Industries · Automotive
Value-Based Bidding for Car Dealerships: Bid on the Sale, Not the Enquiry
A dealership's lead forms mix serious buyers with people comparing prices across five sites. Use your own sales history to estimate the gross each new enquiry is likely to bring, so bidding learns to find the buyers who show up and sign.
Why lead counts fall short
Why a count of enquiries misses what a sale is worth
Automotive leads are among the noisiest in lead generation. A price enquiry sent to every dealer within fifty miles, a test-drive booking with a trade-in, and a finance question with no vehicle chosen all count as one lead, and bidding on the count buys the cheapest form fills.
Your DMS or CRM knows which ones became sales, and for what gross. New versus used, the model enquired about, whether there was a trade-in and how soon they wanted to buy all show up in the numbers. That is the signal the ad platforms need.
Close rate and gross move separately
A used-car enquiry may close more often for a smaller gross; a new model with a trade-in may close less often for far more. Expected value needs both.
Gross, not sticker price
Price on the gross profit or the revenue your system records on a completed sale, whichever your business runs on. The sticker price of the vehicle enquired about is not the value of the lead.
Finance details stay out
Credit scores and financing approval are sensitive and are refused by column name. Vehicle, condition, trade-in and timeline carry the signal without them.
The funnel
From enquiry to sold
- Enquiry
- Appointment set
- Showed
- Sold
Known when the lead arrives
What a new lead can be priced from
- Vehicle or model enquired about
- New or used
- Trade-in offered
- When they want to buy
- Distance from the dealership
Learned later
What the history is trained on
- Whether an appointment was set
- Whether they showed
- Whether the vehicle sold, and the gross
The vehicle, its condition, a trade-in and the timeline on the enquiry are what price a new lead. The appointment, the show and the sale are what the history is trained on.
How it works
From your sales history to what the ad platforms see
- 1
Bring in your history
A CRM export or a HubSpot connection: leads with their outcomes, won, lost or still open.
- 2
Find what relates to value
Each field known when a lead arrives is tested against your closed deals. Only the ones that clearly moved outcomes are kept.
- 3
Estimate each new lead
Its expected value: how likely leads like it are to become customers, times what those customers were worth.
- 4
Send the value
To Google Ads or Meta, as a conversion value on the lead. Sending changes no bid by itself.
- 5
Judge it on real outcomes
Compare closed deals before and after your campaigns start optimising on the values, never the values we sent.
Worked example
Three leads, three different values
Expected lead value = the estimated chance of becoming a customer × the expected value of that customer.
Value basis: Gross profit on the sale. Front and back gross as recorded in the DMS on a completed sale. If your export carries revenue instead, that is the basis, and the values mean the same thing in those terms.
New SUV, trade-in offered
- Wants to buy this month
- Within 20 miles
22% × $3,200
$704
estimated value of this lead
Used sedan, no trade-in
- Wants to buy within three months
- Within 20 miles
15% × $1,800
$270
estimated value of this lead
General enquiry, no vehicle chosen
- No timeline given
- Over 100 miles away
4% × $2,000
$80
estimated value of this lead
Illustrative example, not customer results.
The SUV enquiry is worth more than twice the used sedan and nearly nine times the general one. Bidding on the count would treat all three as a single lead at a single price.
How the product actually estimates this
It does not score each lead on its own. It starts from your overall close rate times your average won deal, with any deal above three times the median counted at that cap, then applies a multiplier for each field that clearly moved outcomes in your history, and rescales so the average estimate matches what your leads were actually worth. Fields that do not clear the evidence thresholds are left out and listed. The formula above is the same idea in one line.
What data you need
Your CRM already has most of it
- Enquiry dateWhen the lead arrived, not the delivery date.
- Sold, lost or still openEnquiries that never showed teach the model as much as the sales.
- Gross or revenue on sold vehiclesFrom the DMS on the completed sale, consistently one or the other.
- Fields from the enquiry formVehicle, new or used, trade-in, timeline and distance. No credit or financing details.
- Matching informationGoogle's click ID or the buyer's email for Google; email or phone, plus Meta's cookies from your site, for Meta.
What matters most is reliable outcomes and enough of them. The report checks your own file and names anything it could not price, rather than applying a one-size minimum.
How activation works
Estimating, sending and optimising are three steps
The product estimates each lead's value and sends it. Your campaigns use it only once you set them to optimise for value, a change you make in the ad platform, and the platform decides when an account qualifies.
Google Ads
Sends each enquiry's estimated value to a conversion action in Google Ads, matched on the click ID or on email. Your campaigns use it only once they bid on value, for example with Maximize conversion value.
Switching a live campaign, step by stepMeta
Sends a ValuedLead event with the value through the Conversions API. Website-form ad sets bid on values once they qualify for value optimisation; instant-form ad sets can learn from the appointment and show stages through Conversion Leads.
How the Meta route worksThe full method, from pricing a lead to measuring the result, is in the complete guide. Leads that reach your CRM without a click ID are covered in the click ID guide.
How to judge success
Measured in outcomes, not in the values we sent
Sales per enquiry
By vehicle condition and model, before and after the switch.
Cost per sold vehicle
Ad spend against vehicles sold, not against enquiries.
Gross per enquiry
Recorded gross divided by the enquiries that produced it.
Reported conversion value going up is not the result; it repeats what we sent. The product's evaluation compares sales before and after the switch, with enquiries from other sources as a control.
Questions
Automotive, specifically
Our leads come from the OEM, third-party sites and our own ads. Which go in?
All of them, with their source. The channel table shows what each was worth per lead, and the model learns from every sale. Only enquiries from your own ads are matched to a click and sent anywhere.
Can we price on whether the buyer was approved for finance?
No. Credit and financing details are sensitive, the ad platforms restrict bidding on them, and the product refuses such columns by name. Vehicle, condition, trade-in and timeline carry the signal.
One customer bought a fleet of six. Will it skew the model?
Not past the cap. Any sale above three times your median gross is counted at that level, the cap is shown and every sale it clipped is listed, so one fleet deal cannot teach the platform to chase its lookalikes.
We run several rooftops. One model or one per store?
One model with the store as an input, if the file carries it. It prices the difference where the history shows one and says so where it does not. A store with too few sales to price on its own gets the shared value until it has more.
Service and parts leads too?
Only if they carry an amount at the outcome. A service booking with an invoice recorded can be priced like a sale; a booking with no amount cannot, and the report says which is which.
Check whether your lead data is ready
Upload a CRM export or connect HubSpot. In about five minutes you see which of your fields relate to value, what new leads would be estimated at, and whether your history is enough to send. The file is read in your browser; you are asked for a name and work email before the full report.