You’re doing VDP campaigns but still not getting results. Now what?
In a previous article, Why SRP Campaigns Should be Canceled in 2023, it was revealed that dealership marketers directing campaign traffic to Search Results Pages (SRPs) are achieving a slower sales turn performance than what could be achieved if traffic was instead directed to Vehicle Details Pages (VDPs). However, running VDP campaigns on major Ad Platforms, such as Facebook and Google, can also lead to:
Extreme Ad Spend waste
Slower Sales Turn due to lost opportunity
Although dealership marketers might be thrilled with the inexpensive Cost Per Click and Engagement Rates achieved by these platforms, the issue is that there’s no breakdown given on how much of the Ad Budget was consumed by each vehicle in inventory. Unfortunately for dealerships, the vehicles that end up consuming ~80 to 90% of the Ad Spend end up being the most premium (AKA “Click Candy”) or cheapest vehicles in inventory while the average inventory receives little to no activity. This is because platforms like Facebook and Google are designed to determine which vehicles are going to generate the most amount of clicks in order to exhaust the daily Ad Spend, which leaves the majority of inventory out of the spotlight.
Using VIN IQ’s analytics, the graph below plots all of a dealership’s vehicles in inventory along the x-axis, while the volume of Paid VDP views per vehicle is shown along the y-axis. The grey shaded area highlights the top 20% of vehicles that are getting activity while all the other vehicles outside of that grey area receive little to no traffic.
Given that Facebook and Google have extremely powerful audience reach and ad-matching capabilities, dealership marketers have an opportunity to increase sales turn by promoting vehicles that shoppers are actually interested in purchasing instead of the Click Candy vehicles. In order to do this, dealership marketers need to use VIN-level marketing technology to dynamically change the inventory that is served on Facebook and Google based on click activity. This way the overpromotion of particular vehicles doesn’t occur while more average vehicles, that are more likely to sell, will get a chance to be promoted. The end result is faster sales turn performance at an inexpensive cost.
If you or your agency needs support in leveraging VIN-level marketing technology across the major Ad Platforms, check out VIN IQ’s free 60-day trial.
