Digital marketing agency publishes exclusive benchmark report comparing marketing performance

Lincoln Digital Group, a marketing and advertising agency based in West Palm Beach, Fla., published a first-of-its-kind benchmark report detailing lead generation for automotive dealers. The report focuses on the first quarter of 2019 and compares it to the same time period in 2018.

The report utilizes actual paid search campaign data from its various dealership clients in order to establish an average, or benchmark, of search engine marketing performance. Specifically, the data points focus on lead generation and the cost thereof, which are metrics commonly known as 'conversion rate' and 'cost per conversion.'

The agency's goal with the report is to provide dealership executives a current and actionable perspective on paid search benchmarks that seemed to be lacking, according to CEO Justin Cerone.

"Astute businesspeople want to know current key performance indicator averages for their industry, and in automotive marketing, there have been several hurdles to establishing them. Thus far, we found this data was only published on an annual basis," says Cerone. "We improved that by publishing it quarterly and with a year over year comparison. Further, those annual benchmark studies didn't share any tactical details that a dealership could use to adjust their performance. We decided to detail the difference in lead generation cost and performance inside and outside of 15 miles from a dealership's rooftop, which is essential information for both budget allocation and market share improvement. Lastly, we were able to combine data on nearly a dozen different Makes from different operations and locations, so that the report would be a broad view of performance for dealers to compare themselves against. This is all critically important because advertising and marketing is a major expense for most dealerships, which creates a need to objectively measure the effectiveness of those dollars."

Due to the variety of dealerships involved and the fact that the data is a blind average, Lincoln Digital Group clients are not at risk of any identifiable information being reveled in the study. The data also comes directly from an advertising dashboard controlled by Google, which means there's no possibility for the data to be altered by the agency or any
other party.

This quarterly report follows its 3-year benchmark study published in January, and Lincoln Digital Group plans to continue publishing its unique benchmark reports on a regular basis moving forward. "We believe we're providing useful information to our clients - who see the report first — and the industry at large. Our clients and industry partners have provided
very encouraging feedback on its content and have asked to share it. We're grateful to be in a position to publish this data and plan to continue improving every subsequent report," Cerone concluded.

For more information, visit https://lincolndigitalgroup.com/q1-automotive-sem-benchmarks/.

About Lincoln Digital Group
Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, Lincoln Digital Group(TM) is a full-service marketing and advertising agency that delivers high-quality digital marketing solutions to Brands in the United States and abroad. We specialize in helping medium- and large-sized companies reach and convert affluent, high-end consumers across various marketing channels. We're also experienced serving publicly-traded and international corporations. Learn more at: https://lincolndigitalgroup.com/.