Carwale.com, one of India’s leading automotive web portal, allots 80% of its budget to the online medium, a large portion of it goes to Google AdWords. Launched in October 2005, Carwale.com is now India’s leading automotive web portal. Owned by Automotive Exchange Pvt Ltd, it is backed by India’s leading early stage venture capital firm Seedfund, and top tier US venture fund Sierra Ventures. It has corporate offices across Mumbai, Delhi, Bhopal and Chennai. The intent behind forming Carwale was to offer well researched content to both car buyers and sellers in India to enable them to make informed choices. Carwale also connects users to leading car manufacturers like GM, Skoda, Mahindra, and so on. It also has affiliations with leading insurance and finance companies. Last year, Carwale sold around 15 lakh cars which amounts to 10 per cent of the total cars sold in the country. Additionally, 30,000 users make inquiries on the website per month, and a significant portion of this traffic converts into sales. Execution: Following the encouraging initial response, Carwale.com turned to Google AdWords to help them attract more users. The online medium worked wonders to help them effectively target two different audiences – buyers and sellers, on one hand and manufacturers and dealers, on the other. Tufail Khan, Vice President – Marketing, Automotive Exchange Pvt Ltd (carvale.com), finds the online medium aligned to the ROI centric approach of the company. This is the reason Carwale.com has allotted 80 per cent of its advertising budget to the online medium, of which a large portion goes towards Google AdWords. It combines this with offline media campaigns for effective branding. Response: Google AdWords has helped Carwale.com get around 20-35 per cent new visitors per month. According to Khan, ‘Conversion Tracking’ in Google AdWords was an effective way to track ROI, and to make future predictions. The Keyword Tool is also used extensively by the in-house team to check search traffic and cost estimates, before adding new keyword to their account. Khan also finds the new AdWords interface better and easier to navigate. He stressed, “All advertisers in the auto industry should start using Google AdWords and analyse it to see how much ROI is derived from the online space’. He also advised using the Content Network for branding purposes.