Search Engine Intuitive Marketing, Behavioral Targeting, SEM, What do you use to drive traffic?

[joe.pistell]

Chris writes:

"so the local ad agency is telling me to move my money from SEM with them and put it into behavioral targeting and also spread out the budget for SEIM to all used cars and possibly new cars as well. "​

Move your SEM money? SEM = Search Engine Marketing. Either someting is lost in the translation, or, your local agency is giving you bad avice.

Is your local ad agency telling you to pause all normal Search campaigns and divert the funds into “behavioral targeting” (translation:remarketing) and dynamic inventory campaigns? You'll want to verify this.

You'll also want to know who's PPC inventory ad system they're using. If they say it's theirs, call them out on it, they're re-selling someone's tool and you want to know who's it is (Haystak has MILLIONS of $$$ in developement costs, you don't want a fly-by-nite inventory tool running your inventory ads).

 

[joe.pistell]

Chris writes:

"But wait a minute. You can't tell me that what GM is doing for us as far as SEM goes is the best that can be done. I'm sure it's minimal and they are doing it for most other GM dealers as well so that doesn't allow me to stand out."

"So my theory is to continue doing SEM with the local ad agency but not target the city I reside."

"Let's target the BIG city 20 minutes away from us and other surrounding cities since GM is only buying the geo I reside."
​

Chris, you already know this, but beware spending cash based on your best hunch. I hear no evidence that your agency is capable of giving you great advice. For example, no two dealers are alike. Your PPC campaign should match your inventory profile (see my posts on this topic here in the DR forums).

Best advice Ive got for you: Consider getting an PPC audit by a PPC specialist in our industry that does not represent anyone but you. http://www.drivingsales.com/ratings/categories/sem

 

[yagoparamo]

Joe,

I agree with your POV but I must also add that this also needs to be viewed with in the context of the money spent here.

I'm surprised about the difference between dealer investment VS dealer expectation.

We often meet with dealers that spend $2,000 or $2,500 a month on PPC. That pays the person doing it a couple hundred dollars--give or take--but also gives them a $76 daily budget which is very little money in most high traffic areas to make much of an impact.

 

[isales]

Thank you everyone for the great responses. I have not been able to come back to this thread since I posted until today. I do apologize. I've been extremely busy talking to multiple vendors and trying to figure out the best approach. It's funny because one of the vendors, Naked Lime, contacted me today after reading this threads and they reminded me to come back and read the responses. I'm about to eat lunch and will come back to comment on some of the replies and answer some of the questions a few of you had for me. Talk to you soon.

 

[isales]

As Chad said, there's a few companies that do the inventory SEM stuff. Some things you could do to get more traffic are Craigslist and some SEO. Right now you rank low on the first page for a bunch of used car searches in your area.

For example, "used cars in slidell la" gets 170 searches a month, but you rank #5. At #1 you could estimate 20-30% of the traffic, which would be a boost of 34+ visitors a month. There's also a bunch of variations of that phrase that get decent searches. You rank decently well for a bunch of phrases, so just a little improvement could make some big changes.

I've been so worried about SEM that I lost focus on our SEO. After reading everyone's replies I did a little digging and found out we are not ranking that great organically. Therefore, I'm going to sign up for Cobalt's power SEO program. But wait! Some guy's at Naked Lime so this thread and contacted me about their SEO program. I like the fact they also enhance your social media presence. Naked Lime is also proposing doing an SEM campaign and I like their proposal. Anyone have experience with Naked Lime?

 

[isales]

Why would local ad agency be concerned about GM running SEM branding campaigns on your behalf? The local agency's job is to launch a PPC campain that does not duplicate the OEM spend.

Sounds simple, agency obtains KW list and deploys a new campaign minus the GM KW's.

Joe,

I thought so as well. I'm still baffled by this. I just got off the phone with my rep at the ad agency and today's phone call was suppose to be about their "new plan" for doing our SEM. They are still worried about competing with GM's SEM campaign and driving up the cost per click. Now I will say that I contacted Cobalt myself and they claim they have no "list" they can provide you regarding the keywords GM / Cobalt is buying on your behalf. However, they do say that it's mainly the dealer name and geo reaching out about 30 miles. But to me my ad agency should have experience with this and know what to do. We've been doing this with them for three months now and still we don't have a good set plan in place for SEM. Furthermore, they tell me that we should only through about $1500 towards the SEM campaign. I don't know. I'm having second thoughts.

If you read my post before this I mentioned speaking with Naked Lime. When I spoke with them the other day I told them I wanted to target a 50 mile radius. They proposed spending $4500/ month on ad spend. The one thing I liked that they do is make model specific landing pages for the model searched which I'm sure helps with conversion. They also can enhance our SEO which I desperately need. One thing Naked Lime didn't seem concerned about was the GM / Cobalt SEM campaign we had running. Maybe they know what they are doing and this isn't a problem for them. Or maybe they don't care and as long as they have my money it's all good. One thing I was concerned about was the high setup fee and monthly fee Naked Lime charged. Also, has anyone ever heard about Gm requiring a 15% commission after $1500 is spent on ad spend. This is supposedly some rule of the co-op program.

 

[isales]

Joe,

I agree with your POV but I must also add that this also needs to be viewed with in the context of the money spent here.

I'm surprised about the difference between dealer investment VS dealer expectation.

We often meet with dealers that spend $2,000 or $2,500 a month on PPC. That pays the person doing it a couple hundred dollars--give or take--but also gives them a $76 daily budget which is very little money in most high traffic areas to make much of an impact.

Yagoparamo,

I'm interested in this comment you made. I could see spending a couple grand only paying the person doing it a few hundred dollars if they were simply just doing a little research on the keywords and bidding but if they are doing display and making model specific landing pages how much more is that worth?

I ask because I got a proposal from a company the other day they recommended I spend $4500 in ad spend money and their monthly fee would be roughly $1500 a month. They do participate in the co-op program but still it seems high to me. Furthermore, the setup fee for the first month is $1700 so my initial investment would be around $7700 for the first month.

 

[csabatka1]

Yagoparamo,

I'm interested in this comment you made. I could see spending a couple grand only paying the person doing it a few hundred dollars if they were simply just doing a little research on the keywords and bidding but if they are doing display and making model specific landing pages how much more is that worth?

I ask because I got a proposal from a company the other day they recommended I spend $4500 in ad spend money and their monthly fee would be roughly $1500 a month. They do participate in the co-op program but still it seems high to me. Furthermore, the setup fee for the first month is $1700 so my initial investment would be around $7700 for the first month.

Just to throw it out there Haystak charges $750/month and they submit everything for co-op on your behalf.

 

[ewalraven]

Do your AdWords keyword research before taking the plunge with this company. Research out into New Orleans and see what each CPC will run you for various terms. Then do the numbers to see how much it would cost to drive approximately 2k visitors to your site. Depends on your market, but we pay on average around $1.98 per click for inventory based keywords.

Why would local ad agency be concerned about GM running SEM branding campaigns on your behalf? The local agency's job is to launch a PPC campain that does not duplicate the OEM spend.

I'm going to piggy back off these here. I agree with the above statements and really think that most people should ask these questions before investing in a "PPC Company". Or whatever it is ..

It's been an uber surprise to me how much lack of knowledge (no offense) some dealers have on running PPC campaigns. And once a sales guy gets in front of them throwing out numbers they'll get confused, excited, or just in a down right "yes mode" and sign up with unknown expectations. There's so many questions to ask:
- Is it just google, bing, more, etc?
- Display or search?
- How targeted is it? How is it done?
- Target just the cars - new, used? How about the competition?
- What's the positioning goal?
- Cost limitation per campaign, group, etc?

Here's the thing that really bothers me -- There's no "secret sauce". It's all done through an admin that anybody can access. For example, say they are running an Adwords campaign -- you can create an account yourself and mess around yourself just to get your feet wet. Just poking around will get you familiar with what you're doing and getting into. Try creating some campaigns just so you know how it all works.

Now, with that said -- Are you able to get access to your adwords account? I'm sure they give you some reporting at the end of the month, but the reporting is most likely going to be skewed to make is look good to you. So make sure you can get access to this -- If not, I would be extremely suspicious.

The obvious is that it's a vendor so they are making money off you. Figure out if their profit makes sense to you and the dealership. Also, remember if they sign you up they are most likely calling up every dealer in your area saying "hey look what we did here ... ". My biggest advice is that you can do this yourself and most likely manage and tweak it better than any third party can do.

 

[joe.pistell]

Joe,

I agree with your POV but I must also add that this also needs to be viewed with in the context of the money spent here.

I'm surprised about the difference between dealer investment VS dealer expectation.

We often meet with dealers that spend $2,000 or $2,500 a month on PPC. That pays the person doing it a couple hundred dollars--give or take--but also gives them a $76 daily budget which is very little money in most high traffic areas to make much of an impact.

Yago,
Know what you're saying. IMO, the PPC strategy has to match the dealer's inventory profile. Here's a table about this topic I made for DR 3-4 years ago.



Traffic = PPC Traffic
Web Skillz = Shoppers Internet Skills
Time in Market = Time spent car shopping
Cost of PPC = Cost Per Click
The arrows point to the direction of the trend (lowest to highest).


When putting together a PPC strategy, I like to start with how much inventory is on the ground. Are they a boutique dealer, or are they a big dealer in their market? It's easiest to understand when you look at extremes: small dealer vs big dealer.

A small dealer should not be buying short tail keywords like "used cars" or "toyota". A paid search visitor that is fishing for "used cars" is way up the funnel and the small dealer doesn't have a big inventory to entice the shopper to "drive down and look around". IMO, The smaller dealer should be buying long tail keywords. They're lower cost, lower traffic and higher up the funnel. All of this matches the smaller dealers needs.

Compare that to a big dealer. They spend big dollars in local traditional media (usually TV) so their name is easily recognized in the PPC ad. They have an inventory selection to satisfy nearly every shoppers want, so it makes sense to PPC advertise VERY aggressively.