- Jul 8, 2014
- 23
- 10
- First Name
- William
Hey Joe, could you expand on this? What are your main concerns with using a non-auto specific company?
Looking for an extremely good SEM company
- Thread starter Emilie Benn
- Start date
Hey Joe, could you expand on this? What are your main concerns with using a non-auto specific company?
I'm 50/50 on this myself.
On the one hand, automotive customers are often considered by automotive people to be this different type of person that needs to be tamed in a way that only automotive people understand. We promote our products like dealers would, we create ads like dealers would, etc.
On the other hand, customers are just people. They shop for cars in a myriad of different way. I've seen some pretty generic campaigns with strange keywords see great success because they picked up on things that seemed so obvious but were generally ignored.
Simple example: dealers love to call cars "pre-owned", but customers call them "used"
Customers tend to Google things like "Tires for an 09 Yaris" not "yaris tires" (In my experience) and yet rarely do I see a campaign take advantage of how people tend to use Google. This is no longer about how they buy cars, but how they use the search engine that shows these ads.
One of the nice things about Showroom Logic is that they make a campaign for each vehicle, which allows them to offer multiple ads for the same vehicle with a diverse list of keywords as well. Combined campaigns tend to hit the limit of ads (I think it's 20?) fairly quickly, making them far more generic.
I will expand on this if you dont mind...
It is like hiring a home builder to build your commercial building. While they know the basics of construction and can probably get the job done, you are going to be paying (alot more on both ends) for their learning about the idiosyncrasies of building a commercial building.
Buying a car is definitely not like purchasing a home or a pair of shoes online. There are different behaviors associated with all three when it comes to search. I am no way an expert at this but I would go with a company that has some experience in the automotive field because they most likely study those behaviors more and can pin point or guide you in the direction you should start at. Just my .02.
- Jul 8, 2014
- 23
- 10
- First Name
- William
Thank you Drew for jumping. I guess I'm looking more for what those idiosyncrasies are. I see what you are saying, but my mind tends to think of ppc/seo/sem, etc etc like the stock market. You are not going to give all of your investments to a broker that is really good at investing only in pharmaceutical companys. You want the guy that finds the dog food company and stuffing peanuts company that is showing big returns. So you essentially are looking for the company that knows Digital marketing no matter the demo...
That's how my mind was thinking of it at least. But I'm open to see why that could be off.
I was wanting a 30 mile radius, and ending up with about 120 miles to the Southeast and East. All of my clicks were being quickly consumed by a densely populated metro area, and I am rural and in a town of 19,000.
They were not on a percentage or a commission. I insisted that we use my Adwords account, and that way I was paying Google directly and paying Showroom Logic a flat fee.
Where they failed was by not listening to me. When we started, we were not hitting our budget (which was only $1,000/mo). They were getting their money. I was happy because the traffic I was getting was highly targeted and in my market. I would rather pay them a 1:1 match with Google and have traffic I could do something with. They didn't get that, even though I told them.
If I remember correctly (back in 2010-2012), HomeNet had their own paid SEM campaigns they were doing for our used car dealer. Using long-term search phrases (YMM/C specific) as opposed to short term (used car dealer City). More clicks, less ad budget needed, decent conversion. Not sure if they do that anymore.
- May 13, 2014
- 7
- 1
- First Name
- Emilie
Thank you all of you for responding to my post. Showroom logic has fixed the latest issues we had on our account and I had a very good call with my Account Manager's supervisor (all in French - who knew?). So we are going to see how they perform in the next 15/30 days and we will adjust accordingly.
Concerning the different comments:Geo-targeting in the settings. ... doesn't stop someone 1000 miles to search for your name and for Google to deliver the ad. Let's say the customer in L.A went on ATC looked at your VDP then google the name of your store based in NYC, Google is a bit smart to know that if it was presenting an ad that the customer would click on it... even though you limited your radius to 100 miles around the dealership (unless you excluded the USA outside of this radius - but at this moment why would you exclude someone 1000 miles away to have an easy way to find you?)
Concerning using a vendor outside the automotive segment: I am going back and forth. But nowadays with UX development being the biggest trend I feel that a company that handle big accounts (such as the OEM - yeah your OEM is probably not using showroom logic nor Cobalt nor Haystack) might be able to get more users doing more broader search type (aka: 2009 toyota yaris tires).
Concerning the different comments:Geo-targeting in the settings. ... doesn't stop someone 1000 miles to search for your name and for Google to deliver the ad. Let's say the customer in L.A went on ATC looked at your VDP then google the name of your store based in NYC, Google is a bit smart to know that if it was presenting an ad that the customer would click on it... even though you limited your radius to 100 miles around the dealership (unless you excluded the USA outside of this radius - but at this moment why would you exclude someone 1000 miles away to have an easy way to find you?)
Concerning using a vendor outside the automotive segment: I am going back and forth. But nowadays with UX development being the biggest trend I feel that a company that handle big accounts (such as the OEM - yeah your OEM is probably not using showroom logic nor Cobalt nor Haystack) might be able to get more users doing more broader search type (aka: 2009 toyota yaris tires).
I want to be sure that I understand this, if I set my Geo Targeting to 100 Miles and someone searches me at 250 miles, I am gonna show up as a sponsored link?
Isn't that the purpose of Geo Targeting...so that doesn't happen?
Isn't that the purpose of Geo Targeting...so that doesn't happen?
Yes/No - it depends on how you set you targeting preferences... you have 3 options:
** People in, searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location (recommended)
** People in my targeted location
** People searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location
The best explanation of each is at https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722038?expand=loc1&ctx=tltp&authuser=0
Google is smart - but isnt "all smart". A good example is a "<CityName> Chevrolet" example for a dealer that I work for. Would you believe that the same <CityName> is in California, Nebraska, and North Dakota?? Well, we we seeing a really high visit/click count from 2 of those states - people with no real intention of looking for us using the "** People in, searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location (recommended)" target option. So our choices were to exclude the 2 non-target states, or change to "** People in my targeted location" .. we chose to change the targeting option.
I really hate radii targeting, a good SEMer will take the time to create the target for each city/state in the campaign that is within the radii. In all honesty this is really the best way to guarantee the targets. Esp in hyper concentrated markets (think top 10 metros). Also targeting the city/state allows you to use bid modifiers to better bid for traffic that is converting on your website.
This is a quick high level example - there are of course other factors that need to be taken into account. A good SEMer will show you all the options, where your traffic is coming from, and allow you to make recommendations to them and from them to meet your business needs.
