Case Study: Launching Best-Performing Ad Campaigns for an Auto Dealer

Client – auto dealer. Business and marketing goals: increasing the number of qualified leads for Peugeot, Ford, Mitsubishi, BMW, and Skoda. Marketing campaign’s goals: minimize the cost per lead (test drive appointment, a sent request for commercial offer) within the stated budget.

Advertising campaign duration: July-September 2020

Ad approach, tactics, and tools

We set up campaigns in Google Display Network, Search campaigns in Google and Facebook Ads with such goals as “conversion” and “lead generation”. Micro-conversions (brochure downloads, clicking on forms) and macro-conversions (leads) were set up to assess effectiveness.

In Google Display Network we:

1. Designed a funnel-based structure. Worked with cold audiences and remarketing audiences.
2. Tested adaptive and standard creative and messages. Also, various creative for cold audiences and remarketing audiences.
3. Tested different audience segments and types of targeting: users’ interests, audiences based on behaviors, ad placement (rst.ua, auto.ria.com, infocar.ua, autoua.net, football24.ua, xsport.ua, ukr.net, and others).

Working with search campaigns on Google:

1. Designed structure based on a funnel and users’ intentions. Set up ad campaigns for dealership brand and car brands, category search queries for auto-dealers, test drive appointments and competitors’ queries.
2. Tested different ads and analyzed the effectiveness of titles and ads’ descriptions.
3.  Analyzed search queries. Added new keywords and negative keywords. Corrected budgets for the most effective ones.
4.  Worked with audiences and RLSA campaigns.
5.  Analyzed user journey and recommended changes for the website to reach the final goal.

Working with Facebook Ads, we:

1. Set up event tracking and audiences on Facebook Pixel.
2. Designed campaign structure, assisted the system with correct learning, and switched to optimization stage.
3. Tested various audience segments. Searched for the most effective ones and scaled the campaigns.
4. Analyzed audience overlap and audience burnout. Tested different formats and messages. Changed communications and offers when burnout occurred.
5. Tested various lead forms for campaigns for lead generation.

 Ad campaign results:

• The number of macro-conversions (test drive appointment, sent forms requesting commercial offer) increased, CPL decreased.
• In Google Ads, CPL decreased by 25% within 3 months. The number of qualified leads increased by 65%.
• In Facebook Ads, CPL on the website decreased by 20%, cost of leads that came from Facebook forms decreased by 50%. The number of qualified leads was raised by 60%.