Sometimes getting the most out of your monthly marketing budget isn’t as easy as it seems. How much more should you spend on paid search advertising? How many leads are you missing out on without knowing how to read the data? What kind of advertising is right for your dealership? What is the best route to maximize your ROI through digital advertising?

Can you answer any of these questions or do you feel a little bit like Bill and Ted?

If you’re considering setting up your own account and just jumping right into paid search, keep in mind that there’s a reason companies charge a management fee for these kind of advertising services.

Seven Reasons Your Dealership Needs a PPC Expert

1. Understanding Data

The most important aspect of running a successful paid search campaign is being able to understand your data. Specifically, what people are doing when they click through your dealership’s ads and if the campaigns are working. It is extremely important to understand elements like which ads are converting, why ads are or are not gaining impressions and clicks and how much of the market you’re missing out on. There might be a dash to show all of this information, but not being able to interpret is the equivalent of “throwing $&!% at the wall and seeing what sticks.” Capiche?

2. Account Management

Even for a seasoned expert, making mistakes in the initial setup of an account is sometimes inevitable, but the wrong mistake can be detrimental to your account spend.

Imagine setting up a campaign to spend $100 a day and not realizing you added an extra zero. Imagine you set this account up and then found yourself extremely busy for the next two weeks. Both seem pretty bad, right? Now imagine that you didn’t double check your location settings when you created the account, and your ads are popping up all over the country. Uh oh! The probability of spending $14,000 instead of $1,400 is very, very real and could not only cost the dealership a lot of money, but it also cost you your job.

3. Talking the Talk

Do you understand all of the paid search jargon? CPC, CPM, PPC, CPA, CTR, DON (wait, that’s me).

What’s a converted click and how does that effect your bottom line? Do you know the difference between impressions, sessions and clicks? These are all things a paid search manager should know and are extremely important in running an account. Missing out on expert advice or solutions could be costing your dealership more than you know.

4. Research

Choosing the wrong keywords can blow your budget out much sooner then expected. Keyword research is extremely important to the success of your paid search account and is something a paid search manager needs to dedicate a lot of time to during the initial setup of the account, and then throughout the life of the account.

The amount of time needed for research is often taken for granted, or at the least, with a grain of salt. I’ve been told before that it isn’t rocket science. Well, maybe it isn’t, but these same people are either not running paid search or are running a failing account.

5. Industry Experience

You may think your automotive industry experience counts for something, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t matter. The experience necessary to run a successful paid search campaign will come from both digital advertising and the experience one gains from working with single and multiple brand stores all across the country. The dealers experience generally comes from a single store, generally within on brand and one geographic region.

Do you know that a strategy in New Jersey could be completely different then the strategy you’re planning in Texas, or California or Idaho? Unless you’ve worked on multiple accounts in a menagerie of locations the answer is probably no.

6. We’re Going Through Changes

Just like Ozzy sings it, the industry is constantly changing, and if you’re not staying on top of it, don’t get involved. While an auto dealer might be busy reading Automotive News, Detroit Free Press and WardsAuto, your paid search manager is having meetings with Google, going to Ad:tech and collaborating with his or her co-workers to develop and implement new strategies on their accounts.

7. Time

Reason seven is quite simple. Take a second and reflect on everything you just read. Do you even have the time to do any of the above?

How much of your day can you dedicate to things outside of selling cars and handling leads?

Take Aways:

I bet you thought the old “set it and forget” saying rang true for paid search. Sorry, but it doesn’t. As previously mentioned, there is a reason companies are paid to handle, research, maintain and develop paid search strategies, remarketing, video advertising, and other paid accounts like social.

Stop worrying about the cost of paying an agency and start worrying about the money lost with inexperience. Give us a call at 732-450-8200 for a free paid search assessment.