The automotive website and the dealership website provider wanted to drive sales for 500 automotive dealerships, so they ran a campaign to target in-market shoppers on mobile, increasing visits to the dealerships by 16.8%.
Driving auto deals
Edmunds is a top automotive website helping people shop for cars by connecting them to dealers across the US. CDK Global is the largest provider of integrated information technology and digital marketing solutions to the automotive retail industry.
Their Goal
Racing for new wins
Edmunds and CDK wanted to engage with new shoppers searching for vehicles on their mobile phones, and also reduce cost per engagement for participating dealers. Specifically, they wanted to drive additional in-market, ready-to-buy car shoppers to dealer site inventory pages.
With more people searching for their next vehicle on mobile, we had to find a way to target them with native, mobile-optimized advertising. Facebook allowed us to reach a new audience and also engage them at a much lower cost. When it comes to mobile engagement, other ad platforms simply don’t have the capabilities of Facebook.
Karim Qazi, VP Ad Technology Platforms & Operations, Edmunds
Our Solution
A targeted mobile campaign
The partners launched a pilot mobile advertising campaign with dynamic ads to target new in-market shoppers, and drive them to 500 participating dealerships.
CDK and Edmunds used proprietary, first-party data to create a Custom Audience of people who had viewed the vehicle detail pages on Edmunds and/or participating CDK websites. The partners also created a lookalike audience based on that group of people.
Using dealership inventory and real-time syncing capabilities, the team hyper-targeted people who had been searching its websites’ inventory pages. These car shoppers saw customized ads from their local dealership featuring images of vehicles that they had previously researched. The dynamic ads also showcased the inventory images in shoppers’ mobile News Feeds.
Shoppers in the lookalike audience saw locally available vehicles in the ads. Ad creative used images of select vehicles from Edmunds’ inventory with a tempting header, “How about test-driving one of these rides?” The ad also indicated the dealership where the vehicles were available. A “Shop Now” call-to-action button linked directly to the specific vehicle detail page on the dealer site.
- Edmunds and CDK Global partnered with Facebook to track website activity using the Facebook pixel, and to measure the increase in unique visitors and visits across devices to the participating dealers’ websites.
Their Success
Revving up sales
Edmunds and CDK’s effective campaign not only hyper-targeted the growing number of in-market automotive shoppers on mobile and increased traffic to its participating dealers, but also lowered its cost per engagement, achieving the following between May-June 2016:
- 45% increase in unique visitors
- 16.8% increase in visits for participating dealers
- 23% increased exposure among millennial audience
Article can also be found here on Facebook Business Success Stories
Update:
Across the AU, we continue to see the same trends as above with a few notes below:
*Majority of users saw ads via Mobile FB Feed
-Share of Digital Time Spent on Mobile 65%*
-Share of Digital Time Spent on Desktop 35%*
-Computer Device Users 23%**
-Mobile Device Users 76%**
Our data aligns with trends last analysed as of Dec 15’ by comScore* & Audience Insights (Last 30 Days) by Facebook**
Facebook Metrics to analyze when considering Ad Unit updates:
How engaged are users?
Post Reactions, Post Comments, Post Shares
How is your Advertising Performing from a FB perspective?
Relevancy (Facebook only shows or attempts to show ads that are most pertinent to the user, impacting all other metrics)
-It measures Feedback from targeted audience (taking into consideration ad’s objective, whether it be views, conversions etc.) This measure likely impacts all other measures.
Clicks, CTR, Impressions, Frequency, Reach, CPCs
In final we continue to see a 2X to 3X lift across all upstream metrics when pairing Facebook advertising with that of each specific dealer, versus those who do not have FB Paid Ads. While downstream metrics or outcomes and conversions continue to vary based on location, budget & interaction.
As told by Facebook updated by John M. Williams