Shoppers should see your dealership website first when searching for your name. Aside from protecting your own reputation, your competitors may bid against you and conquest leads. These clicks are low-hanging fruit, meaning they convert well and are inexpensive.

1. Should I buy my own name?

What metrics should I care about?

2.

24/7 $

3. How should I allocate budget?

Leads matter the most. Metrics like CPC (cost per click), impressions, bounce rate, and CTR (click through rate) don’t matter if they aren’t resulting in leads. However, don’t forget to pay attention to cost. Track your cost per lead if you have the data connectivity to do so. On the left is the formula you want to use.

autoleadstar.com

Your budget should reflect what’s working. Put more dollars into ad campaigns that bring high quality traffic, and reduce budgets on lower performing campaigns. The budget allocation should be automated so that your ads are always fully optimized, 24/7 for highest ROI.

Google Ads: What Every Dealer Must Ask

Cost =Lead

CostCalls + website Lead

When you're investing marketing dollars into channels like Google, it's important to track best practices and make sure you're staying as competitive as possible with the highest return on investment. This is your ultimate guide with 10 questions you should always be asking about your Google Ads strategy.

5.

LEAD

Which bid strategy should I use?

Increase awareness

Increase profit Target ROAS

Maximize clicks

Target impressions share

Business Goal Smart Bidding Mothod

Increase sales or leads Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value or Target CPA

Increase website visitors

Your bid strategy should match your business goal. If you were advertising for a news site, your bidding strategy might optimize for cost-per-view. But if you’re trying to drive traffic to your site and capture the traffic as leads there, your bidding strategy should optimize for conversions.

6. Do I have conversion tracking set up?

Conversion tracking allows you see what happens when someone clicks on your ad. This transparency will help you understand meaningful activities (like leads and sales) that come from your Google Ads and will adjust to optimize for best results. Without this, you may be adjusting campaigns based on the wrong metrics. This can lead to a decrease in lead haul when you ultimately want an increase.

4. What is a bid strategy? Every time an ad appears it goes through an ad auction, a process that decides which ads will appear and in which order. But it’s not just an auction that rewards the highest price. If Google thinks your ads and landing pages are high-quality, you still have a chance to win. So for every search, Google’s algorithm decides which ads to display. Google Ads offers 12 different bidding strategies that optimize for different goals.

Target Search Page Location

Target Outranking share

CPM Bidding (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)

VCPM Bidding (Cost Per ViewableThousand Impressions)

CPV Bidding (Cost Per View)

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9

10

11

12

Enhanced Cost Per Clicks (ECPC)

Maximize Conversions

Target CPA (cost per Acquisition)

Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)

Maximize Clicks

Manual CPC Bidding

1

2

3

4

5

6 Target Impression Share Bidding

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9. What is the keyword strategy?

Dig into keyword strategy to see if you’re using long-tail keywords. While these keywords may be less popular, they convert highly well since they are specific (ex: 2012 Subaru Impreza) and lead to the specific page on your site that matches the query. Question if you are just using short tail keywords like “new subaru”, which are obvious and popular, and generally harder-to-win traffic.

Do I know exactly how my dollars are being spent? Google is connected to your budget and data. How is your budget being allocated? Understanding what part of the budget goes directly to Google versus agencies/success fees is crucial, as well as being a part of the budget allocation decisions. Why was more money put into campaign A versus campaign B? When was this change made and how has it affected our ROI?

8. Are my campaigns dynamic? Dynamic campaigns are programatically created

to fit the nature of dealer inventory. The templated campaigns can apply to all makes and models in your inventory, making it easy to create ads at scale. With 65% of shoppers searching for specific vehicles, dynamic campaigns don’t leave opportunities on the table.

7. Does my strategy fit Google’s 5 Micro-moments?

Google’s micro-moments reflect the different moments a typical shopper goes through while searching for their vehicle online.

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