Hit the road! How to increase car sales by 44% with Google Ads?

What were the CHALLENGES?

• Withdrawal of previous bestsellers from the offer: in the first half of 2021, top models that built sales on the Polish market disappeared from the offer, namely: ASX, Outlander, Eclipse Cross, and Outlander PHEV.
• No new car premieres until 2022: by the decision of the headquarters, no new Mitsubishi model that would fill the so-called “model gap” will debut in Europe in 2022.
• Mitsubishi’s weakening position on the Polish market: due to the above, the brand’s market share and position have been quite badly affected. Additionally, the Mitsubishi team struggled with fake news about the alleged withdrawal of Mitsubishi from Poland.
• Smaller budget: due to the smaller range of models and a smaller number of cars for sale, media budgets were appropriately reduced, this forced a different approach to account structure and changes in the idea for further effective action.

How did we DO that?

• Use of Mitsubishi CRM data: better understanding of the Customer Journey. In the case of Mitsubishi, the user journey is defined by 7 stages: (visit, configuration started, configuration completed, lead, test drive, submitted offer, car sale). As creators of a dedicated dashboard that aggregates online and offline data and statuses at all stages of the journey, we incorporated 3 offline statuses (test drive, submitted offer, sale) as Google Ads conversions, which are sent to the advertising system every day and optimized campaigns under them.
• Using Value-Based Bidding: this is an approach to lead campaigns based not on quantity but on the value of conversions, which has recently gained in popularity. Although we have 2 conversions, each of them can give the company a different value, and that’s where VBB comes in. In our case, we developed a dynamic model of value allocation between individual stages, based on data from the whole year regarding: the number of individual events on the journey, the price of a given model. This allowed us to set target ROAS rates in campaigns so that they promoted mostly offline conversions (preferably sales) rather than leads themselves.
• Withdrawal of bestsellers and no new releases: considering that most discontinued models generated both leads and sales for Mitsubishi, we faced a difficult task. We mapped the most homogeneous models that were on offer, redirected all remarketing lists to minimize the loss of potentially interested Mitsubishi customers. In the case of the current range, we set ourselves priorities, sales plans and allocated budgets on this basis, trying to communicate the USP as much as possible in all digital channels.

What RESULTS we achieved?

From the beginning, a decade-long partnership relationship, the key to the assumed goals of cooperation has been a model based on trust and professionalism. If we add to this flexibility in decision-making, budget management and adaptation to the current situation, great communication and coordination of activities in various areas of digital marketing, we have a recipe for success that we have achieved together and of which

Łukasz Wójcik, Marketing & PR Director Mitsubishi Motors