I just cancelled CDK (cobalt) PowerBrand here's why

[Alex.Lemoing]

I signed up for PowerBrand with Cobalt to take care of our GM Store online marketing a little more than 6 months ago. Everything was running smooth, we were getting a ton more visits to the website thanks to our display campaign, the lead count seemed to creep up and we were selling cars too.
Until I started doing my own reports...

Here's our visit and lead counts coming from our Cobalt OEM website :

(by the way, the amount of email leads coming from our Cobalt website is very low, is anybody else experiencing this ?)
It looks promising, everything seems under control, except :

Our PowerBrand conversion rate is pretty much crap.
I also noticed an increase in our website Bounce Rate (from about 25% to 55%). Basically they were giving us empty traffic. A ton of High Funnel interest that was not converting to anything.
The increase in lead was mostly organic as our SEO is getting better and better each day. Phone calls are down but it will jump start in March with Tax Season.

I did not even mention that Cobalt is actually keeping 40% of our budget for their own pocket. that's a huge portion that could be used in advertising.

What we are about to do is a bit bold, but we decided to take matter in our own hands and handle our Pay per click and display by ourselves. I have high hope that we will succeed. If we fail, it will be a lesson learn and we can always go back to a third party.

What do you think, did you make the right decision? Would you have done different ??

 

[joe.pistell]

Uncle Joe Rule #121: "In business, every time you attempt to solve a problem, it creates a NEW problem. Before you make your move, think deeply about the new problem your creating... your success depends on it".

Alex,
I am all for your plan, I DIY'd my PPC for years . I understand your thinking. Some things to consider:

• Have you any experience in building and optimizing a PPC campaign?
• How much free time do you have to set aside for PPC learning, building and optimizing?
• How much money are you prepared to burn while you learn and make mistakes?
• Does your rollout plan factor in all of the above (i.e. keep the losses to a min while you learn).

IMO, If you have little to no PPC experience, you have a long road ahead of you, filled with lots of research & construction time and expensive mistakes. I'd recc immersing yourself in analyzing 3rd party PPC vendors to see if anyone can deliver better results than your existing vendor. Once that is finished, work with your new vendor and tell them you want to learn & build your own campaign (so your work doesn't over lap). Pick a theme and DIY! (e.g. one model, service, etc)

HTH
Joe

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Alex,

Joe focused on the PPC portion of your post. He offers some solid advice I wouldn't over look.

When you say... "I also noticed an increase in our website Bounce Rate (from about 25% to 55%). Basically they were giving us empty traffic. A ton of High Funnel interest that was not converting to anything."

Where are/were the PPC campaigns dropping the click?

Assuming this is a sales only campaign, no service involved correct?

And when you say "not converting", are you referring to form fill leads only or are you counting the phone calls as well?

The Bounce rate isn't always the best measurement to determine performance so be sure to check all the variables. And read this thread - it's a great conversation around Bounce rates.

 

[Alex.Lemoing]

@JoePistell , I have been actively monitoring PPC campaigns for the past trimester. (for all my stores) I also ran a separate campaign on my own.
On a small budget of $465 I was able to collect 158 clicks while CDK only got me 189 clicks on a budget of $826.
That being said, I was unable to track the conversion of my campaign, I was doing this on the side and didn't want Cobalt to be involved, so I didn't ask them to implement the tracking code on our pages. I will obviously do that in the future.

While I do have limited knowledge of Google Adwords and absolutely no knowledge on Bing and Yahoo, I got in touch with logicalposition.com and signed a 3 months contracts where they will at the same time create solid campaigns and show me the ropes of SEM. After 3 months of learning I should be good to go.

@Jeff Kershner this was a Sales only campaign yes. the high bounce rate was mostly coming from the display campaign they were running for us. Between the bounce rate, the very low conversion rate and their 40% cut, we are having a hard time staying on board.

The other thing to consider is that we are not using the Co-op funds for GM, so this SEM campaign was 100% out of pocket and we need to maximize the ROI. with Cobalt taking 40% of our budget for their own pocket, it hurts us more than anything else.

We took a risky decision but like the old saying goes : Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Thanks for the thread link I will read on it.

 

[joe.pistell]

Awesome Alex, you're already rolling!

thought:
Are you Localposition's 1st car dealer? Ask about compiling negative keywords for dealerships. I found an old negative keyword list with about 300 phrases that may help you, I uploaded to a gdoc [negative keywords spreadsheet]

HTH
Joe


Keyword

• car rent
• car hire
• car rental
• rental car
• "car rental"
• car ins
• car insurance
• insurance car
• "car insurance"
• rent car
• car for rent
• "rental car"
• rental cars
• "rental cars"
• car rentals
• "car rentals"
• car wash
• "car wash"
• used parts
• car auction
• car loan
• car parts
• "car parts"
• remote control cars
• car show
• "car show"
• car battery
• insurance quotes car
• cheap car rentals
• car credit
• car auctions
• "car auctions"

 

[joe.pistell]

Alex,

Maybe this can work for you.

IMO, a quality PPC visit should be nearly as good as an organic SEO visit. Heres an old score card I found July 2010:

​

Nearly all of the PPC results were inferior to SEO, but overall, I thought the traffic metrics were very healthy. With this, you'll find weak shopper performance by drilling into individual campaigns. Also, today's KPI is VDP views, if you believe in that, you can use that metric as a goal in Google Analytics. IMO, using VDP views as a stand alone KPI is not a complete picture of your shoppers satisfaction. I'm sure localposition will help you here too.

HTH
Joe

 

[Alex.Lemoing]

@JoePistell thank you very much for this information. the Negative keyword list will come handy for sure. VDP view is good, I'm also a believer in the H&D visits. these factors may not bring a trackable leads but are healthy factors for the dealership.
Our organic traffic have been doing great, opting in the SEO option was one of the best decision we ever made.

This is our Organic traffic curb.

 

[joe.pistell]

Alex, "H&D visits"?

(Nice SEO trend

 

[Alex.Lemoing]

@JoePistell Hours & Direction it's good for foot traffic

 

[joe.pistell]

Alex,

@brianpasch just made an excellent video that you may find useful, HTH.


His article is here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automotive-vdp-trends-vs-counts-brian-pasch