Paid search is an area where dealerships commonly overspend (in huge amounts), and at the same time, do not inspect their campaigns at a detailed level. There is perhaps no other purchase dealers make where they give an agency a blank check and simply hope for the best. A common mistake made by dealers is failing to inspect the reports provided to them by their agency.
Overspending: how does it happen?
For one, it’s very easy to spend money with Google or Bing, and a dealer’s agency is more than happy to take their money and encourage them to increase budgets. Another reason can be ego: when a dealer wants to rank high for many keywords despite not having a good idea if the keywords are driving shopping traffic, leads, calls, etc.
If you’ve ever sat through a monthly review with your digital agency, you know the high-level topics that are typically covered. The agency reports on how much was spent in total, what the cost-per-click was, the impression share, clicks, click-through-rate, and so on. The only conversions discussed might be phone calls, with no real goal of what a reasonable cost per conversion should be. The discussions are kept at a very high level. The agency might discuss the various keyword groups, and if impression share is not high enough, the agency may suggest moving more of the budget toward those keyword groups.
Agencies often do not discuss what type of website shopping behavior those keyword groups are driving or discuss the specific keywords that are purchased. There simply isn’t enough time to do a deep dive in a typical 30-minute monthly call.
The old adage is, “The devil is in the details”: and that is very true in this case. For paid search, the details are in the:
1) Keywords purchased,
2) Keyword-match-type chosen
3) Ad copy, and…
4) Landing page for each keyword
How would a dealer measure success at the keyword level? They would inspect the downstream performance on the website. Why would a dealer care about high impression share for keywords where visitors leave the site within seconds of their visit? The only keywords important are those keywords that drive shoppers, meaning: someone who stays on a dealer’s website more than 10 seconds (at least!), visits more than one page (hopefully VDPs), and potentially submits a lead/chat/text/phone call.
Dealers should not buy clicks that don’t lead to shopping behavior or conversions. Unless someone is periodically doing a close inspection of paid search campaigns at the keyword level, to determine if those clicks are delivering shoppers, the dealer will likely have a runaway spending on their paid search.
So, what is this magic report that the agency doesn’t want dealers to see? A dealer should receive detailed paid-search keyword lists, that contain on-website visitor information so they can see what the agency is spending their money on.
In this example of an all-too-common scenario, the dealer buys the keyword “Buick.” Sounds harmless, right? Wouldn’t every Buick dealer want to rank high for the word “Buick?” The agency is happy to spend the money (and charge the commissions), and each month shows the dealer how many clicks they won and lost for the word “Buick.” The problem is that nobody is tracking how well this keyword is performing downstream in the website. It turns out the dealer is paying for clicks on every Google search request that includes the word “Buick,” including old Buick vehicles, parts, owner’s manuals, etc. How well does that traffic perform? The internet visitor clicks, discovers they don’t like the page, and immediately leaves, resulting in:
- Zero time on site
- No VDPs
- No leads
- No shopping behavior, and…
- A complete waste of the dealer’s money!
Unless the dealer or agency inspects their campaigns at the keyword level, they will never discover the huge waste that occurs every day in dealerships across the country.