Strategy
First, we launched a singular VA campaign targeting all makes/models in one product group labeled as ‘New Inventory.’
Next, we broke out our ‘New Inventory’ VA campaign by different car brands to determine what brands of cars performed better. Using a Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) bid strategy allowed us to make appropriate bid changes based on our return on ad spend. When we noticed that bigger brands like Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc. were driving more volume at a more efficient cost compared to smaller brands like Fiat (for example), we implemented a new course of action.
We determined what top car brands are worth breaking out into their own VA campaigns to better control spend. This allowed us to:
- Target top-performing car brands more granularly
- Gain more control for directing spend to certain brands
Breaking out our top-performing car brands provided us the opportunity to funnel more users into our high-priority car brands, resulting in more prospective customers at a lower cost per action.
TrueCar’s umbrella brand contains accounts for new cars, used cars, military discounts, and Sam’s Club. When we began testing VAs, we tested only the new and used segments, with the focus on the new segment (which has historically driven stronger revenue and higher margins). We expanded VAs into all account types under the TrueCar brand to gobble more real estate with multiple ads per query.
As part of our optimization testing, we analyzed traffic behavior when sent to two kinds of pages: a model home page and a “build a {model}” page. We found conclusively that the “build” page had higher engagement and led to more down-funnel progression.
