Digital Dealer - July 2019 - 42

M A R K E T ING & ADVERT ISING: Da ta & An a l yt i cs Continued from pg. 41

IN ORDER TO EFFECTIVELY MEASURE THE
SUCCESS OF PAID FACEBOOK CAMPAIGNS, THOSE
CAMPAIGNS NEED TO BE PROPERLY UTM-TAGGED,
AND THEN EVALUATED IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS FOR
QUALITY."
the agency skims over
high-level metrics for paid
search results that can hide
important details as to the
success of these campaigns.The dealership nods
along with the stats, not
really knowing what "good"
looks like. The dealership
should not allow the agency
to simply show rolledup performance metrics
for cost-per-click, clickthroughs, and phone calls.
The dealer should instead
ask for important details
such as which keywords
were purchased, as well as
the cost and performance of
each keyword. The dealership should learn which
paid keywords were the
most expensive, which ones
performed the best, which
ones performed the worst,
and how often the paid keywords matched the actual
shoppers' search queries.
This type of detailed inspection will help discover poorly-performing keywords that
need to be eliminated, while
also finding top-performing
keywords that the dealership should make sure are
properly funded.

3. INEFFECTIVE FACEBOOK CAMPAIGNS - I've

heard many people advise
dealers that Facebook
advertising is a great alternative to paid search at a
fraction of the price. I would
agree, but would also add a

42

J U LY 2 0 1 9

warning to dealers that too
many agencies struggle to
run effective paid Facebook
campaigns, as they are
not properly inspecting the
downstream traffic on the
dealer's website. Too many
agencies focus only on the
basic metrics provided in
Facebook, such as impressions, frequency, and clicks.

way to market used vehicles, as long as the dealership is properly measuring
ROI. The monthly fees for
the leading TPAC providers
range from $800 to $15,000
per month, which is a huge
spread. Smart dealers are
pulling the monthly reports from the TPACs and
comparing those across

TPACS CAN BE A
VERY COST-EFFECTIVE
AND EFFICIENT WAY TO
MARKET USED VEHICLES,
AS LONG AS THE
DEALERSHIP IS PROPERLY
MEASURING ROI."
Instead, these agencies
should closely inspect the
quality of the downstream
website traffic generated. In order to effectively
measure the success of
paid Facebook campaigns,
those campaigns need to be
properly UTM-tagged, and
then evaluated in Google
Analytics for quality.
4. OVERPAYING 3RD
PARTY CLASSIFIEDS
- While I've published

many articles challenging
third-party automotive
classifieds (TPACs) like
Autotrader, Cars.com, and
CarGurus, I remain a fan of
the digital classifieds segment. TPACs can be a very
cost-effective and efficient

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

important success ratios
and metrics to make sure
they are getting strong
return on investment. These
ratios include cost-per-VDP,
cost-per-lead, cost-per-call,
as well as inspecting referral traffic to their websites.
Dealers should have a goal
pay less than $1 per VDP,
and less than $60 per lead/
chat/text/phone call.
There is nothing that
makes me feel better than
identifying and eliminating
a wasteful source of paid
search spending, and then
reinvesting those dollars
into digital campaigns that
will truly deliver strong ROI.
However, this discovery
and transformation will

only happen if the dealer is
willing to dig a level deeper,
to ask the hard questions,
and to do the math to compare results against known
benchmarks.
If you are an automotive
retailer, let us help you find
and eliminate the wasted
spending in your digital marketing investments. We can
help you greatly improve
your return on ad spend
and gain more transparency
with your digital marketing
investments. Details here:
generationsdigital.com
You can also follow us on
these social networks:
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/
in/georgenenni
FACEBOOK: facebook.
com/generationsdigital/
TWITTER: twitter.com/
generationsdig
GEORGE NENNI, with
over 25 years of automotive
experience, educates the
auto industry about emerging
technology, sharing his vision
for how dealers can maintain
a competitive edge. He has
spent countless hours over
his automotive career with
dealers, training them instore on best practices, digital
marketing ROI analysis, and
adoption of new technologies.
Today, George is the founder
and principal consultant with
Generations Digital, helping
automotive dealers improve
the effectiveness and ROI
of their digital marketing and
advertising.
http://www.generationsdigital.com http://linkedin.com/in/georgenenni http://linkedin.com/ in/georgenenni http://facebook.com/generationsdigital/ http://facebook.com/generationsdigital/ http://twitter.com/generationsdig http://twitter.com/generationsdig http://www.Cars.com http://www.DIGITALDEALER.COM
Digital Dealer - July 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - July 2019
