Search Engine Marketing (PPC)

Google Adwords is probably one of your dealership’s biggest and most important online marketing investments. Even if your dealership has hired an agency to manage your investment, you should spend 15 minutes to read the information Google just put out on Quality Score.

Quality Score (QS) can be one of the more confusing aspects of Google’s Adwords algorithm, but its critical to optimizing your dealership’s Adwords account. As a part of their AdWords Best Practices Series, Google released “Settling the (Quality) Score” white paper to help small businesses understand QS.

Google repeatedly states that the Quality Score number that appears in your Adwords account is not actually used in the real-time ad quality calculations. The Quality Score figure is a simplified representation of three factors: 1) ad relevance, 2) expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and 3) landing page experience, that Google does use in its calculation. According to Google, the Quality score is the “warning lights in a car: something that alerts you to potential problems.”

Anyone who is familiar with Adwords already knows that for every Keyword in your account, Google provides ratings (Above Average, Average, and Below Average) for each of these 3 elements. Ideally your keywords will be “Above Average” for all of them. In the Quality Score White Paper, Google even provides specific actions you can take to improve your score for any of these three factors.

Another interesting part of this whitepaper discusses a few things that DO MATTER and those that DON’T MATTER when it comes to Quality Score.

DOES MATTER:

1. The User’s Device – it matters to Google that you are giving users a good experience, and that includes catering to the device they are using to view your ads. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile users. Try separate ads and pages for mobile visitors.
2. Relevance to a User’s Intentions – Google believes this is the “heart of ads quality.” “Focus on delivering relevant ads” instead of trying to game the system for a higher QS.
3. For Newly-Launched Keywords, Performance on Related Keywords – Google will see how well the ads and pages are performing on related keywords if you’re starting out with new keywords. This prevents them from having to measure from scratch, and gives you an opportunity to start off on a good foot.

DOESN’T MATTER

1. How You Structure Your Account – Your AdWords account should be structured in a way that makes sense for you and your dealership. Outside of that, moving a keyword into a new ad group or campaign (without changing the ad text or destination URL) will not have an impact on your Quality Score.
2. Running Your Ads in Other Networks – Using the Google Display network or other Google search partners won’t affect the quality of your ads on Google.com.
3. Your Ad’s Placement on the Page – Having your ad in a high position on the page is great, but it doesn’t increase the expected Click-Through-Rate of your ads. The expected CTR shown is normalized for your actual position.

This white paper is a great resource for those dealerships that manage their own PPC accounts, and even for those trying to understand how their vendor is earning their ROI. I highly recommend reading through the ten page document when you have time. The biggest takeaway? “Give your users what they need, and a great Quality Score should follow.”

Working in a dealership, you have a million more important things to worry about than how Google’s Paid Search Auction works. But your dealership is probably spending thousands of dollars a year on paid search because it’s a proven, high ROI marketing channel for your dealership. Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, just put out a quick, new video updating how the Paid Search Auction works.

This new video does a great job of explaining updates to the ad auction (including items like Ad Format Impact), presenting why Google uses the different factors that they incorporate into their auctions. Among the concepts he addresses are:

1. The (updated) 5 Ad Rank Factors
   
   1. Bid Price – Your Keyword’s Cost Per Click
   2. Expected Clickthrough Rate – Google’s measure of how often Google has determined someone using that Keyword Search Query will click on your ad
   3. Landing Page Experience – Highly Relevant (to the Keywords and the Ad Copy) Landing Pages are best; specifically a High Quality Landing Page is:
      • Relevant and Original Content
      • Easy to Navigate
      • Transparent – about the nature of your business, how your site interacts with the user’s computer, and what you will do with the user’s information if you collect it
   4. Ad Relevance – Google uses your ad copy to make sure that it is relevant to the Keywords in the Search Query; they don’t want to serve ads that have no relation to a search
   5. Ad Formats – Enhancements to your Ad.  All of these add more information and more reasons to click on an ad.  This information would include:
      • Phone Number
      • Site Links
      • Website’s Domain in Ad Headline
      • Ratings
2. Quality – It appears that Hal is suggesting that “Quality Score” is an aggregate of Bid Price, Expected Click Through Rate, Landing Page Experience, and Ad Relevance (these have traditionally been the components of Quality Score).  Hal’s video suggests that Google actually looks at “Ad Format Impact” as a separate factor from Quality Score.
3. Ad Rank – Ad Rank is the number that Google assigns to each eligible ad to determine which ads and in what order to show them for any auction.  Ad Rank is based on a formula of Quality Score x “Ad Format Impact” x Bid Price.  The higher your ad’s Ad Rank, the higher up it will show for a particular Search.
4. Second Price Auction – this is how Google’s Adwords system actually determines the price that you pay when someone clicks on your ad.  Advertisers don’t actually pay their bid amount.  Once Google determines that an Advertiser’s ad is going to show, they charge the price that the advertiser would need to pay to beat the next highest Advertiser’s bid.  So, if you bid $4 for an ad, but based on your ad’s Quality Score AND Ad Format Impact, you might only need to pay $2.50 to beat the next Advertiser’s ad, so you are only charged $2.50 for a click on your ad.

The video is not even 9 minutes long, and if you use this outline while you watch it, you will probably be able to understand how Google’s Paid Search ad auction works in less than 30 minutes.

When you’re looking for a local business on your phone, how often are you in a position to write down a phone number, and then call?   It’s much easier to click the number of the business and have your phone call automatically – it seems obvious.  Did you know that less than 40% of car dealer’s PPC ads use this click-to-call functionality?

Using Click-to-Call in your PPC ads is especially important because it gives a clear call to action for consumers, and also allows your dealership’s ads to use the full text space. Since Google uses the click and call through performance of your ad when determining your Quality Score and cost per click, allowing viewers to convert from the search results page can provide your dealership with a huge boost in your PPC ROI.  Also, Google doesn’t allow phone numbers in the PPC ad copy, so using the Click to Call ad extensions they offer will add a “Call” button in your ad.

According to Google Think Insights, over half of auto searchers would be “very likely” to use click to call for parts/services or vehicles if the option were available.  Your dealership should be using click to call on your dealership mobile website (regardless of whether you use adaptive or responsive design).

Once your dealership has set up to click to call on your site (or in your PPC ads), make sure they are configured properly and are defined as goals in your Google Analytics.  If your website is not set up this way, and you’d like to have a website that automatically tracks all of your mobile calls via Google Analytics, we can provide you with a website that has that capability.  This will also help your dealership to more accurately track phone calls and the ROI of your online marketing efforts.  Your dealership website provider should be able to help you set this up.  Lastly, make sure you regularly test your click-to-call links across multiple devices to make sure they work on all devices and ensure your dealership isn’t missing leads.

If your dealership is running pay per click campaigns as a part of your online marketing mix, one of your main goals is probably to maximize the number of sales or service leads for the dealership.  The potential complexity of running numerous, simultaneous PPC campaigns can be overwhelming, even if you have an expert managing your efforts.
Whether or not your dealership is running your own PPC campaigns, it’s important to continuously optimize and improve them.  However, testing (whether it’s a simple A/B split test or a complex multi-variate scenario) can be even more overwhelming. Here are some fairly simple tips to dramatically increase your PPC conversion rates.

Match Landing Page Content Headings to Ad Copy: Make it clear to customers who click through on your ads that they have landed on the right page by matching your landing page headings to your ad copy.  Mirror the message and goals of your ads on the landing page to help drive up conversion rates.

Use Dynamic Phone Number Call-Tracking:  Google will provide you with call tracking within all of your ads (make sure you include that data in making your optimization decisions), but you also want to track the calls that come through from visitors AFTER they click through to your site.  Make sure that you have Dynamic Phone Number Replacement Call tracking; this replaces the phone numbers on your site with a unique tracking phone number each time someone clicks through on your ad, so you can track the call back to the ad (including campaign, keyword, creative, etc).  You will typically receive 4 calls or more for every lead form submission from an AdWords campaign, so you are missing the forest for the trees if you are only optimizing your ads based on lead form submissions.

Run Tests Long Enough:  When testing any of these factors (preferably in A/B format), make sure you don’t cut the test short. For example, if you declare a winner before the length of your typical sales cycle, you can’t accurately determine which test is more successful. You have to make it through a sales cycle to truly test the effectiveness of your tests. Use the “winner” to continue to test what works best for your dealership.

One User Intent Per Ad:  Make sure you (or your PPC provider) are creating ads for each segment of consumer you’re trying to reach. PPC is not a one size fits all endeavor. And yes, this leads us directly into the landing page conversation…

Effective Landing Pages: This is huge for PPC. Having effective and relevant landing pages will not only make your ad campaigns convert at a higher rate, but can also decrease your costs (Google rewards ads with a high quality score) – start with these Landing Page Best Practices to get started:

• Start With A Goal: What do you want people to do once they click on your PPC ad? Answer that question and build your landing page to help visitors accomplish that goal. Anything that doesn’t help visitors reach the goal you started with may not be necessary.

• Use One CTA (Call to Action): Try not to confuse visitors with multiple CTAs. Your ad copy should explain what visitors are looking for when they reach your landing page, so make that the CTA on the page a logical next step for someone clicking through on the ad.

Combining all of these best practices can increase the overall conversion rates of your PPC campaigns, save your dealership money, and help sell more cars.