[Case Study] Getting More With Less: How One Auto Dealer Saw Improved Facebook Results After Lowering the Budget

Think throwing more money at your Facebook ads will make them perform better? More money is not always the key to better results, as we at 9 Clouds have learned through our work. Sometimes a lower budget can actually bring better results.

For one of our clients, we actually decreased the overall monthly budgets on four dynamic retargeting campaigns for four different locations. After just a couple of months, we’ve already seen great improvements while spending less. 

The Challenge:

After taking a few months off from running Facebook dynamic retargeting ads to their site, our client was interested in jumping back to it with whatever funds were needed to make up for lost time. 

After just one month of using the client’s higher budgets, we noticed the cost per result on the ads were higher and not spending the way we’ve seen these ads perform with our other clients. 

For this situation, we had to:

• Find a way to get people back on the dealerships’ site to grow the retargeting audience.

• Figure out how to get the cost per click (CPC) down.

• Do all of this while not wasting the client’s budget.

The Solution:

We developed new budget recommendations for the different dynamic retargeting campaigns. We also suggested supplementing the dynamic retargeting campaigns with a general inventory Facebook campaign to bring more people to the site — expanding the retargeting traffic. 

These new budgets were calculated by members of our team using what we know about the area’s size and our target cost per result. With those numbers, we came up with smaller, more focused budgets for the dynamic retargeting campaigns. This allowed us to take some of that unused spend and shift it to other dealership inventory ads.

The Results

So far, we’ve seen far lower cost per click (CPC) numbers and an expanding retargeting audience — all while we spend less money on ads. 

For one store, we decreased the retargeting budget by $750 and the monthly CPC on the ads went from being $4.00 in May to just $0.52 in July. 

Another location with just used vehicles had their dynamic retargeting budget lowered by $400. The average CPC with the higher budget was around $2, while the CPC in July with the lower budget was just $0.40.

Overall traffic to the sites has grown very well, with some of the dealership locations seeing more than 5,000 new users to their sites in one month and a 124% increase in site goal completions from the previous month. This increase in site traffic is subsequently helping increase our reach numbers on the retargeting ads as well, so we’re very excited to see how they will continue to progress with more time.

Get Results Like These For Your Own Business

Wondering if you’re wasting ad spend with your current budgets? Check out our free guide to Facebook budgets for auto dealers. 

And if you’re thinking about changing up your online strategy or worried you’re wasting money on budgets, let us know. We’ll work alongside you and your business to figure out how to get the best results for your money. 

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