Car Sales Leads with Pinterest Ads

Shoppable pins and a vehicle catalog for the shopper who is planning a purchase months out, with the intent of search and the reach of a feed.

Pinterest Ads is the advertising account for a platform that behaves like a search engine with pictures. People come to it to plan: a road trip, a family, a garage, a move, a first truck. They type what they want and save what they find, and the platform knows what they have been saving for months. Ads appear as pins in the search results and the home feed, and they can be shoppable, which means a pin for a specific vehicle from the store's catalog, with its price, that clicks through to that unit. Video pins and lead forms are also available, and targeting covers geography, interest and the keywords people search.

The audience skews female, skews toward households making purchase decisions, and skews early. A person saving pins about three row SUVs and car seats is not on a lot yet, but she will be, and the dealership that reached her while she was planning has an advantage the dealership that shows up in the last week does not. For a store with an inventory feed, the catalog format turns the whole lot into pins.

Connecting your own Pinterest Ads account to the CRM has its own page: Connect Pinterest Ads to Your Dealership CRM. This page is about the channel and the leads.

A store spends on Pinterest to reach the household decision maker before the decision is made, which is where every other channel struggles. The intent signal is real, the cost per click is lower than on search engines because fewer dealers compete for it, and the shoppable pin puts a specific unit and price in front of a person who was searching for exactly that category. It is also one of the few places where content about lifestyle, a family vehicle for camping, a truck for a trade, gets saved and revisited rather than scrolled past.

The honest objection is time. Pinterest leads mature slowly, because the person was planning, not buying, and a store measuring the channel on thirty day form fills will not see much. The second objection is that the platform is not where most men research trucks, so a used truck store with a male buyer will find the audience thin. It rewards inventory heavy stores with family vehicles and patience with the follow up.

For the broader case for this kind of channel, Social Media Lead Ads for Car Dealerships covers it without repeating what is here.

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Pinterest fits franchise stores selling family crossovers, minivans and three row SUVs, stores with a live inventory feed that can populate the catalog, and dealer groups that can afford a slow maturing channel beside their fast ones. It fits lifestyle heavy brands whose vehicles show up in camping, travel and home content. It fits less well for used truck stores with a male buyer, for buy here pay here, and for any store that needs leads this month. Brokers with a feed can run the catalog nationally; a feed is not required for pin and lead form campaigns.

The practical question is whose login the campaigns live under. With the webXintel Ads Network, which every plan includes, they live under ours: you choose the zone, the campaign type and the pre screening questions in Leads Manager, and our team does the building and the daily management. With your own Pinterest Ads account they live under yours. Request the connection from the Advertising Networks page in the CRM, our team completes the setup, usually the same day, and from then on the media is billed by Pinterest Ads to your dealership and the account history belongs to you. Agencies that already manage a Pinterest Ads account for the store can keep it; we work inside it. The two paths are not exclusive, and moving between them is a request, not a project.

A Pinterest lead arrives through a click on a shoppable pin to a vehicle page or a LeadLocate lead page, or through an in app lead form. Catalog leads carry the unit. The shopper is typically early, often researching for a household, and responds well to a drip of useful information about the vehicle rather than a same day sales push; the CRM's follow up processes are built for that pace.

Once it is in the CRM the channel stops mattering and the process takes over. The lead shows its source and campaign, the pre screening answers you asked for in Leads Manager, and it routes by the distribution rules you set, to a person or a rotation. Automated first contact, by text, email or a scheduled call, is optional and configurable. If the store's process lives in another CRM, Instant Push forwards each lead there by ADF on arrival, and the subscription price is the same either way. Expect a mix: shoppers who name a vehicle and shoppers who name a budget, both of them worth a call, as what to expect from car sales leads sets out.

The point of running Pinterest Ads through LeadLocate is not Pinterest Ads. It is that Pinterest Ads becomes one more line in a system that already holds everything else. Leads Manager is where the campaigns are planned, whatever the channel: the zone, the campaign type, the questions a shopper answers, the creative. The CRM is where the leads land, are distributed, are worked by text, email, call and voicemail drop, and are reported on in the activity, company and management reports. A store that adds Pinterest Ads does not add a login, a report or a vendor to chase; it adds a source. The same is true of the dozens of other channels on the advertising channels page, which is the list the CRM itself shows a dealership under Advertising Networks.

That matters more than it sounds. Most stores do not fail at advertising because a channel was wrong; they fail because the leads from the third and fourth channels never got worked, since nobody was watching that inbox. One inbox, one set of distribution rules and one follow up process is what makes a fourth channel worth adding at all, and the same reporting is what lets a manager see, in one place, which channel is earning its budget this month and which one is not.

For an agency, Pinterest is a channel that separates it from the shops that only run search and social, and it is cheap to test for a franchise client with a feed. Connected to the store's LeadLocate CRM, the slow maturing leads it produces are actually followed up over the months they take, which is the only way the channel ever proves itself to the dealer.

Agencies are how most stores buy Pinterest Ads, and LeadLocate treats the agency as part of the store's team. An agency user can manage the campaigns in Leads Manager, hold the platform accounts in its own name and connect them, pull the same reporting the dealership sees, and use the webXintel Ads Network as a lead source for clients that want results before they want a media plan. What the agency gains is the piece it typically lacks: the CRM, the distribution rules, the texting and calling, the follow up processes, all of it visible so the agency can show the store what happened after the click. Agencies that bring dealerships onto the platform can enroll in the referral program. See dealer-marketing-attribution-softwareL for how the agency side works.

Geography is the first setting on every LeadLocate campaign, and it is yours. Draw the zone you sell in with the zone editor in Leads Manager, a radius, a list of counties or a state, and Pinterest Ads placements are bought for that zone and nothing outside it. Brokers who sell to the whole country set the whole country; a group draws one zone per rooftop and the reporting comes back the same way, so a regional manager can see which store's market answered. Financing audiences stay inside fair lending rules on every channel: Leads Manager keeps them from being narrowed by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP, with locked controls, so a store is protected without thinking about it. Everything else, the vehicles, the message, the radius, is open.

The setup cost of Pinterest Ads, in your time, is a click. The Advertising Networks page in the CRM lists it beside every other channel; Request Connection opens a support request our team works, usually the same day. Stores that are new to LeadLocate choose a plan on the pricing page, month to month with no long term contract, and start with the webXintel Ads Network the same week. Media bought through a Pinterest Ads account in your name is billed by Pinterest Ads directly to you. Your existing CRM, if you have one, keeps receiving leads through Instant Push by ADF, and the price does not change for that.

From there it is a conversation, not a contract. Our team confirms the zone and the selections, says plainly what Pinterest Ads is likely to do for a store of your size, and agrees a review date. If the reporting shows Pinterest Ads earning its budget, it stays; if it does not, it is switched off from the same page, the store keeps every lead and record it produced, and the budget moves to a channel that did better in the same report.

Do car buyers really use Pinterest?

Household decision makers planning a family vehicle do, and they use it months before they visit a lot. It is not the place for a same day sale, and it is a strong place to be the first dealership a planner hears from.

What is a shoppable pin for a dealership?

A pin generated from the store's inventory feed for a specific unit, showing the photo and price, that clicks through to that vehicle. Inventory Link is the LeadLocate product that ingests a feed; ask about it in the request. Feeds are not required for standard pin or lead form campaigns.

How should a dealership judge Pinterest?

Over a quarter or two, on saves, clicks to specific units and leads that mature, not on the first month's form fills. The audience is planning, and the channel pays when the plan becomes a purchase.

Do I need my own Pinterest Ads account to run it through LeadLocate?

No. The webXintel Ads Network is included with every plan and needs no account of yours. If you want campaigns under an account your dealership owns, request the connection from the Advertising Networks page and our team sets it up, or connects the Pinterest Ads account you or your agency already hold.

Can Pinterest Ads leads go into the CRM we already use?

Yes. Turn on Instant Push in the CRM settings and every lead is forwarded to your existing CRM by ADF the moment it arrives, with its source attached. The subscription price is the same whether you work leads in LeadLocate or forward them.

What does LeadLocate charge for Pinterest Ads?

The platform is a monthly subscription, month to month with no long term contract; the plans are on the pricing page and each includes the webXintel Ads Network. Media you buy through your own Pinterest Ads account is billed by Pinterest Ads to you, not marked up by us. We do not tie the price to results, because no one can promise what a shopper will do.

Request Pinterest Ads from inside the CRM and our team sets it up, usually the same day. Not on LeadLocate yet? Pick a plan, month to month, and start with the included webXintel Ads Network this week.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.

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