Why Dealership SRP Marketing Should be Canceled in 2023
Have you ever wondered if you’re making the right decisions regarding your dealership’s marketing investment?
You’re not alone.
When digitally marketing inventory, dealership marketers have two primary types of marketing campaigns at their disposal to generate shopper leads:
Search Results Page (SRP) Campaigns: These campaigns drive shoppers to a Search Results page where all inventory of a particular model is shown.
Vehicle Details Page (VDP) Campaigns: This campaign type brings shoppers directly to a single vehicle’s details page and includes more information.
Although many marketers believe if a shopper enters your website from an SRP campaign, they will not only scroll through the inventory listed, but they will also click on multiple VDPs from there. The unfortunate news is that this assumption needs to be corrected based on a 2022 study performed by VIN IQ on 400 dealerships nationwide that discovered shoppers that enter your website from an SRP will only look at 1.2 VDPs on average. However, compare this against 1.9 VDP views when a shopper enters your website from a VDP campaign and the math is straightforward; dealerships achieve a 60% increase in VDP views when a shopper arrives from a VDP-centric campaign.
But why does this matter?
It all comes down to one word; engagement. You might be familiar with the following statement “...SRP views are similar to someone driving by your store, while VDP views are similar to someone pulling up to your dealership and asking to look at that particular car”. VIN IQ’s 2022 study proves, using real dealership data, that this statement holds true.
Using the graph below as an example to highlight the acceleration in VDP views that dealerships experience before a vehicle is about to sell, day 30 before a vehicle sells is plotted on the far left while day 0 before a vehicle sells on the right. At day 0, there is a significant increase in VDP views right before a vehicle leaves inventory, especially in organic traffic.
The graph below is a snapshot of a dealership’s VDP engagement events 30 days before a vehicle leaves the lot. VDP engagement events include photo clicks, Carfax report downloads, lead form submissions, etc. On day 30 before a vehicle leaves the lot on the left, and day 0 before the vehicle sells on the right, there is a massive spike in activity. Engagement is king, and VDPs in their very nature outnumber SRPs in their engagement points due to their detailed information and CTAs.
Instead of bringing shoppers to SRPs, dealership marketers need to bring shoppers directly to a VDP sooner and accelerate engagement and ultimately increase sales turnover. Since a dealership only has so much money to allocate to its marketing, having a strong Return on Ad Spend is crucial. By wasting marketing dollars on SRP campaigns, dealerships are holding themselves back from increasing sales by not running VDP campaigns instead.
Dealership marketers looking to increase their sales and marketing performance need to shift dollars away from SRP campaigns and instead invest in VDP campaigns. If you’re unsure of your dealership’s current marketing campaign setup or are interested in starting VDP marketing campaigns, check out VIN IQ’s free 60-day trial to get started and find opportunities to increase your sales performance.
