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:
- Reduce CPC
- Improve the likelihood of your keyword entering an auction (i.e. a higher Impression Share)
- 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:
- Past CTR of a keyword (Is this keyword generating tons of impressions but very few clicks?)
- Overall CTR of entire account (Are your campaigns stuffed with ineffective keywords and bad text ads?)
- Quality of landing page (Does your landing page contain pop-ups? slow connection? Are visitors being sent to irrelevant pages?)
- Keyword + Ad text relevance (Does your ad contain a compelling message that closely relates to the keyword that triggered it?)
- 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.
