How Many Google Ads Campaigns Should My Dealership Have?

How Many Google Ads Campaigns Should My Dealership Have?

Thinking about creating a new Google Ads campaign for your dealership?

According to Google, you can set up as many as 10,000 campaigns within one account. No dealership needs that many! Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, you might not have to add another campaign to your current account.

On average, most of our clients have between two to four Google Ads campaigns — depending on their goals and how many brands they sell at their dealership. That’s often sufficient, but you should evaluate your own needs before deciding how many campaigns your store should have.

Here are a few best practices on why you should or shouldn’t set up a new campaign in Google Ads. 

Identify Your Advertising Goals

The first thing you should do when contemplating a new Google Ads campaign is to figure out your goal. Do you want to:

  • Reach people who are actively searching keywords related to your business? A search campaign might be good for you. 
  • Get people to download your service app? There’s an app promotion campaign for that. 
  • Retarget visitors to your website or people interested in similar topics to your site? A display campaign would work great!
  • Conquest a new area where your business is entering? You can either adjust a current campaign to fit your needs or set up a separate search campaign that mimics a current campaign targeting an area you are already in.

If your new goal mirrors the goal of a Google Ads campaign you have already made, you may be able to add a new ad group into the current campaign.

There are certain settings that are allowed at the campaign level only, while other settings can be controlled at the ad group level. These settings will help you decipher if you need to create separate campaigns or if you can group them together.

Campaign Level Settings

  1. Budget
  2. Location Targeting
  3. Device Targeting
  4. Network Settings
  5. Ad Schedule
  6. Language

Ad Group Level Settings

  1. Audience Targeting
  2. Demographic Targeting
  3. Keywords
  4. Final URL Domain

Keep in mind that if you are targeting multiple cities, it would be best to keep the campaigns separate, so your ad copy and keywords can be specific for each location.

Get Organized

The success or failure of a Google Ads campaign comes down to how well organized it is.

Google thrives on organization within an account. You want to make it easy for Google to find the right ad for the right search. If your campaigns resemble a hoarder’s cluttered room, Google won’t know where to look and may even give up.

Organize your campaigns and ad groups with a clear and understandable nomenclature. At our office, we teach other team members what we are doing, so if someone won the lottery (like the saying “got hit by a bus,” but happier), they wouldn’t have to come back to work to help someone understand what is going on in the account.

Look through your campaigns, and check if your keywords are organized within each ad group. Do you have “sedan” keywords (or ads) in a “truck” ad group? Clean that baby up!

It’s also important to look at the search terms within an ad group. If they don’t align with your ads, keywords, and goals, add them to your negative keywords list. This helps Google understand your ad group better.

Develop the Structure

After you’ve figured out your goals and gotten your account organized, put together a layout of your campaigns.

We’ve created an example for a dealership with two new brands, used inventory, and a service department:

Sample Google Ads Account

Within each campaign, you should have ad groups for each of your new models, as well as an ad group for Dynamic Search Ads. If you are able to incorporate remarketing ads, they could be included here or in their own campaign.

While Google has a high limit for the number of ad groups you can have (20,000 per campaign, to be exact), you should try and stick with around 10 ad groups at the most. Ad groups should have 20 or fewer keywords and five to 10 ads per ad group. 

You can have more or less, but keep it manageable for your team. That way, if something isn’t performing well, you can quickly pinpoint the culprit and fix it (or get rid of it altogether).

Implement Your Plan

With an organized Google Ads account, you’ll be able to spend more time doing other marketing initiatives — which is a real bonus if you are a one-(wo)man marketing band.

If you still need help, reach out for a complimentary marketing assessment from our 9 Clouds team. You can also check out our free Google Ads eBook, which offers hacks to help you save money and optimize your account better.

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