Montana Dealer Increases Efficiency (and Results!) with Facebook Inventory Catalog
The Challenge
The longer a used vehicle sits on a dealership’s lot, the less profit it earns for the store once the sale is made.
In an effort to push used inventory that had been sitting on the lot for an extended number of days, Denny Menholt Honda in Bozeman, Montana, enlisted 9 Clouds’ help in creating a Facebook campaign promoting specific used inventory with a “These vehicles must go!” message.
How were the vehicles chosen? Each week, Denny Menholt Honda’s general manager would send 9 Clouds a list of specific used vehicles to feature in the “Must Go” Facebook campaign. The ads were then created by manually uploading each vehicle into the ad using the carousel format.
Once a vehicle sold, 9 Clouds would reach out to our contact at Denny Menholt Honda, who would then send over a replacement vehicle for the one that was sold.
The results were good . . . but the process of selecting the vehicles and building the Facebook campaign was not very efficient. 9 Clouds knew we not only could optimize the ad creation process, but also do it in a way that delivered better results for our client.
The Solution
To help streamline the vehicle selection and ad creation process, 9 Clouds began utilizing our Cumulus software, which connects a dealership’s inventory feed with a dynamic product catalog within Facebook Business Manager.
Instead of manually adding and removing vehicles to the Facebook ad, as we had been doing previously, 9 Clouds created a Facebook product set that automatically pulls any used vehicle that has been on Denny Menholt Honda’s lot for 45 days or longer.
Once a used vehicle hits that “45 days on lot” mark, through Cumulus, it’s now automatically integrated into the “Must Go” Facebook campaign.
No more manually adding and removing vehicles on 9 Clouds’ end, and no more figuring out which vehicles to promote on our client’s end. Time has been saved all around!
Another benefit of integrating our Cumulus software with Denny Menholt Honda’s Facebook ads is that Cumulus has the ability to automatically pull in additional features of the vehicle, such as price and mileage. If the price of a vehicle is updated, this change is automatically reflected in the Facebook ad!
The Results
After five months of running the same “Must Go” Facebook campaign utilizing our Cumulus software, the results were quite impressive when compared to the previous five-month period:
- 28% average decrease in cost per click (CPC)
- 25% average increase in click-through rate (CTR)
- 33% average increase in ad impressions
- 32% average increase in time spent on site
Not only did we improve efficiency for the ad creation and maintenance process, we also helped beef up Denny Menholt Honda’s Facebook ad metrics.
Using attribution from the Offline Events tool within Facebook, we also found that switching the “Must Go” campaign to incorporate Cumulus software resulted in an increase of Offline Events over a five-month period:
- 15% increase in offline leads
- 80% increase in offline purchases
Hungry to Learn More?
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