Google pay per click for car dealers?
You can go to a number of conferences and 20 groups and NABD and Leedom events, and you’ll find dealers who hate Google Pay Per Click (PPC), you’ll get dealers who absolutely love it, and then you’ll get some who aren’t even sure what it is.
One big question this: Who is running your Google PPC campaign if it is not working?
Oftentimes a dealer will have an in-house sales person running the PPC ad or the general manager or the dealer. And this is almost always a mistake. This is just like having your administrative assistant repair vehicles. Yes, your assistant may know how to turn the vehicle on and press the gas pedal, but that doesn’t mean he or she knows how to repair it. Just like someone who knows how to turn on the Google PPC ads doesn’t mean they know how to make them perform.
One big problem that I see in Google PPC ads with car dealers is that they target the wrong key words. Do your own search as if you were a car buyer and type in a number of different terms and just look at the ads that show up. Hopefully, you won’t see any of yours in the wrong place.
But you’ll see things like: if someone searches for an auto shop because they need an oil change. They’ll see an ad for a car dealership selling cars. They probably targeted in the keyword “automobile.” Because it is Google PPC, that person may not click on your ads — so although it doesn’t actually cost you any money directly, it’s still a poor choice of targeting because the more your ad shows without being clicked on, your “Click Through Rate’” (CTR) goes down and leads to the cost per click going up.
A lot of people don’t realize this is how it works. For example: if your ad shows 100 times and someone searches for a word or term or phrase that you’re targeting and they click on your ad once, there would be a 1% CTR. If else is running the same targets but their ad gets clicked on twice out of a 100 times, their CTR us 2% and they will pay less per click than you will. And then maybe as much as 80% or 90% less.
To think about it, Google motivates the advertiser to write good ads and target properly, because they want the consumer to have an enjoyable experience. Because without the consumer, Google doesn’t exist. You buy ads on Google because all the consumers are there and 80% of search is done through Google. So Google has to make the consumer experience good; they don’t actually want ads showing up for a car dealer who doesn’t have an auto shop to someone who is looking for an oil change. Because that’s not what they are looking for. It may be similar or in the ballpark, something to do with a vehicle, but they are never going to click on your ad. And if they do, they just go right back to Google and search for something else — which is a bounce — and leads to a high bounce rate. That also doesn’t help your ads, and they cost you money.
Google rewards advertisers for targeting properly and writing good ads. As your CTRs go up, your cost per click goes down — but Google still makes more money this way. Some dealers might say, “Well, how is that possible? Why would they get discounts for writing good ads when we’re doing better?” Well, so is Google. Because if the ad shows 100 times and somebody clicks on the other guy’s ad twice, Google might get $10. And if your ad shows 100 times and someone clicks on your ad once, Google might get $6 even when they charge you 6$ per click for the same thing that they charge on the other guy at $5 per click. Google still makes more money from the other guy because their ads and targeting were better.
So writing good ads with good copy is also very, very important. It’s probably second most important after targeting. There’s a lot more about targeting which we will get into later, but it’s so in-depth, it’s too much for this one article.
Let’s talk about copywriting. Copywriters are some of the highest paid marketing and advertising people on Earth. A good sales letter can cost you a $100,00 plus 3%. You could hire someone local to write an ad and it will cost $2,500. Either way, it’s expensive if you get someone who’s worth it.
Your Google PPC person should be a good copywriter more than they are technical. There is a Google certification program. It certainly doesn’t hurt the person’s qualifications who does your Google ads, but if the technical aspect is all they know, and they don’t know anything about strategy or copywriting or conversion, then having a Google certification isn’t going to do you much good. Having someone with the certification is a bonus when comparing two different people who are both great copy writers and great at strategies and great at conversion and work very hard to give you the service and results that you want.
Some additional problems I see with dealers using Google PPC and having it not work for them: Poor targeting is number one, poor copy is number two. But there’s also no “call to action” in the copy. And when the potential customer lands on the page after clicking on your ad, there’s not only no call to action, they are sent to the home page. That’s like a billboard that’s saying, “Hey, we exist!” and “Hurray, who cares?”
A customer clicking on your ad is still better than a lot of other types of advertising, because they did express interest by choosing to look at your ad. But if they get to the dealer web page and there’s no call to action, it’s just plain boring. Or they land on the home page with nothing on it to get them to take any action. That will cost you more money per conversion.
Conversion, meaning they take some sort of action other than just clicking on your ad. A conversion can be a sale, but it can also be filling out an online application. Or they send you a text to the number listed your website. Or they answer a question where they submit their email …those can all be conversions — and you want to track those too.
Another problem I see is that dealers don’t track anything. They just look at the cost and don’t really look at anything else. There can be other things causing a problem when ads don’t lead to sales. You could have great performing Google PPC but the web pages you’re sending them to is aren’t great. Or they call a phone number, and the person answering isn’t very helpful. The person calling says, “I saw your ad on Google and I heard you do some zero money down programs, or $500 dollars down.” The person answering the phone says, “I don’t really know much about that, I can transfer you…” and the caller says, “No, no, that’s okay, thanks.”And they hang up. And you don’t even hear about that call.
All sorts of things can happen between the person clicking on your ad and actually buying.
This is why you want to track everything. You can find broken links in the chain if you know what some of your team members are doing along the way that will lead up to a sale — or not.
If you are getting great click through rates and great conversions and lots of visitors to your website, but you’re not getting any sales, then something else is wrong other than the ads. It could be the website itself. Or it could be the person answering the phone; it could be the follow-up. Most people don’t click on your ad to just try a certain dealership and buy. Now that would be more likely with mobile if someone is on their mobile phone, they’re only couple of miles away and are looking for a dealer within a few miles because they’re desperate for a vehicle right now. Then yeah, that can happen.
But most people do a bit of shopping first, so you need something between the click on the ad and the final sale. This leads to another frequent problem: Websites have no call to action other than “buy now.” Most people shop for a period of time, even in the Buy Here Pay Here business. Their car isn’t running great or they just got a little more money — maybe their tax refund — they got a kid, a new job, whatever reason, they decide to purchase a vehicle. They don’t necessarily always have an emergency need to buy today.
So you need to have an in-between step whether you’re a new franchise dealer or a Buy-Here Pay-Here or other type of dealership. You need an in-between step, some type of lead capture that gets the person to contact you with their contact information. They can fill out a lead form on your website, get a special coupon or a gift certificate or some kind of informational packet — something to get them to give their contact information. That is the in-between step — and then you have to have follow up.
Another problem I see with Google PPC not working for dealers is that dealers aren’t building any trust. Just because Google sees you’re adding clicks doesn’t mean people are ready to buy from you. They may click on the ad, go to your website, see a couple of vehicles that look interesting, then go right back to Google and search for your dealership — which brings them to your online reviews. When they see you had bad reviews, they don’t call.
So even though they ended up not contacting you, they cost you money by clicking on your ads. But they did get there, went to your website, liked what they saw, but then they found your online reviews were bad. So they decided to look elsewhere because they don’t trust you. Or they look at your website and it’s very corporate-looking, very template-looking, and there’s really nothing warm and welcoming to separate you from other dealers.
Consumers are always looking for something to help them make a decision. They have such a hard time making one, they need something to stand out, to help them say, “Okay, I like this one.” Success stories and testimonials on your website, things that build trust and humanize your dealership and help you, help them to relate. This can lead to better performing ads on the front end.
There are all sorts of reasons why Google PPC ads won’t work for dealers. Now let’s talk about a few reasons why they DO work for dealers.
One, the targeting is much better than most other forms of advertising and marketing. Some dealers will look at Google PPC and say, “Wow, I have to pay $5 or $8 to get somebody to click on my ad.” And they think that’s a lot because they’re comparing apples to oranges. They’re not comparing the 50,000 impressions they get from a television ad or 50,000 commercials. They say, “Alas if I paid 50,508 dollars for every commercial, I’d be broke, so it’s not the same thing.
The majority of people who see television ads or other forms of mass marketing without much targeting other than geographic location, aren’t seeing your commercial, or they’re choosing not to watch it. They get up to get a drink in the kitchen or go to the bathroom or talk to the spouse or their kids or go do something on the computer or they have a DVR, or they’re just not paying attention to the commercial because they are not interested in buying a vehicle right now. I’m not picking on television. Television ads can work great when used properly. But in comparison to Google PPC ads, they’re completely different.
Imagine if you ran a television commercial that only showed to people who were interested in buying soon. They saw your ad. Then you paid a dollar amount for each individual who saw your commercial who is actually interested in buying a vehicle right now. That is the better comparison. That’s not possible with TV, but is a better comparison.
So don’t let the cost per click scare you. Also, do not compare impression ads that companies run on ad networks. Salespeople will say they can get you a million impressions for $10,000 which amounts to a very low amount for impression. But if you compare that to your click cost on Google PPC, it’s not the same thing. If you want to compare impressions then compare impressions to impressions. You can run Google display ads PPC instead of search and you can get a million impressions for a lot less than the $10,000 you might spend for an ad on that network.
The beauty of cost per click rather than paying per impression is that if you are targeting correctly and writing copy to attract your target, then ideally anyone who clicks on your ad is interested. You don’t want to attract the wrong person with some kind of over-inflated, over-zealous offer like, “We approve everybody, zero down on the spot, come get a car now.” You might attract a lot of clicks but not a lot of buyers because you’re giving way too much. So you ideally must have a different mind-set in your advertising when you pay per click.
You don’t want people to click on your ad unless they are definitely interested. Ideally, every time you get a click, you want to sell a car. That will likely never happen, but that is the goal you shoot for. You don’t want to get clicked from people who are just browsing. You don’t want to be a Buy-Here Pay-Here dealer and have people clicking on your ad when they’re looking to buy a brand new Ford. There’s no way they’re going to buy from your dealership. So if you run ads for people who are searching for new cars and your Buy-Here Pay-Here ad shows and they click on it, it’s going to cost you $4, $5, $8 or $10 — and there’s no way they’re ever going to purchase from you.
Another great thing about PPC for dealers is that it’s scalable. You can turn it on, turn it off, turn it up, turn it down. You can budget $20 a day, you can budget $250 a day like some of our clients do, and you can run a quick test. You know, it’s pretty well known in the marketing business, at least in the digital world, that you can use Google PPC for testing.
Some authors who are trying to decide what they want to title their book will spend money researching just what triggers people, gets their attention. So they’ll run ads with one title and they let you choose the title of their book and also their Google ad, run the same amount of ads and look at the percentage of people who actually click. Whichever one gets most people to click on, that’s the one they choose. Something deep down inside of the person causes them to click, some kind of psychological connection, something the title is saying.
So you can run ads in Google PPC to do a test. If you want to run ads on Google to see whether $500 down or $499 down attracts more people, run an ad in Google PPC to the same target and wait until it gets 5,000 impressions. Look at how many people clicked on it when it said $500 dollars down then run the exact same ad with $499 dollars down on the same target, same amount of impressions, what percentage clicked on that. Whichever one wins is the one you can go with, even in print.
So you take the winner from Google and run that ad in print. If you run it in different magazines or if you use the newspaper and find that effective, try to decide which one will work better. It’s probably going to be the one that works better in Google PPC as well, bevcause it’s the same people. They are telling you, “Hey, here’s how to advertise to us.”
Google PPC is also great because rather than messing around with search engine optimization (SEO) which can take weeks or even months in metro areas, you can be on the first page of Google in 24 hours. You pay to get there, but you also pay a lot of money for SEO to get to the first page in Google. Now it is true that using SEO, if you are ranked number 1 in Google on the first page, you get a lot more clicks than you will for a PPC ad that shows at the top. However, if it takes months to get there, you’re going to be missing this time for Google PPC ads.
We have clients that we’ve gotten to the number one spot on the first page of Google, and we still run Google PPC ads because there are a couple of hundred terms you could use as key words on Google PPC and your dealership may not rank number one for all of those. Some of our clients rank number one for used car dealer, for bad credit car dealer, for Ford dealer — those sort of things — but they don’t rank number one when someone types in, “I have poor credit but I have had a job for six months, can I buy a car?” People type that sort of stuff into Google. It’s impossible to appear number one for everything. So the things you don’t appear number one for, you buy a Google PPC ad.
Google PPC ads are also fabulous for dealers because it is very measurable if you’re tracking and measuring everything possible. You can measure how many impressions you get, how many clicks you get, and how many conversions you get. For example: You can take a tracking code from Google and it goes on to a page on your website that is hidden.
Let’s say you want to call an application conversion in this case, so you run ads on Google and find a certain amount of people who click on the ad. Then you get your click through rate. When they go to your website, they fill an application which sends them to a hidden page of your website, a “thank you page,” or a “welcome page” that says, “Hey, we got your application, we’ll be in touch.” And on that page there’s a conversion code that Google gives you, any website designer should easily be able to put it on your website. And when the prospective cutomer gets to that page, they are now a conversion. Google will track that for you and provide a dollar amount spent per conversion.
So if you know how much on online application is worth for you, then you should know whether it’s worth it or not to continue running Google ads in hopes of getting online applications.
There are more reasons to use Google PPC — and it’s scalable and manageable. You can find people to manage your Google PPC ads for anywhere from $250 to $700 dollars a month for one location — and it really depends on your budget. If you start getting in bigger budgets in multiple locations then that’ll drive the cost up. If you want to learn what we do, then contact us. We’ll be in touch.