The Triangle of Automotive Paid Search Success

In the world of automotive, paid search ads play a crucial role in keeping dealerships in front of their market. Although there are many factors that play into paid search success (a strong set of keywords, granular campaign structure, ongoing A/B tests, ultra-tailored ads, etc.), there are three key components that play a huge role in your overall account health: geo-targeting, impression share, and budget.

At Adpearance, we refer to these three components as “The Triangle.” Depending on a dealership’s marketing needs and constraints, it is crucial to determine which of these three components are most important. The triangle works in a simple way: choose two of the variables you wish to control, and the third variable is automatically dictated based on search volume. To put this in more simple terms, I’ve broken down two common scenarios for dealerships.

Portland CDJR

• Portland CDJR has worked with their Adpearance Account Director to establish their two constants of the triangle to be budget and impression share. This means the third component, geo-targeting, will need to be the variable and fluctuate in targeting distance. This will satisfy the two constants and let the account maintain a healthy impression share with their given budget.
• Constants: Fixed budget & fixed impression share.
• Variable result: Adpearance Paid Search analysts determine a targeting area around the dealership allowing them to satisfy the two controlled variables.

Seattle CDJR

• Seattle CDJR has chosen its two constants of the triangle to be budget and geo-targeting. This means the third component, impression share, is the variable that will fluctuate. For this example, if search volume in this targeted area costs more than the fixed budget allows, then impression share will decrease as the dealership does not wish to decrease their geo-target or increase their budget.
• Constants: Fixed budget & fixed geo-targeting.
• Variable result: Campaigns maintain an average search impression share lower than the optimal amount (85-100%) as a result of the set budget and geo-targeting.

Informing Your Decision with Sales by Zip

As you can see from the most common scenarios outlined above, it is extremely important to establish the two most important components of the triangle to allow for digital marketing success. At Adpearance, we help make this decision even easier by creating a Sales by Zip Code heat-map of your most successful sales area (as seen below). This helps determine a data-backed, tailored geo-targeting strategy for each specific dealership.

Is budget an issue? No problem – we can put together a tiered growth plan (as shown below) that allows us to launch campaigns by covering the most successful sales area to start, and gradually pushing out additional campaigns over time as we help your dealership increase sales.

Let our team of 4.0 analysts put together a free comprehensive analysis outlining the status of your current digital marketing presence and what Adpearance can do for you!