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Outrageous PPC CPC for Jeep/Chrysler

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bono426

bono426

Skate Alert
Aug 26, 2013
50
6
First Name
Charlie
#1
Anyone else experiencing this with AdWords? Some keywords are going for $25 a freakin click!

Everyone and their mother is on some program through chrysler that is inflating the cost greatly. This is getting to be a little ridiculous..

I'm in the Boston area, anyone else experiencing this?
 
#2
Sure. $25 CPC isn't that crazy especially if you are targeting models AND you are competing for that number one spot :) I mean, chances are you are going to be against the wallets of Chrysler.

Though, you shouldn't be paying that much unless you have a heckofa good proven conversion rate. Assuming the ad is targeted, designed, and laid out right. I'll say around $X per click (removing price because I don't want to get in a debate over this) would be the max for some of these campaigns.

btw, I did a PPC campaign for a personal injury lawyer about a year back ... $100 cost per click on some keywords!
 
#3
Your inventory profile should drive your PPC strategy. Big store is a supermarket. A small store is a boutique. In other words, Lil' boutiques should be snipers and big store can be carpet bombers.

Snipers buy long tail ads. Carpet bombers buy high volume short tails (and pay big CPC).

in the end, snipers need to be way smarter than carpet bombers.
 
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#5
Hey Bono, a $25 average CPC does seem on the high side for an automotive keyword. I’ve managed a PPC campaign for a dealership in the Boston metro area last year and the CPC’s, while higher than average, did not approach $25.

Many Chrysler dealerships throughout the country have taken advantage of Chrysler’s Digital PAP funds through Haystak, which is why the CPCs relating to new Chryslers have risen over the past 2 years, but I don’t think that’s enough to explain a $25 click.

Quality Score is important to keep in mind when trying to control CPCs. I have a script running on most of my client accounts that computes campaign and account level Quality Scores and outputs the figure to a graph so I can monitor progress.

To reduce this massive CPC I would focus on improving your Quality Score, this would accomplish 3 things:

  1. Reduce CPC
  2. Improve the likelihood of your keyword entering an auction (i.e. a higher Impression Share)
  3. Improve overall ad position (Ad Rank = Max CPC * Quality Score)

Don’t worry if you’re not exactly sure of what Quality Score is, it’s a bit of a black box even to PPC managers. However, we do know some crucial factors that goes into calculating this number. Address any one of the following issues and you’ll be on your way to moving your score up:

  1. Past CTR of a keyword (Is this keyword generating tons of impressions but very few clicks?)
  2. Overall CTR of entire account (Are your campaigns stuffed with ineffective keywords and bad text ads?)
  3. Quality of landing page (Does your landing page contain pop-ups? slow connection? Are visitors being sent to irrelevant pages?)
  4. Keyword + Ad text relevance (Does your ad contain a compelling message that closely relates to the keyword that triggered it?)
  5. Keyword + search query relevance (Are you making smart use of negative keywords to filter out bad impressions? Is someone, for example, in your area typing in “Saturn”, hoping to find information on the ringed planet, only to see your text ad telling him about your stock of cars from the defunct manufacturer? Filter these people out.)

There are 4 more known factors that go into Quality Score calculation in addition to the above, but I’ll leave those out as they can get complicated.

If you’d like, I’d be happy to look into your account for free to make sure everything is configured the right way, just send me a PM.
 
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#6
Pistell, Thank you!

I'm aware of the quality score and I've been working on getting that up higher. I think the problem is there are 4 dealers in the area competing for the #1 spot with budgets that, well, they just dont exist. Also, like you said with the Haystack thing providing adwords to every Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram dealer and they're doing it in the most cookie cutter way. So the competitive keywords like "Grand Cherokee" are being auctioned off to everyone and the top 4 or 5 who are competing for the #1 spot, are paying for it.

This is even the case with Bing too!
 
#7
bono426 said:
Pistell, Thank you!

So the competitive keywords like "Grand Cherokee" are being auctioned off to everyone and the top 4 or 5 who are competing for the #1 spot, are paying for it.

This is even the case with Bing too!
Click to expand...

Solution, replace keyword "Grand Cherokee" with any of the following for an almost certain cheaper CPC

+2014 +Grand +Cherokee
+used +Grand +Cherokee
+Jeep +Grand +Cherokee
 
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