Searching for new drivers

Client: Mercedes-Benz

Traditionally, to reach people searching for a car on Search Engines, Mercedes-Benz has bid on certain keywords to appear in search results (for terms like "car dealership near me", "executive car", “Mercedes-Benz C-Class”). 

However, these ads did not consider where users were in the purchase funnel – meaning everyone would see the same ad. So, to reach people more efficiently after budgets have been shifted away from regional paid search, we moved from targeting via keywords to targeting based on intent. To do this, we used first-party data from mbusa.com to track user intent signals, like how often individuals had visited, and for how long, and what actions they had performed.

We identified two kinds of searchers:

1.Upper Funnel Searchers were individuals who were less familiar with the Mercedes-Benz brand. We increased awareness by serving them educational calls to action and sending them to web pages where they could learn about different models and the brand.

2.Lower Funnel Searchers were people who had already interacted with Mercedes-Benz. We served them ads with more urgent calls to action and more detailed information about pricing and model features. These users were also taken to pages of the Mercedes-Benz website intended to motivate engagement, such as the ‘Build Your Own Model’ page or special offers page.

Our search strategy worked. On-site actions increased by 18% YOY. Purchase intent actions increased +16%. While spending went down -34% YOY, cost per acquisition went down even further: -44%.