SEM Management Any ReachLocal users?

[ErdmanMotors]

Better late then never but one of my dealerships is finally getting into PPC and Remarketing. We do not have anyone in house who can handle it so we are looking for a cost effective 3rd party to help us out.

At digital dealer I heard reach local thrown around some but after contacting them and learning about their pricing model and plethora of horrible reviews online I got a very uneasy feeling from them.

That being said any recommendations from the community?

 

[sweece]

We were approached by ReachLocal at one point. The way they set up their campaigns is ridiculous. They direct users to a mirror of your site that is hosted on ReachLocal's own domain. They'll try to tell you that it's better to do it that way because they can monitor your campaigns better but that's just a bunch of bs. Nobody else is doing it that way, so why do they? Plus, if somebody bookmarks the site after clicking a PPC ad, they'll be directed back to the ReachLocal version of your site.

That being said, we use an agency to manage our PPC. It's a bit more expensive so I'd say a recommendation would be based upon your projected ad spend. I keep hearing about a company called Trada that "crowdsources" paid search so you'll save a bit of money on that end. What that means is that you'll have multiple people managing your account -- not too sure if that's a good idea. They do, however, get paid only on performance.

Anyhow, there's plenty of people that do PPC these days. I'd say interview a few companies and figure out which ones operate the way your dealership does. Each company does things a little differently and you'll notice that after talking to a few.

Something that you'll want to do once you sign up with someone is to make sure they have access to your inventory all the time. We have Dealer Specialties send our agency our data feed via FTP so that they can easily create a pivot table to see which vehicles we have on a weekly basis. That's pretty important for the ads and making sure you bid on the right keywords.

I believe Dealer.com has some sort of turn key solution (hate that term) for their clients that automatically knows their inventory so you should check that out too.

 

[joe.pistell]

Not ANY PPC vendor will work, You MUST choose an automotive PPC vendor ONLY!!!

You're paying the vendor, this vendor should know the auto-dealer market place in great detail. There are a MILLION ways to blow thru a PPC budget. Optimizing that budget to reduce waste and make your dollars work smarter is the vendors mission and you can only get there with deep automotive knowledge.

Automotive Dealer PPC Vendors I know of:
Dealer.com
HayStak.com (formerly Moore & Scarry's HayStack)
Portraz.com


Speaking from my experiences only,

I was a self managed PPC user. I had created and managed a GIANT PPC campaign. Over several years, it has grown to 32,000 keywords (phrases) that dropped into a dozen different campaigns (sales themes). I created geo-targeting to attack and track my home market and 2 neighboring markets.

A few extra details your PPC vendor should be doing for you (to offset their expense)

Negative Keywords:
Nothing is worse than paying $$$ for a guy looking for an owners manual, or a shopper looking for a 60's Chevy impala. To improve ROI I built a negative keyword list of hundreds and hundreds of words & phrases.

Ad Extensions:
I am very proud of my "ad extension" work, it creates killer CTR.

As time went forward & I dumped hundreds of hours into PPC, yet the evolution of PPC was becoming more complex. I found myself unable to keep up with the evolution of PPC. I hired my son to help me, I taught him everything I knew, his "light went on" and after 1,320 hours of employment with me, he took his Google AdWords Certification test and passed (proud papa!).

We've experimented with trying to force a feed to Google Merchant Center to display our inventory pictures. FAIL. That led me to write: http://www.dealerrefresh.com/google-dealertrack-chrome-systems-changes-automtive-industry/


Along the way, I've had discussions with the brilliant Eric Mayhew of Dealer.com(DDC). Eric created Total Control Dominator (TCD). Last I checked, TCD was not compatible with non-DDC sites. I met Duncan Scarry at DD9 and became very interested in HayStack, but he wasn't ready for all of my tweaks.

This loooong story ends with Duncan Scarry making huge improvements to Haystak and I've turned over my PPC account and the results have been excellent.

 

[Brian Pasch]

PCG Digital Marketing also offers SEM and Display advertising. We have a customized, hands on approach to paid search which includes leveraging retargeting, promoted video, and now video pre-roll. We will also help to design and implement better landing pages for the campaign to increase conversion.

If you would like to discuss your needs, give me a call on my cell: 732.672.2356.

Brian Pasch

 

[dscarry]

There are a lot of companies that provide SEM / PPC and there's a lot of differences.

One of the best ways to determine the best from a long list of good providers is third party verification from the search engines themselves.

Google annotates the best search marketing companies through their Google Adwords Premier SMB Partner program. Unlike a Certified Partner, this is not an accolade you can simply meet requirements and receive. Google selects them based on their past performance, customer satisfaction, ability to operate at scale, etc.

Microsoft has a similar program, called the Microsoft Advertising Authorized Reseller program.

Once selected for the program, the engines then offer products, services and betas not always offered through non-selected partners, such as free clicks and click rebate programs.

In the automotive industry, there are only four companies that have been selected by the search engines with these designations - Dealer.com, Cobalt, ReachLocal and Haystak Digital (formerly Moore & Scarry).

All four of them provide great service. If you watched Jonika's (from Google's) keynote address, she highlighted those four providers and discussed the great lengths Google goes through to vett and select them.

All of them are great providers, each with their own set of benefits. Cobalt and Dealer.com, however, only work with dealers who have Cobalt or Dealer.com sites. ReachLocal and Haystak (my company) work with all dealers.

The main point of differentiation between Haystak and ReachLocal is our exclusive, specific automotive focus. Our software is designed for auto dealers and offers things like dynamic inventory ad generation, bidding based on vehicle age and black book value, etc. In addition, we offer fee-based compensation - so we don't take a percent of your spend.

If you go with any of the four listed here - you'll have a solid provider that's been well researched and vetted by the best in the industry.

This is certainly not to say that other providers don't or won't do a good job.

For information on Haystak, visit Haystak Digital Marketing - Automotive SEM & Automotive PPC

 

[dscarry]

This loooong story ends with Duncan Scarry making huge improvements to Haystak and I've turned over my PPC account and the results have been excellent.

Thanks for the reference Joe!