Objective
Create a comprehensive Adwords campaign that avoids DMA overlap and eliminates territory conflict between two Cadillac stores that were owned by the same group. In addition, eliminate erroneous clicks in pre-owned inventory.
Challenges
Traditional Adwords campaigns are generated based on a radius around the advertising store and is designed to cover and protect the advertiser’s DMA as well as marketing into the competitive DMA. In this instance, the adjacent market was owned by the same dealer group and any overlap would create a situation where the dealer would be bidding against himself. Upon examination, it was also discovered that the previous Adwords account management had keyword structures that were causing ads to be displayed for pre-owned vehicles that were not in inventory. This was particularly true for “off brand” vehicles such as Ford, Chevy, etc. Though the dealer did carry these makes, they only carried a few of each “off brand” or “non-Cadillac” vehicles. Generic keywords, such as “Used Ford” were generating large amounts of traffic (as well as cost) for vehicles that were not in stock.
Solution
To eliminate the problem of overlapping DMAs, the target area was manually parsed into zip codes and individual Adwords campaigns were created by zip code. Since no zip code was ever duplicated this eliminated self defeating competitive bidding. This philosophy was then expanded in the market of the closest competitor, dividing zip codes up between the two dealers so that these two stores never bid against themselves in the competitive DMA.
To solve the pre-owned erroneous click problem, a data feed was created from the pre-owned inventory database. This inventory was then converted into broad match modified keywords that created parameters that the actual search term must be an exact match to a vehicle actually in stock. In other words, if the dealer had a 2015 Ford F-150 in stock, the search term would have to be “2015 Ford F-150” or “2015 F-150” for the ad to show. Terms such as “2007 Ford Taurus” or “used Ford” would not trigger an ad. Each broad match modified keyword is reviewed manually to ensure accuracy and the keywords are updated and reviewed on a regular basis to account for inventory changes. Because they are a Cadillac dealer, terms such as “Certified Cadillac” or “Used Cadillac” will trigger an ad.
Result
A cost effective, no overlap Adwords campaign that develops relevant leads.
