In this video blog, Jim Flint, CEO, and Founder of Local Search Group discusses advertising spend, and various ways to allocate your budget via cost per sale thinking.

There are thousands of you reading our blogs, watching our videos, and keeping up with our activities on various platforms where we publish.  

I believe we all have something in common: We enjoy learning, understanding and developing a competitive edge in the hyper-competitive automotive digital marketing space.

Nine years ago, Local Search Group was formed thanks in large part to a vendor in the space that couldn’t help our dealership go to market in a timely fashion.

Now? 

Now we are  “A Now part of a Now business.” 

And the pace of change and the speed at which change continues not only excites, it exhilarates. 

Digital Change

Our company was founded in 2010. We worked on and with Google before Google was cool. We worked on and with Facebook before Facebook was popular. Now, they are ways of life.

Automotive Change

In 2011 there were only three cars that went from 0-60 in less than 3 seconds. The Nissan GT-R, the Porsche 911 Turbo S, and the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. 

Now there are 11 such cars. And the speed and pace of change continues.

Today our company still maintains our status as a top flight automotive performer thanks to our amazing employees, our outstanding platform partners, and a dealer network that --like us—just won’t quit until the job is done and the game is won!

So, thank you for tuning in and being a part of our 9th anniversary. We can’t wait to see what the 10th looks like. Like the speed demons we are, we think it’s going to be better—and get here even faster—than you could ever imagine!

With 6 Google Certifications and practical experience in Google Ad accounts, I wonder out loud if Smart Bidding just isn’t that Smart in the Automotive space.

Google’s Smart Bidding uses machine learning to optimize bids to maximize conversions and conversion value across your campaigns or bidding portfolios. Target CPA, Target ROAS, Max Conversions, and Enhanced CPC are all Smart Bidding strategies. 

Sounds good until you separate the sizzle from the steak: 

Here’s why--

One – Impression Share Matters More

The Best Target for automotive is impression share so that you moderate against seasonal demand. Smart bidding looks at conversion values. In down markets, Smart bidding would thus force bidders to pay a premium for a non-sale conversion which would unnecessarily drive up your corresponding cost per sale. Not good.

Two – A High Volume of Conversions that Aren’t Truly Conversions

There’s no worse place to be than here. If you bid to form fills, phone calls, texts or even time on site you will be paying for conversions that aren’t really the ultimate conversion. The ultimate conversion is sales. What if you have four hundred conversions that you track?

The beginning of the end would be when automotive retailers that signed up for Smart Bidding inadvertently went wild to secure phone calls--which IS one of the defined conversions. However, what if half of those phone calls went to the service drive? At least we’d finally know which half of our new car advertising was being wasted!

Now think about your ultimate closing ratios on the above preliminary indicators and know that the car business wasn’t designed for smart bidding. But wait there’s more.

Three—But Budgets are Constrained

Smart bidding works best when budgets are NOT constrained. Think of Target Return on Ad Spend. If you will imagine it as an online checkout world that finalizes transactions. Thus, you should know that you were getting money back on your advertising spend. As such, you’d be inclined to advertise more and let the dollars work themselves out as efficiently as possible as you look for your Return on Investment.

However, when you consider what that means to automotive and that the conversions being tracked are NOT ACTUAL transactions... it might make you sit back in your chair like you would if you were punching a Bugatti Chiron Sport off the line.

Fourth—The Conversion Delay is <7 Days for the Learning Period

The time lag for learning in auto is annualized; however, Google’s smart bidding process follows a 7 day learning period. Look no further than the common frame of reference in our industry of the Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR). 

As such, Google could best serve us by tracking conversions for 365 days and applying seasonal considerations to the automotive industry. 

I ask because I believe Google will eventually come through. Until then, we calculate on our own as an agency which benefits our clients.

Until Google steps in using 7 days’ worth of conversions isn’t so smart in the automotive space either.

Google Ads is a wonderful, powerful tool for automotive retailers when properly applied. 

This is a friendly reminder that Smart Bidding isn’t really meant for the Automotive Space and that you should be wary of agencies or individuals that advise otherwise.

In this video blog, Jim Flint, CEO and Founder of Local Search Group, discusses the strategy of building lookalike audiences from known buyers so that you can then exclude the original audience from ad spending in order to gain economies of scale.

We are well-known for understanding the value of advertising – how much something costs versus how much something is worth. Additionally, we also know our values at Local Search Group.

Value and Values. Two different things.

Local Search Group’s values do much more than establish the financial worthiness of something.

Our Values–summed up in the 7 C’s here – help drive our thinking and actions – and these are values any organization or dealership can adopt to improve their own efficiency as well as their overall culture.

Consistency is a huge part of what we do. In order to maximize performance, everything can’t be an event. Consistency provides poise in moments that matter. It’s a way to look at launching and closing out each month.

We look at each month like a football coach looks at a game during a season. We define the wins, the losses AND the adjustments that need to be made in order to maintain or improve upon our competitive position in the market. Not just for our clients, but for our employees, too.

We even look at the Super Bowl as arguably the world’s largest event for the aspects of consistency that it brings to the table. When we find the consistency in our own event’s–Super Bowls or otherwise–we are able to scale the mountains of work we do for our clients as a team in a repeatable way.

Are you doing the same with your dealership or agency?

Jim Flint, CEO and Founder of Local Search Group, discusses how to keep competitors from bidding on your dealer name by employing intelligent amplification on your maximum cost per click.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

As Google continues to literally change colors, it’s worth noting that their Ad identification grows increasingly smaller. Those changes have been inversely proportional to the relevance that their Ads provide to consumers. That’s a good thing. Can’t wait to see what the next 10 years bring!

Jim Flint explains how Local Search Group got its start in terms of being the "Now" Part of the "Now" Business that Automotive Sales and Marketing represent.

Both Grant Cardone’s book, “Sell or Be Sold” and Daniel Pink’s book, “To Sell is Human” remind me of the idea that sharing an idea or concept involves selling.

On the sales front, OTT may arguably be the word of the year for sales and marketing professionals. Other nominees include Digital Retailing and Actionable Analytics. Previous winners for marketing phrases of the year include “selfie”, “programmatic” and “QR Codes”, but I digress.

Let’s take on OTT for a moment and consider how it influences industries and consumers alike. In recent meetings with various OTT vendors, I find they speak more and more of one-to-one modeling. In a related way, direct mail and e-mail companies are offering up an IP address that follows through down to specific households in order to complement their direct mail efforts.

AT&T U-verse for example--through the combination of set-top box data from cable and phone information--pretty much has a data warehouse of intelligence. And they are promoting one-to-one advertising. I just wonder how that works out though? Let’s say AT&T signs national deals with Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota. Meanwhile, a consumer—based on these HOT new statistical models—comes in and identifies a consumer as an SUV buyer.

What’s next?

Do we end up with a Ford SUV spot, a Toyota SUV spot and a Chevrolet SUV spot all in the same two-minute break? 8 times a day for the next 90 days. Shopper Beware. Shopper Beware for certain.

Also, how do we keep this accountable from an advertising perspective? Reporting from AT&T could be the answer, but in terms of more accountable media enterprises—think AC Nielsen or RL Polk for a moment--those business models are being replaced by real-time, one-to-one promises.

The vertical integration of phone companies into the advertising space is exciting from a data perspective and simultaneously just a little bit disconcerting. Be wary of the false promise, the quick wedding and the low levels of accountability inherent to this promise. It doesn’t much sound like a match made in heaven when the outcome portends to bombard the ultimate buyer with more bottom of the funnel advertising than they could reasonably stand.