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“Tell me, I forget.

Show me, I remember.

Involve me, I understand.”

Chinese Proverb

I have spent five years in the automotive industry and specialized in website management, digital marketing, social media and sales. I have seen a drastic amount of change within the digital marketing landscape. The world of digital marketing is vastly expanding and one must stay up-to-date with trends otherwise you will get left behind. It is worth mentioning that staying current with advancing technology will save the company you work for money (changes can occur in-house as opposed to hiring companies), time (changes can take place in real-time instead of waiting on outside companies response times) and be self-empowering (valuable skills are learned when trying and failing yourself as opposed to others failing).

My journey began back in October of 2012 where I started in sales and ended up landing a position later that year as the Internet Sales Coordinator while working at Waverley Chrysler. Throughout 2013 to 2016 it was awarded the number one dealership in volume sales for new vehicle delivery within the Prairies. My responsibilities included managing their websites, inventory and internet team as well as oversaw their social media accounts and digital marketing. I learned a lot while on the job and gained insight into various aspects within the digital world. Managing a website was new to me and so was everything else.

Skip forward to September of 2016 and I found myself working as the Marketing Manager at That Car Place. A month into the position I initiated my first ever Google AdWords campaign and was excited to take on a new challenge and see how it all worked. Our goal was to increase traffic to our website and in turn sell more vehicles. I was going to work with our website provider Carpages.ca on creating two separate landing pages. Both geared towards receiving more online credit applications, one page was targeting consumers with good credit scores while the other was going to target customers with bad credit scores.

I had zero idea on how to actually implement a Google AdWords campaign although I did have a strong understanding of how it worked. Google AdWords is an advertising service for businesses wanting to display ads on Google and its advertising network. The Google Network is basically leased advertising space that the majority of websites have. Websites offer this space to Google so companies can advertise on it. Sites like The New York Times, Tripadvisor and thousands of others all have dedicated space that are part of the Google Network. The ad service is largely focused on keywords. Businesses set an advertising budget and only pay when people click on their ads.

We started off our first campaign on October 1st. Only 58 days later we had hit 1,037,899 Impressions, 3,590 Interactions, a Conversion Rate of .35% and spent only $1,459.86.

As Austin Powers famously said, “Whoopty Doo…But what does it all mean Basil”?

Well I’ll tell you Austin, I’ll tell you.

First, let’s take a peak at the email I sent my co-workers on that exciting day.

Subject: 1+ MILLION IMPRESSIONS IN 58 DAYS – GOOGLE ADWORDS RESULTS!

Date: 11/28/16 9:45 am

To: That Car Place Staff

Good Morning,

Here’s some great news to kick off the beginning of the week: We hit 1+ Million Impressions in our Google AdWords Campaigns and we only started Oct 1, 2016 (58 Days ago). That’s averaging 17,241 impressions PER DAY!

But Dean…What is an impression? Well, an impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network. Each time your ad appears on Google or the Google Network, it’s counted as one impression.

This is one important stat and a milestone number to hit in that amount of time!!! Another and arguably more important stat is how many Clicks we received. A Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website as well as the effectiveness of campaigns.

We received 3,590 Clicks! This number might seem tiny in comparison to the number of impressions we received but look at it this way. How many people physically visited our dealership over the last 58 days? Kyle and Robert logged 92 customers each since Oct 1 plus there’s Kal’s contacts and these don’t include the tire kickers so let’s round-up and say between the three of them they each saw 100 people since Oct 1st. That’s 300 people who physically visited That Car Place. Well, 3,590 physical people visited our DIGITAL dealership (i.e. our website) and that’s JUST from the campaigns. That’s not including other visitors from organic search results and social media sites as well. Pretty cool eh!!!

This of course is only part of the puzzle. We are driving more people to our digital dealership then every before and what happens next is equally and if not more important. Once they’re physically at the store, getting them into the vehicle they’re looking for and can afford is the end goal.

Let’s keep working together as a team and we will increase the number of cars we sell while still offering the amazing customer service that we have been recognized for. Have a great day!

P.S. See the screenshot attached in the email.

Cheers 🙂

Dean

Marketing Manager / Sales Executive

That Car Place

It was after this point in time that I started connecting some interesting dots. Have you ever heard this from a marketing company before, “Sign-up with us and we’ll get you to the top spot on Google“? Well if you’re a dealer principal or marketing manager than I’m guessing your answer would be something along the lines of way too often. There are tons of marketing companies out there all offering the same thing. The difference now was that they were pitching exactly what I was doing and I had real stats to compare them to. Seeing as this was my first time doing a Google AdWords campaign, I welcomed the challenge of being beat and was hoping these companies would do better than what we were doing in-house. Especially since they do this all the time. After all, how does one improve if not to have a benchmark to strive for and surpass. Alas, I was surprised to find out these companies results. So far, there’s been four companies which I’ll remain nameless that have failed to come anywhere close to offering the same results to what we’ve been able to achieve. First, let’s take a look at our six months of stats which have been broken down monthly and includes display and search ads:

Impressions: 550,000+

550,000+ Interaction Rate or Click-Through Rate: .40%

.40% Conversions: 1500

1500 Interactions: 2200+

2200+ Average Monthly Cost: $1250

And here’s the breakdown of the 4 companies guaranteed results:

Company 1 – (Per Month):

100,000 impressions for $1,000

Company 2 – (Per Month):

Package 1: $1800 (30% Mgmt. Fee or ONLY $1260 goes towards actual campaign) + $550 setup fee: 20,833 impressions 609-1016 conversions

$1800 (30% Mgmt. Fee or ONLY $1260 goes towards actual campaign) + $550 setup fee: Package 2: $3050 41,666 impressions 609-1016 conversions

$3050

Company 3 – (Per Month):

$2,000 – $3,000 457 – 600 Interactions 20 – 27 Conversions = Qualified Customers (5% of interactions – this stat is from Google).



Company 4 – (Per Month)

$1,000 50,000 impressions and a .31% CTR (click-through rate) – Display Ads Only



“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.”

Carly Fiorina, former executive, president, and chair of Hewlett-Packard Co.

When comparing Impressions, Company 1 is the closest to us by guaranteeing only 1/5th of our results at nearly the same monthly cost (difference of only $250). When comparing Conversions, Company 3 is the worst compared to us by guaranteeing only 20 conversions for $2,000 which is dwarfed by the 1500 conversions at $1250 that we’ve generated. That’s a staggering difference of cost and results. Anyways, you get the picture. To say that I was disappointed in the competition and pleased with our results is an understatement. “Was this normal?” I wanted to know if this was just a lucky break or could it be replicated.

“Things get done only if the data we gather can inform and inspire those in a position to make [a] difference.” Mike Schmoker, former school administrator, English teacher and football coach, author.

After 6 months of tweaking our campaigns, analyzing stats and having multiple conversations with other marketing companies it seemed we were doing exceptional on our Google AdWords campaigns. “Yipee, Yahoo!” With that said, there’s still lots of room for growth and I am very much open to hearing what other companies have to offer. After-all, the marketplace is constantly changing and so should your campaigns.

“When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.” Chinese Proverb

I challenge dealers and other businesses to consider the options of whether or not to hire a digital marketing company as opposed to investing in training an employee. The answer depends on how much time and resources you have but my suggestion is if you can do it in-house, go that route. It’s well worth the investment to have a team member within your business learn how to manage Google AdWords campaigns as the cost of one employee compared to hiring third-party marketing companies can save you THOUSANDS of dollars in advertising costs in the long run. Additionally, from an employee’s stand-point it’s definitely empowering and rewarding to see your results. Not to leave out the fact that you get to learn so many different lessons as well as obtain valuable skills. Google AdWords can be fun to learn and they have a great support system in place. Rest assured you won’t be alone just clicking buttons on a screen at random. Google Support is an invaluable resource that will provide tips/tricks and guide you on improving your campaigns one step at a time.

One final thought I have in relation to analyzing stats is make sure your marketing plan and goals line up with your game plan. If your goal is to sell more vehicles (which it typically is in the auto industry) than make sure your marketing plan is set up for you to understand what’s working and what isn’t. Depending on what your goals are, you should be able to answer, “Is this assisting in selling more vehicles or not?”. The answer for us to that question is, “Yes, absolutely it’s helped!”. However, if your Google AdWords campaign is strictly for branding purposes than perhaps just focusing on the number of impressions you are receiving is the most important stat, or if you’re looking to get more people to submit credit applications so that you can convert them to a sale than you have to consider multiple factors. Impressions, conversions, landing page layout and the quality of information on that page are all important, as well as asking questions such as, “How many of the conversions are good vs. bad? What can we do to increase the amount of quality leads? Etc.” As you can see, you can go back and forth and interpret stats all day long until the cows come home but make sure your goals are clear and line up with your marketing plan.

If you want to learn more about Google AdWords here’s a list of helpful resources:

In closing, I leave you with this parting thought.

“Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the web like deer on a freeway” Geoffrey Moore, Author of Crossing the Chasm & Inside the Tornado

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Thanks for reading this post 🙂

Written by Dean

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