Looking for an extremely good SEM company

[Chris Leslie]

Ah, that makes sense

 

[Amy Eddins Hughes]

Chris, call Julie Lawton, she has trained PPC Account Managers within Cobalt, DDC, Showroom, L2T, and all of our certified agency partners. I'm sure she will have a good feel for which company is best to meet your goals.

 

[Heather Gallay]

We actually do SEM for our clients. Our PPC Manager used to work at Haystak, but now works for us managing a smaller client roster, and giving each account daily attention. And we're an automotive-only agency.

 

[Prentice Parton]

I've been reading through this thread and my curiosity is sparked as to why dealers are still utilizing a radius as a means of geo-targeting when there are so many efficient methods of targeting. I understand the desire of coverage and radius targeting being a method of "casting a wide net", but wouldn't you be more interested in utilizing dimensions data that would show that in "x" zip code you're spending $1,000 for 2 leads as opposed to "y" zip code that you're spending $1,000 for 10 leads.. and then optimizing according to CPL in most effective areas in a DMA? Just a thought.

 

[craigh]

I've been reading through this thread and my curiosity is sparked as to why dealers are still utilizing a radius as a means of geo-targeting when there are so many efficient methods of targeting. I understand the desire of coverage and radius targeting being a method of "casting a wide net", but wouldn't you be more interested in utilizing dimensions data that would show that in "x" zip code you're spending $1,000 for 2 leads as opposed to "y" zip code that you're spending $1,000 for 10 leads.. and then optimizing according to CPL in most effective areas in a DMA? Just a thought.

Yes, everyone should be doing things a bit better than a simple radius, but the radius still works.
Since much of the location data is based on things other than their actual physical address, the radius has upsides and downsides.

Personally, I do multiple campaigns each with their own city or radius. This allows us to report as you were discussing, but based on specific regions. Our cities aren't 5 million in population, so I'm talking about a small city surrounded by other small cities we target. There's definitely some "wide net" issues with radius and other location targeting though - that location data will never be perfect.

<offtopic>
My biggest challenge is the dealerships where they all live in the dealership's city, but 95% of them work in the city next door that has 1, 2 or even 5 dealerships of the same make. I'm finding that people are doing their car shopping at work (assumed from time of day, location and ISP), which means that this dealership is struggling with everything from AdWords to sales. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I also do all my shopping closer to my office than my home. So we tried targeting the city where they work, but with ads trying to convince them to visit the "hometown" dealership. We tried targeting the hometown harder in the "off hours". We tried so many different location, campaign, keyword and ad types and options and I still can't get a firm grasp on it. The clicks and impressions work well, but the traffic doesn't bite. Did some A/B testing with the theme and no change. Used the theme in another city for a same make dealership and it worked better than their previous theme. Changed the content, did SEO evaluations, etc. Organic traffic navigates the site as we would expect, but for some reason the traffic we bring in from AdWords doesn't grab ahold hardly ever. Again, similar campaigns for the same make (different dealer) 2 hours away works fine.
</offtopic>

 

[Heather Gallay]

At Dynamic Beacon, we never just use a radius. We cherry pick zip codes and areas - and it's a fluid process that we're constantly modifying through regular reviews of the accounts with our clients.

 

[Tallcool1]

I am in a rural market and it is 100 miles to the nearest city with more than one zip code.

Radius just kind of makes sense to me.

 

[Prentice Parton]

I can see where radius would be a good start, but you'd definitely want to look at the dimensions data what can show you, both, where your ad was shown within your radius (in order to properly weed out high CPL areas), and have a look at the user location data to find out where your ad was shown outside of your targeting area as a means of expansion into other efficient markets.

 

[DrewAment]

Prentice,

You are assuming that dealers have conversions set-up, and/or even their Analytics account linked and importing goals to Adwords. In most cases NOT -- at least very few actually do AND pay attention. And, if they have a vendor do it for them - most vendors probably don't take the time to show to ability to city/zip target and do bid modifiers. For the vendor it is easier to do a radius.

However...I do agree with you. But, I usually start with a radius and then use the location report "where your users were" to add, exclude, and bid modify as needed. You will have your core locations that perform well with-in 90 days IMO.

You can also overlay this with mapped data from the DMS for solds and bid modify based on higher or lower grosses and number of units sold. Example: 120 clicks does nothing for you if you didnt get them in the door to sell them a vehicle.

There are probably 99 different ways to do it, and it will vary greatly from make, location, rural, city....each dealership just needs to decide what THEY are comfortable with.

 

[Prentice Parton]

I somewhat agree with you, here. Unless a CRM is feeding back which leads turned into a sale, a true conversion will never be a measure in automotive deals. If you're not selling anything to gain online revenue, you're lead gen. I'm definitely not under the assumption that a dealership is tracking true conversions (no online sales that produce online revenue) and/or tied with analytics as you can use far more effective dimensions data from Google AdWords as of late. If you're not eCommerce, you're lead gen. It's important to set that expectation up early.

I will however, stress the importance of linking analytics as a measure of tracking micro-conversions (leads) that would be most beneficial to dealerships. You're right, clicks does nothing for you. What DOES do something for you is knowing (w/ micro-conversions) whether a click turned into a sales phone call, directions from a mobile device, service appointment by phone call, incentive page view, etc. Marrying analytics to AdWords is far too simple a process to skip.