Ryan Everson's Ultimate Guide to Not Get Forked by Vendors

[Ryan Everson]

3. Running Multiple New Vehicle Model PPC Ads in a Single Google Ads Campaign

Too many vendors throw all of their new vehicle model paid search ads in a single Google Ads campaign. For example, they have ad groups created for each model underneath a single make campaign.

• Campaign: New Chevrolet Vehicles
  • Ad Group: Malibu
  • Ad Group: Silverado
  • Ad Group: Impala
  • Ad Group: etc…

Why is this bad?

• You have no control over the spend of each individual model, you’re primarily leaving it up to Google to determine based on each ad groups’ search volume, performance, and bids. What if you really want to focus on Silverado’s one month and pull back on Malibu’s? This type of setup makes it difficult to accomplish.
• You have no control over the geo targeting of each individual model, every model gets the same geo targeting. In a lot of markets you may want to focus on a large rural area for truck models but then a smaller urban area for sedans. This type of setup makes it impossible to accomplish.
• It makes it more difficult to examine the performance of each model. Vendors often only report at the campaign level which would hide the breakdown by model. This averages out as an aggregate and can help hide poor performing models / ad groups.
• It makes it more difficult to create hyper-relevant ads which leads to low quality scores and subsequently higher costs and lower performance. Vendors are forced to throw all of their keywords for a particular model in a single ad group and implement more generic ads….instead of segmenting the keywords out by intent across multiple ad groups and creating more relevant ads.

What should you do?

Each model or model grouping should ideally have its own campaign with highly relevant segmented ad groups. This allows you more control over budget, geo targeting, keyword targeting, etc.

Example:

• Campaign: Chevrolet Silverado
  • Ad Group: General
  • Ad Group: Lease
  • Ad Group: For Sale
  • Ad Group: Specials
  • Ad Group: Discounts
  • Ad Group: APR
• Campaign: Chevrolet Malibu
  • Ad Group: General
  • Ad Group: Lease
  • Ad Group: For Sale
  • Ad Group: Specials
  • Ad Group: Discounts
  • Ad Group: APR
• etc...

So we recently acquired a new dealership and ran into this exact issue when examining the dealership's paid search account.

The vendor had every model in a single campaign which gave them no control over the spend of each individual model.

One of the things we look at is our annual sales volume vs our annual paid search spend for each model to quickly see if anything is way out of whack.

In the chart below, the orange line is our annual unit sales and the blue bars are the annual paid search spend.

You'll notice we spent way too much money on the Camaro, Suburban, Volt, and Corvette but not enough money on the Equinox, Traverse, and Trax. Why did this vendor spend $6,000 advertising the Corvette when we only sold 3 the entire year and probably would have sold them with zero paid search advertising.

This is a report everyone can easily run using Microsoft Excel to help identify wasted spend and areas of opportunity.

 

[Alexander Lau]

So we recently acquired a new dealership and ran into this exact issue when examining the dealership's paid search account.

The vendor had every model in a single campaign which gave them no control over the spend of each individual model.

One of the things we look at is our annual sales volume vs our annual paid search spend for each model to quickly see if anything is way out of whack.

In the chart below, the orange line is our annual unit sales and the blue bars are the annual paid search spend.

You'll notice we spent way too much money on the Camaro, Suburban, Volt, and Corvette but not enough money on the Equinox, Traverse, and Trax. Why did this vendor spend $6,000 advertising the Corvette when we only sold 3 the entire year and probably would have sold them with zero paid search advertising.

This is a report everyone can easily run using Microsoft Excel to help identify wasted spend and areas of opportunity.

View attachment 4000

Your agencies should do this for you, if they're not your paying for crap service. Something we did years ago at Strong Automotive. Good concept, nonetheless.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Your agencies should do this for you, if they're not your paying for crap service. Something we did years ago at Strong Automotive. Good concept, nonetheless.

Before we brought our paid search in-house we probably had 6 or 7 different paid search vendors and literally none of them did this. So it's awesome that your old agency did but I'm willing to bet the majority of dealers aren't receiving this service.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Before we brought our paid search in-house we probably had 6 or 7 different paid search vendors and literally none of them did this. So it's awesome that your old agency did but I'm willing to bet the majority of dealers aren't receiving this service.

Agreed, don't get me wrong we were ahead of things and I just fell into that mold. Most don't, you're right. If you've got the resources, much smarter to bring it in-house too.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

I would love to get you guys opinions on Conversion Window timeframes and Repeat Rate percentages for conversions. Other than display and retargeting, should a conversion window timeframe be set greater than 30 days. As far as conversion repeat rate, should any repeat rate be greater than a 1.00 for our segment???

 

[Ryan Everson]

I would love to get you guys opinions on Conversion Window timeframes and Repeat Rate percentages for conversions. Other than display and retargeting, should a conversion window timeframe be set greater than 30 days. As far as conversion repeat rate, should any repeat rate be greater than a 1.00 for our segment???

What bid strategy are you using?

Conversion reporting inside Google Ads is to primarily power the bidding strategies that use machine learning to get additional conversions.

We use Google Analytics for most of our conversion reporting because it allows us to look at the entire conversion path with multi-touch attribution models and custom channel groupings. This will allow you to better see the effect of Google Ads past the initial 30 days.

To answer your question though, below are the settings we use:



Repeat rate is a tough one because it depends a lot on your website CTA's and can also be incorrectly counted if a user clicks the back button and visits a confirmation page a second time.

 

[joe.pistell]

Dealer's profile will impact the challenges to the spending model.


Here's an old Dealer Profile framework I posted here about a zillion years ago. Many of these attributes can influence ad spending ROI.

===================Dealer Profile Attributes===================

Dealer attributes come in 2 ways.
“Digitally Observable” (DO) or “Via human interview” (HI).
Most Dealer Profile Attributes are DO.


Franchise’s Influence

• Franchise Persona (e.g. jag vs buick vs kia. This is a key study unto itself)
• OEM's Position among its competition (e.g. Audi/Subaru/SUV's are strong, Buick/Sedan's are sucking wind
• OEM Incentives (this has historical precedent & it’s relative to its peers, it’s dynamic (i.e. marketplace driven)).
• IMPORTANT! Franchise Inventory Complexity Profile (e.g. Honda has a few models, trims & options, Chevrolet has a 100x more. Both OEMs use this strategically.)
  

Dealer’s Direct Responsibility:

• Dealer’s Local Impact (a little fish or big fish?)
  • # of roofs
  • Franchise’s Persona, it’s impact to the Store (a volume brand or elite?)
  • Inventory size (width and depth)
    • Inventory Dupes (e.g. longo toyota has 77 Black Camry’s)
    • Inventory Scarcity (rare vehicles)
  • New/Used ratio (used inventory changes shopper demos & engagement)

Dealer’s Management Methods

• Pricing models (e.g. call for price, A-B = C, One Price, etc)
  • Frequency of price changes
• Inventory health
• Inventory Performance Sensitivity
  • Age driven?
  • Turns driven?
  • Marketplace driven?
  • "Oh shit I'm about to be fired, I'd better do something"
• Is the dealer management rules based or reactive?
• Standard website or custom?
• Inventory health. Time to front line. Quality of Photos, options detail, etc.
• Dealer's Review volume & scores

Geo Profile

• Rural, Suburb, City (population density & demographics)
• Drive time to market center
• Avg distance to sale (from sales history)
• Marketing Footprint: Serve a single market or multiple markets
  

Dealer's Advertising Profile

Traditional Ad Spend

• Carpet Bomber? (big spender)
• Drop in the ocean? (little spender)
  

Digital Ad Spend

• • Early Adopter?
  • History of trying new products/ideas? (gives us insight into the stores performance efforts)

Marketplace Influences

• # of In-Franchise competitors
  • Dealers share of the total In-Franchise inventory in his marketplace (i.e.. little fish or big fish?)
• # of off-Franchise competitors that share "common customers" (e.g. Kia/hyundai/toyota/chevy have common customers)
  • Dealers share of total inventory in his "common customer" marketplace

Websites Responsibility in converting ad spend into sales opportunities

• -Site Design, which includes…
  • ----Search UI Quality
  • ----SRP Design Quality (i.e. Clutter)
  • ----VDP design quality (e.g. VDP photo size)
    
• -Site Speed
  

/end

 

[joe.pistell]

FYI: Last week at DD and DS, I met dozens of players that would find Ryan's posts very useful (plus, this is the spirit of DR). @Alexander Lau you're highly skilled in these matters, why not create a thread and create a thread that's a brain dump?

@Alexander Lau, step it up bro. Create a thread.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

@Alexander Lau, step it up bro. Create a thread.

 

[Alexander Lau]

@Alexander Lau, step it up bro. Create a thread.

Nah... I'm a born poacher! Thanks though.