

Dealerships can monitor their daily budget and results through the CarClicks’ backend software and through its website analytics, the company shared.

“Dealers are tired of paying thousands of dollars for leads that aren’t converting,” French said.

“Our program drives quality, yet inexpensive traffic directly the dealership where consumer’s feels more comfortable communicating with a local business,” he concluded.