Where Would Your Sales Be If Everyone Stopped Running Google Ads?

[ThatPPCGuy]

I had a really good, and honest, conversation with a GM at a Ford store in Florida last week. He's been the GM for a decade now and heard every pitch from all the vendors. Including me!

I brought up an interesting point: If you, and all your competitors STOPPED running Google Ads - where would you rank in your market? If your store is consistently 4th or 5th, would it continue to be so? Would your pump in/out report look the same?

A lot of money gets wasted in Google Ads every month, usually coming from a place of fear (if I don't show up, my competitor will). Money gets thrown at yr/make/model searches, competitor names, and aged inventory thats priced wrong, not because there's no traffic (look at your analytics).

Curious on what everyones thoughts are on this!

Justin

 

[Carsten]

It's google.
So google ads help with search rankings for the more generic terms.

(I don't believe what google posts as their rules ... they obvious have their own ad revenue as a primary interest)

 

[ThatPPCGuy]

Thats for replying Carsten, I appreciate it. I have managed Google Ads for over a decade now, and through trial and error, and spending millions of dollars for dealerships, have sen that most generic search queries do not result in conversions. I'm a big supporter of marketing that supports awareness and reach - but search ads are the least effective. A dealers Search Term Report from their SEM vendor will support this.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Fortunately, other search engines are beginning to take noticeable market share from Google. @JessicaRobertson has been pointing out the rise of Bing paid search to @Jeff Kershner and me for months. We're planning a RefreshFriday to talk about the holes in Google and where others are beginning to take advantage... and why.

 

[ThatPPCGuy]

Thanks for replying Alex, i Agree. and mirroring Google Ad in Bing is as simple as three clicks. Just make sure Google Ads is optimized first. My comment holds true for Bing as well - dealers throw money at too many keywords, with the majority not producing anything. If the campaigns were designed for reach they would, at least, be too expensive. SearchGPT could disrupt Google before Bing ever makes up ground! Looking forward to the RefreshFriday.

 

[Ryan Everson]

It's google.
So google ads help with search rankings for the more generic terms.

(I don't believe what google posts as their rules ... they obvious have their own ad revenue as a primary interest)

Are you saying that spending money on Google Ads helps your organic rankings?

 

[KateRedmond]

I backed out significant budget from Google ads about 1.5 years ago and haven't turned back, and we are breaking records. We allocated the money to social media and just do some geo based searched like dealer near me etc.

 

[ThatPPCGuy]

Thanks for sharing Kate. Not surprising sales were un-affected by ad spend! Are you running any VLA or PMax campaigns? The value of a well optimized PMax campaign is affordability (compared to Search), and ability to track store visits, the king of all dealer KPIs!

 

[CarlAutofusion]

Most dealers are way overspending on Google Ads. A lot of accounts we review are not even being managed very well. You can see this when you go to the search terms and see clicks from the same search queries month-after-month that aren't producing results. The vendor buys the broadest searches because they can come back in the next month and tell you the impression share is too low and you are missing opportunities. They do this to keep increasing your budgets and get rewarded for running an inefficient campaign.

PMax Vehicle Ads are super awesome - cheap clicks and if you optimize the VDP, you can get a decent conversion rate. If you send the traffic to your normal VDP, the conversion rate is usually pretty bad (but the clicks are still cheap).

 

[ThatPPCGuy]

I agree. The overspend is probably from the dealers COOP, they need to spend a certain amount. Doesn't mean they should waste it, but thats often times where the budget is coming from.