By Mason Miller, Digital Marketing Manager, Gravitational Marketing

A few years ago, automotive dealerships were just flirting with the idea of Google Search Ads, and now many are spending the majority of their advertising budgets online. The shape of digital marketing today varies greatly from years prior, and that transformation isn’t slowing down anytime soon. This makes it increasingly important for agencies to continue to innovate themselves, and for dealerships to hold them accountable to that too.

Unfortunately, many agencies fail to innovate, leading many dealerships to shop around. If you continue to see the same results and little growth, you may want to follow suit, but before bringing in anyone new, step back to ask some important questions – before it’s too late (i.e. six months later, you wonder why all your numbers are down to wake up to the fact that while the new agency is on the cutting edge, they don’t have the basic know-how to get the job done).

Here are five questions to ask when selecting a new digital marketing agency:

• How Do You Measure Conversions? “Conversion” has different meanings among marketers. One of the better definitions that we’ve seen defines a conversion as, “an action that’s counted when someone interacts with you online and then takes an action that has been defined as valuable to your business.” Sounds vague, right? That’s because it is, and that’s often on purpose.Digital marketers need a lot of different data points of varying values to efficiently optimize an account. That usually means defining actions as different kinds of conversions. One agency may count a conversion every time a VDP is viewed, whereas another may only report on a conversion when a lead form is submitted. Those are two drastically different numbers! And we’ve seen agencies run the gamut between those two extremes.

   

  This often gets lost in translation when agencies report on performance. It’s an even bigger issue when you compare your past agency’s conversion numbers with your new agency’s, without ever knowing that you’re comparing two entirely different metrics! Before you do that, make sure you know how your new agency counts conversions and how your old agency counted them as well.And while you’re at it, you may want to think about which definition is the most valuable in growing your business.

• How Many Times Will You Count a Conversion from a Single Click? Most digital platforms provide an option to count a single conversion per click or to count every triggered conversion, regardless of how many clicks occurred. The latter means a single customer could potentially generate any number of conversions during a single visit.There is no right answer to this, and it usually depends on the specific campaign and your customer’s landing page experience. However, switching from one method to the other will significantly affect your measurements. You’ll want to find out how your new agency has it set up and how it differs from what your prior agency did, before comparing performance.

• How Are You Going to Slice Up the Budget? There are tons of different ways to cut up a digital budget between general search, used search, new search, brand search, display, YouTube, location campaigns, remarketing, product ads, and the list goes on. Honestly, that’s just scratching the surface.You need to know how the new agency is going to spend the budget. Most agencies worth their management fee will tell you that they’re going to start with a standard breakdown, but then move the budget around to where they see the best performance.Still, it’s worth knowing where the money’s going. If you were sold on some newfangled strategy, you want to find how much money is going to it and how much is going to the same strategies you were using at your old agency. Then, you can decide if it’s worth the switch.

• Do You Match Performance Back to What’s Sold? Not a lot of agencies will do this unless you ask, but it’s worth asking. Some ad platforms, such as Facebook, can take an uploaded list of sold customers and match them back to ad campaigns. Other agencies might hand match sold customers back to leads that were generated through their digital campaigns.If your agency won’t do this for you, it’s worth pushing them on it. After all, if your campaigns are generating leads, but aren’t resulting in any additional cars sold, why are you spending the money?

• What Kind of Attribution Model Do You Use? Agencies will allocate conversions to different campaigns or sources depending on what attribution model they’re using.One popular attribution model is called “Last Click,” where they will attribute 100 percent of the conversion to the last ad the user clicked on. Another popular model is “First Click” attribution, which will allocate 100 percent of the conversion to the ad the user first clicked.This matters more than it sounds! It can result in swaying dozens of conversions from Display or YouTube campaigns to Search campaigns or vice versa.

   

  There are other attribution models, as well. Some even split the conversion credit between multiple touchpoints. In some weird instances, you can even find a conversion that is attributed half to one source and the other half to another. While disorienting at first, this is the best way to get an accurate picture of how your campaigns are working and how often they interact with one another.

8 More Key Questions for Your Digital Marketing Agency

Don’t forget to ask the following eight questions as well. 

• Where are you sending the traffic from the campaigns?
• How can I see my results in real-time?
• Do you offer detailed monthly reporting?
• Will you remarket to my website traffic?
• How often do you update ad copy?
• How often do you update banner ads and images?
• How many conversions should I expect from this campaign?
• What are your benchmarks for Click Through Rate, Cost per Conversion, and Conversion Rate?
  

They might not need as much explaining as some of these questions, but they’re equally important! 

At the very least, these questions will make sure your business goals are aligned with what the agency is promising to deliver, so you can start the relationship off on the right foot.

 About the Author

Mason Miller is the digital marketing manager at Gravitational Marketing, a full-service automotive advertising agency in Orlando, FL. Mason specializes in PPC, SEM, social media, mobile, video, and email marketing, creative messaging, and data collection/analysis.