Performance Benchmarks - FOR AUTOMOTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING 2019 - 9clouds.com - 9 Clouds
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2019
Performance
Benchmarks
FOR AUTOMOTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING
PAGE 1 9clouds.comCONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 EMAIL MARKETING 5 FACEBOOK ADS 8 GOOGLE ADS 11 WEBSITE CONTENT 14 CONCLUSION 17 PAGE 2 9clouds.com
WHY SHOULD YOU READ THIS REPORT?
No one has done this before. It’s a wild digital world out there, and we
made this PDF to give you the information you need to conquer it.
What is a good number for [insert digital marketing statistic here]?
Email marketing, Facebook ads, Google Ads, and web content all
come with a unique set of metrics that can make or break your digital
marketing strategy. This document lists the most important metrics to
evaluate for each of these services. We’ve presented the data clearly and
scientifically so you can see, side by side, how the results we’ve achieved
with our automotive clients compare with the industry averages.
THIS IS REAL DATA FROM REAL DEALERSHIPS.
After nearly a decade of independent work in automotive digital
marketing, 9 Clouds is in a unique position to provide valuable
insight into the key metrics for these core digital services.
THESE ARE CONSISTENT, ACCURATE MEASUREMENTS.
Not only does our data come from practical, real-world
campaigns — it’s also standardized. Our specialists created
detailed methodologies for each of these services.
We use these performance benchmarks not only to assess our own
work, but also to provide a constructive guide for our fellow automotive
digital marketers. We hope you find them as useful as we do.
PAGE 3 9clouds.comMETHODOLOGY
With the infinite points of data available at our fingertips, objectivity is rare in
digital marketing.
To provide some signal in the noise, our team carefully chose the most
important data points for our core digital marketing services: email
marketing, Facebook ads, Google Ads, and web content.*
After determining the best data points to analyze for each service,
we methodically compiled our internal data from clients, focusing
on preserving the accuracy and validity of our findings.
Then, our specialists identified reputable third-party resources
that regularly report the national benchmarks for each corresponding
service. We measured our clients’ results against these industry averages to
give you a fair, complete picture of the data.
The benchmarks from third-party resources are denoted with this icon:
The benchmarks from 9 Clouds performance data are enoted with this icon:
We hope you enjoy the report!
*NOTE: While we do offer search engine optimization (SEO) as a service, we did not
explicitly include it in this report, as SEO metrics are neither as straightforward nor as easily
attributable as those of our other services. That said, we are working on defining those
metrics and plan to include them in future reports.
PAGE 4 9clouds.comEMAIL MARKETING BENCHMARKS FOR 2019
OPEN RATE 18.7% 26%
CLICK-THROUGH RATE 12.6% 14%
UNSUBSCRIBE RATE 0.19% 1%
BOUNCE RATE 0.99% 1.8%
Email marketing delivers click-through connect with them in their busy world. Use
rates that are up to six times higher this wisely; don’t blast content that may
than those of organic social media, and not apply to them. Your email marketing
it regularly generates the highest ROI of campaigns are opportunities to build a
any digital marketing channel. Those are personalized and trusted relationship.
powerful facts! We’re going to assume
you’re using email marketing as part of How many people check emails while in
your strategy. (If you’re not, let’s talk!) the bathroom, the drive-through lane,
the grocery store line, the bedroom,
Email marketing is the oldest and and just about everywhere else?
simplest of our platforms to measure
— but it has changed over the years. When your audience checks their email, they
are inviting you into their personal space
The days of “email blasting” are no . . . and they can kick you out with a
more, as your customers become wiser single tap. That’s why you must keep a
and spam filters become smarter. close eye on your email metrics to be
sure you’re reaching the right people with
When someone gives you their email the right message at the right time.
address, they’ve given you direct access to
PAGE 5 9clouds.comEMAIL BENCHMARKS
In this report, we’ve identified four email strategy and careful data management helps us
metrics that will give you insight into just send relevant emails to the right group of people
how well you’re communicating with each on behalf of our clients, resulting in above-average
valuable member of your audience. email open rates in the range of 11% to 42%.
OPEN RATE CLICK-THROUGH RATE
Open rate is the first metric to examine because Next, we looked at click-through rate (CTR):
it’s the first opportunity for your recipients the percentage of people who click on a link
to engage with your email. If your audience within your email out of those who open
isn’t opening your emails in the first place, it. This is not to be confused with click rate,
you’ve already lost your chance to connect. which is the percentage of those who click
your email out of those who receive it.
Open rate is the percentage of people who
opened your email out of those who received CTR is an important metric because it tells
it. Improving your open rate is the first you whether or not your email entices
step in improving your email success. your audience to actually take an action in
response to your message. It helps you identify
You can do this by testing the subject line, whether your email is achieving its goal.
sender name, send time, or recipient list. For
example, an email sent to a very small recipient 9 Clouds’ CTR benchmark shows an 11% increase
list may have an unusually low or high open over the industry benchmark. Complemented
rate compared to one sent to a larger list. by our high email open rates, this metric
is successful due to engaging design, clear
As you can see, our internal 9 Clouds benchmark messaging and calls-to-action, and regular
for email open rates is 39% higher than the A/B testing to achieve optimal results.
industry benchmark. Our email segmentation
PAGE 6 9clouds.comEMAIL BENCHMARKS
UNSUBSCRIBE RATE Many email clients will exclude these contacts
Unsubscribes are not always a bad thing. from future email sends. If yours doesn’t,
After all, it’s a waste of your time to send you should manually remove them in order
an email to people who aren’t currently to protect your sender reputation. (You don’t
interested in your content or product. want to end up in the spam folder, after all!)
Unsubscribe rate measures the number of email A soft bounce indicates a temporary
recipients who elected to no longer receive future technical problem, such as one with
emails from you. It’s normal to have a consistent, the recipient’s email server.
low number of unsubscribes. After all, that
reflects the ebb and flow of the buyer’s journey. There’s not much you can do to prevent hard
and soft bounces, but it’s a good practice to
However, watch out for a sudden spike in your clear out the contacts who aren’t receiving your
unsubscribe rate. This may reflect mismatched emails because of bounces. At 9 Clouds, we
expectations between what you promised your routinely remove bounced email addresses to
recipients and what they received. It may be keep our clients’ contact lists clean and relevant.
time to restrategize your email marketing.
WHERE DID WE GET OUR DATA?
Before we send marketing emails for our clients Before we measured our own benchmarks based
at 9 Clouds, we take careful steps to exclude on client data, we researched several third-
contacts for whom we know the message is not party resources to give us the best indication
relevant. This results in a lower unsubscribe for “what’s good” for each of these metrics.
rate and facilitates a positive relationship
between our clients and their customers. Our source for third-party email data for the
automotive industry comes from a combination
BOUNCE RATE of reliable sources. These include industry
Finally, bounce rate measures the number benchmark reports from GetResponse, Constant
of emails sent compared to the number Contact, MailChimp, and Campaign Monitor.
of emails delivered. There are two main These reports are as recent as March 2019.
types of bounces: hard and soft.
A hard bounce often indicates a permanent
error, such as a nonexistent email address.
PAGE 7 9clouds.comFACEBOOK ADS BENCHMARKS FOR 2019
COST PER CLICK: $2.24 $0.91
CLICK-THROUGH RATE: 0.8% 1.99%
COST PER LANDING PAGE VIEW: $3 $3.95
COST PER LEAD AD SUBMISSION: $24 $21.67
Note: All currency metrics are shown in USD.
No matter what kind of dealership you COST PER CLICK (CPC)
have, Facebook brings your audience We first chose cost per click (CPC)
together. According to WordStream, because Facebook ads are fundamentally
1.49 billion Facebook users generate a pay-per-click system. We also picked
22 billion ad clicks each year. CPC because it provides insight into
competition for the audience’s attention,
Since Facebook has a treasure trove it gives a clear indication of which
of data with which to find your ideal content Facebook thinks is the most
audience, and since the cost of a click is engaging, and it evaluates the quality of
less than a cup of coffee, it’s easy to find audiences within the Facebook ad tool.
and bring the right kind of traffic to your
dealership’s website every day of the week. Within the Facebook “ad auction” system,
where companies compete for attention,
The ads you show to this qualified CPC indicates the market value of a
audience can take many forms, creating click given the targeting methods and
a wellspring of data and insights. In this quality of content used in the ad.
report, we’ve boiled it down to four main
data points that clearly show return Cost per click is an average of all
on investment for auto dealers. clicks on traffic-oriented ads (as
PAGE 8 9clouds.comFACEBOOK ADS BENCHMARKS
opposed to ads with video-, event-, or reach- COST PER LANDING PAGE VIEW
based objectives). We measured it in the Not all clicks result in quality website visits.
“CPC (All)” column in Ads Manager. To understand how many people actually saw
the web page linked in your ad, we use the
As you may have noticed, the average automotive metric of cost per landing page view, which
CPC at 9 Clouds is more than a dollar less than is calculated with traffic-based ads for clients
the industry average. Our strategic blend of with Facebook pixels installed on their sites.
high-value lookalike audiences and retargeting
audiences regularly allows us to achieve very We chose this benchmark because Facebook
low CPC numbers for our Facebook advertising ads should drive only the most qualified visitors
clients. Additionally, our Cumulus software to your site — visitors who actually wait for
enables dealers to deploy highly relevant the page to load and then spend time on
Facebook campaigns, which often yield very your site. Cost per landing page view provides
low CPCs in the range of $0.08 to $0.50. directional guidance by reporting the number
of times a person clicked on your ad link and
CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR) then successfully loaded your landing page.
Next, we chose CPC’s cousin, click-through
rate (CTR), which is also based on traffic- At 9 Clouds, we focus on creating a satisfying
oriented ad data. We measured it in the user experience for our clients’ customers. This
“CTR (All)” column in Ads Manager. involves carefully setting the targeting, the ad
creative, and the destination page. By constantly
CTR is the percentage of impressions that testing our methods, we’re able to ensure the
resulted in clicks to the website or other assets quality of our ad traffic after the click happens.
within Facebook. We chose this metric because
it indicates the quality of the relationship Our average cost per landing page view is roughly
of your content to the people viewing it. one dollar higher than our industry average simply
because we focus on obtaining higher-quality traffic
9 Clouds achieves a CTR that is twice the from smaller audiences, which normally drives up
national industry average by using a mixture the expense in the Facebook ad auction system.
of high-value Lookalike Audiences, engaging Higher-quality traffic results in higher-quality leads.
ad formats, and individualized retargeting with
campaigns leveraging our Cumulus software.
PAGE 9 9clouds.comFACEBOOK ADS BENCHMARKS
COST PER LEAD AD SUBMISSIONS Our cost per Lead Ad is a few dollars cheaper
As a relatively new ad format, Lead Ads than the national average because we use Lead
represent Facebook’s attempt at taking over Ads for a variety of applications, such as test
the conventional website by placing a form drives, tire quotes, and content subscriptions.
directly in the ad. Because users don’t have Our ads are also created with a focus on high-
to leave Facebook to fill out these forms (and value audiences and engaging ad creative.
the forms even auto-fill with user-shared
data), Lead Ads in theory encourage a higher WHERE DID WE GET OUR DATA?
conversion rate than traditional landing pages. Before we measured our own benchmarks based
on client data, we researched several third-
We chose to measure Cost per Lead Ad party resources to give us the best indication
submission because this metric is directly related for “what’s good” for each of these metrics.
to our clients’ main goal of lead conversions.
The best source for CPC and CTR was WordStream,
While Lead Ads can be used for a variety which published the automotive benchmarks
of applications (blog subscriptions, email with reliable methodology. These benchmarks
subscriptions, test drives, tire quotes, etc.), were updated most recently in February 2019.
we’ve found the submission costs to be at
least somewhat consistent for each client. Our third-party data for cost per landing
page view and cost per Lead Ad submission
Although our sample size for cost per Lead represent an average of 26 automotive
Ad submission was about 60% smaller than marketing agencies, and the numbers were
the sample sizes of our other benchmarks, provided to our agency directly from Facebook’s
we are confident in using it because it automotive division in August 2018.
is based on clients selling a wide variety
of brands in diverse U.S. markets.
PAGE 10 9clouds.comGOOGLE ADS BENCHMARKS FOR 2019
COST PER CLICK: $2.69 $2.34
CLICK-THROUGH RATE: 3.17% 10.3%
CONVERSION RATE: 3.75% 97.13%
Note: All currency metrics are shown in USD.
Search engines are often the first place searches because of high competition,
consumers go to research a business, Google Ads can be your answer.
product, or service. According to Search
Engine Land, 69% of shoppers use their Our search engine marketing (SEM)
smartphones to shop, and 82% of them team structures our benchmarks around
search for terms that include “near me.” measurable data collected directly from
Google Ads. For this report, we looked
Putting your business at the top of the at three benchmarks set by a third-
search engine results page matters. More party company, WordStream, which
than 60% of users will click on one of works with more than $14 billion in
the first three search results, while 90% Google advertising spend every year.
will click on the first result. With Google
Ads, you can be one step above all these COST PER CLICK (AVG. CPC)
organic results, placing you above the Like other digital advertising platforms,
competition and making you more visible Google works off a pay-per-click program.
to consumers. Even with great search Through Google’s click algorithm, your
engine optimization (SEO), Google allows cost per click (CPC) can easily fluctuate
a few cost-associated ads to show above based on several factors, such as quality
the organic (free) search results. If you score, competition, and how much you
have a hard time breaking through organic are willing to bid. Pay-per-click ads allow
PAGE 11 9clouds.comGOOGLE ADS BENCHMARKS
businesses to pay only when someone Consistently, our CTR is above industry
clicks on their ad. Your ad shows up standards, with several accounts averaging
whenever Google deems it relevant to over 10% CTR for all of 2018. Our SEM team
the search, so your ad could be shown works to write highly relevant ad copy that
dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times speaks to the searcher. Some larger agencies
to other people who don’t click on the ad. may work off templated copy that’s just like
another account’s copy. Knowing that well-
To obtain strong external benchmarks for written ads can initiate a click, we listen to
this report, we looked to a larger company the client’s voice to craft a cohesive message
with hundreds of clients. Since WordStream that will engage a potential customer.
breaks out its metrics by industry, we were
able to ensure our data accurately reflects CONVERSION RATE
the industries with which we work. Across Conversion rate is the percentage of goal
our three main industries — automotive, conversions that were completed from the
health, and industrial services — 9 Clouds number of clicks the account received. After
was well over $1.00 cheaper than the consulting with the client to determine which
average CPC for WordStream’s data. specific goal conversions to measure, 9
Clouds sets them up in both Google Analytics
CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR) and Google Ads. We set up these objectives
Click-through rate (CTR) is also an important throughout the sales funnel so we can see
metric to watch when measuring Google how consumers are moving through the
Ads success. To find your CTR, you take the research and sales process. Goals may be
number of clicks divided by the number something like a vehicle detail page (VDP)
of impressions the account received. view, calling the dealership, submitting
a credit app or trade-in evaluation.
This is an industry-wide metric used by
many SEM strategists and companies WordStream’s breakdown of industry
and factors into other Google metrics, benchmarks shows that auto searchers
including quality score. Google pulls CTR, perform more conversions on average
along with several other metrics, into its than medical and industrial service users.
bidding system, which computes CPC.
PAGE 12 9clouds.comGOOGLE ADS BENCHMARKS WHERE DID WE FIND OUR DATA? Our SEM team worked to find reliable third-party reporting that included data from industries with which 9 Clouds works. In the end, WordStream provided the most detailed data from its SEM database. WordStream’s metrics were last updated in December 2018. All of the 9 Clouds benchmarks were taken from client Google Ads accounts, based on all of 2018 (or as soon as the client started working with us in 2018). The data comes from 20 clients in the industries of automotive, health and medical, and industrial services. PAGE 13 9clouds.com
WEBSITE CONTENT BENCHMARKS FOR 2019
CONVERSION RATE: 3% 5.8%
TIME ON PAGE: 2:17 1:53
BOUNCE RATE: 60% 72.2%
Your website is your digital showroom. Clouds creates custom landing pages
Web pages, such as blog posts and landing and blog posts for our clients as part of
pages, serve as virtual “salespeople,” our search engine optimization (SEO)
explaining why customers should choose marketing service (and why we included
your dealership and inventory over your web content benchmarks in this report).
competitors’ — so it’s essential to put
the right content on those pages! While there are several ways to measure
the success of your web content (any
Along with providing helpful information to of the metrics in Google Analytics can
your audience, optimized web content can be helpful), we’ve chosen three primary
boost your presence on search engines, benchmarks for this report: conversion
attracting new visitors to your site. Since rate, time on page, and bounce rate.
Google processes more than 40,000 search
queries every second, you can bet shoppers Many other metrics, like page views,
in your area are searching for cars online. can vary wildly based on the client’s
market, the type of page, and what
But ranking highly on Google is just the other services we’re providing for that
first step. To convert leads into customers, website. On the other hand, conversion
your website needs to offer content rate, time on page, and bounce rate are
they find truly valuable. That’s why 9 all more indicative of the quality of the
PAGE 14 9clouds.comWEBSITE CONTENT BENCHMARKS
content on the page — something over 6.3% — a 110% increase over the national
which we have much more control. average. We believe this is because
we are intentional about driving high-
CONVERSION RATE quality traffic to these pages and have
We started with the metric of conversion implemented effective conversion
rate. After all, the point of most blog strategies, including smart forms and
posts and landing pages is to get custom graphics, to increase submissions.
visitors to click through to another
page, right? It’s all about moving people TIME ON PAGE
further along the sales funnel. The next benchmark we measured for
web content was time on page. This
It’s important to note that “conversion rate” metric, measured in Google Analytics,
can be defined a few different ways. In refers to how long a visitor spent viewing
this report, for landing pages with forms, that specific page. The longer the time
conversion rate refers to the percentage on page, the more engaged the visitor.
of visitors who fill out the form on that
page. For landing pages without forms The average time on page benchmarks
and all blog posts, conversion rate refers for the blog posts and landing pages 9
to the percentage of visitors who click Clouds creates for our clients are 1:51
on the call-to-action (CTA) button on that and 1:52, respectively. While these are
page. We used Google Analytics, HubSpot, slightly less than the national average of
and the client’s content management 2:17, many of our pages and posts are
system (CMS) to access these numbers. intentionally shorter in length, both to
accommodate readers’ short attention
The average conversion rate on the blog spans and to encourage quick and easy
posts 9 Clouds creates for our clients is 5.8% form submissions and clicks to other pages.
— a 93% increase over the national average. It’s a good idea to compare this metric with
We rely on effective SEO tactics and regular the visitor’s entire time on site. If a visitor
content testing to achieve increasingly high has a short time on page but a long time on
click-through rates on our clients’ blog posts. site, that’s typically still considered a quality
session, since they are clearly finding the
The average conversion rate on the content they’re looking for on your site.
landing pages created by 9 Clouds is
PAGE 15 9clouds.comWEBSITE CONTENT BENCHMARKS
BOUNCE RATE WHERE DID WE GET OUR DATA?
The last benchmark we analyzed for web Before we measured our own benchmarks
content is bounce rate. Also measured in Google based on client data, we researched several
Analytics, bounce rate refers to the percentage third-party resources to give us the best
of visitors who closed the page without viewing indication for “what’s good” for each of these
any other pages afterward. Bounce rate, like metrics within the automotive industry.
time on page, reveals whether the content
adequately meets the needs of the audience. To find the average website conversion rate for
the auto industry, we averaged the data from
The average bounce rates for the blog posts a variety of reputable web content sources,
and landing pages 9 Clouds creates for our including Search Engine Land, Unbounce,
clients are 70% and 74.4%, respectively. These WordStream, IMPACT, and Spinutech.
are higher than the 60% national average, but
considering some of the mitigations involved — To find the average time on page for
such as the fact that bounce rate can skyrocket automotive web content, we turned to
for high-trafficked pages, mobile sessions, and Brafton, which published a comprehensive
paid traffic — it’s not an alarmingly high number. content marketing benchmark report in
In fact, a high bounce rate isn’t always a bad 2017. We supplemented this benchmark with
thing, since it could mean that visitors found recent data from Spinutech and Weidert.
exactly what they were looking for on your
page and didn’t need to explore any further. To find the average bounce rate for automotive
web content, we again referenced the
Again, it’s a good idea to measure this metric report by Brafton as well as recent data
with the average bounce rate of the entire from RocketFuel and Exposure Ninja.
website. If the bounce rate of the specific
page is lower than the bounce rate of the
whole site, you can know that page contains
higher-quality content than most pages.
PAGE 16 9clouds.comHOW DO YOU STACK UP?
Now that we’ve shared our digital marketing data
with you, we want to hear about yours! Is your
dealership above or below our benchmarks?
Every business has a unique way of
measuring ROI. We want to know about
your benchmarks and what they mean.
If you feel your marketing performance
metrics could use a boost, we can help. Get
a clear picture of your data with a free digital
marketing assessment from 9 Clouds!
PAGE 17 9clouds.comYou can also read
