How Phelps Digital Helped One Buick GMC Dealer Maximize Digital Advertising Budget Allocation
CHALLENGE
2020 brought a lot of changes to the way people conduct and advertise business. With everyone spending so much time at home, there was a clear increase in online activity. According to Vox, in the first eight weeks of the COVID pandemic, Facebook alone gained one million new users and saw average monthly use increase over 10% year over year. One mid size Buick GMC Dealer entrusted Phelps Digital to help them navigate this new, unknown digital landscape and help them implement strategies to keep their business on top. Phelps took on the challenge of determining this dealer’s best budget allocation across paid digital channels in order to achieve a maximum return on users reached and leads generated.
SOLUTION
As a business practice, Phelps follows trends in consumer online engagement to aid digital recommendations to our clients. Through this process, we have learned the importance of being specific with each individual client. When reviewing the Dealer’s Google Analytics, we noticed they had an average increase of 40% in Facebook referral traffic from January 2020 to March 2020, mirroring the time frame of when the pandemic started to take effect. As such, we identified a clear opportunity to shift this dealer’s main advertising focus to Facebook. Specifically, we identified a budget in The Dealer's SEM campaign that would likely produce greater results if reallocated to Facebook. With the help of our rep at Social Dealer, our team focused on a Facebook strategy that included expanding consumer reach and using creative content featuring the dealership’s pet dog. Our team also focused on dealer inventory that needed to be moved by implementing a brand conquest campaign.
RESULTS
Pulling their budget from SEM required a reduction in targeted keywords. Phelps Digital recommended removing keywords with the lowest conversion rate and focusing on a low funnel strategy for the short term. The reallocation caused a 39% decrease in SEM investment and a 117% increase in Facebook investment relative to their starting point. Even with the change in SEM investment, the Dealer had an overall improvement in shopper engagement. Similarly, the additional Facebook budget resulted in increased overall performance due to the implemented targeting. Overall, without changing this dealer’s total digital investment, Phelps was able to help them maximize their return. Between February 2020 and July 2020, the dealer was up 42% in form leads. In addition, they had a record breaking sales month and sold four times their average monthly amount in slower moving inventory!
