Results at a Glance
2.1x
Group Paid Google Sessions
~16,437 in February to ~33,808 in April across all six stores
65% to 96%
Engagement Rate, Every Store
Chevrolet 84%, CDJR 96%, Nissan 96%, Honda 68%, Ford 66%, Toyota 66% in April
23x YoY
Thayer Chevrolet Paid Search
102 sessions in Aug 2025 to 2,337 in Aug 2026
2.2x
Thayer Toyota Paid Search
11,025 in February to 24,368 in July, the largest store in the group
Background
Thayer Auto Group runs six franchise stores in Bowling Green, Ohio: Chevrolet, Ford, Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, Nissan, Honda and Toyota. The group had real organic strength and strong brand recognition in northwest Ohio, but paid search had been left to the two largest stores. The four smaller franchises had almost no paid presence, and competitors investing in paid were taking share on the model and 'near me' searches the group should have owned. In March 2026, Savvy Dealer launched a hand-built paid Google program, Search plus Vehicle Listing Ads, across all six stores at once, with full GA4 conversion tracking activated the same month. This study compares the February baseline, the last month before launch, with April, the first full month under management, then checks whether the gains held through August.
The Challenge
Six brands, six inventories, six different starting points. Thayer Toyota already ran meaningful paid traffic; Thayer Nissan ran essentially none. A templated, autofed approach would have applied one bid strategy and one set of copy to all six and called it a group program. The group needed campaigns that treated each franchise as its own store, with model-specific keyword groups, ad copy written per brand and bid logic tied to each store's inventory aging, while still running on one playbook, one budget pacing discipline and one reporting cadence so the group could compare stores side by side.
What We Changed
Hand-Built Search and VLA Per Franchise
No autofeed inventory dumps. Model-specific keyword groups, bid logic tied to inventory aging, and ad copy written for each brand rather than templated across the group
Full-Funnel Conversion Tracking From Day One
GA4 conversion events activated alongside the campaign launch, including a lead event on Thayer Chevrolet that started firing in March, the same month the campaigns went live, so spend was measurable end to end from the first dollar
One Team, Six Brands
The same playbook ran across Chevrolet, Ford, CDJR, Nissan, Honda and Toyota. Each store got brand-specific creative and inventory feeds, but bidding strategy, budget pacing and reporting were shared, which is how the group sees all six stores on one page
Engagement as the Quality Gate
Traffic volume was never the target. Every store was held to GA4 engagement rate, the share of sessions that stay 10 seconds, scroll or convert, and the smaller stores landed at 84% to 96%
Before & After
The Impact
Within 60 days of launch, paid Google traffic to the group's six stores more than doubled, from roughly 16,437 sessions in February to roughly 33,808 in April, and every one of the six stores lifted. The smaller franchises moved the most: Thayer Chevrolet went from 141 paid sessions to 1,429, Thayer CDJR from 501 to 4,718, Thayer Honda from 721 to 4,069, and Thayer Nissan launched from a near-zero baseline to 3,711. The two stores that already spent, Ford and Toyota, grew 1.7x and 1.2x respectively, adding thousands of sessions a month with engagement intact. Engagement is the number that separates bought clicks from acquired shoppers, and it held between 65% and 96% at every store, with the three smallest franchises at 84%, 96% and 96%. The gains did not fade after the launch window. Thayer Chevrolet's paid search sessions in August 2026 were 2,337 against 102 in August 2025, a 23x year-over-year increase with a lead event now firing 60 to 72 times a month, and Thayer Toyota's paid search sessions grew from 11,025 in February to 24,368 in July, 2.2x on the group's largest store. Organic traffic at both stores stayed flat to slightly up over the same period, so the paid growth was additive, not cannibalized.
The Bottom Line
A dealer group does not need six vendors or six strategies. It needs one playbook that respects that each store is different. Thayer's six franchises doubled their paid Google traffic in 60 days, kept engagement in the 60s to 90s, and were still holding the gains five months later. That is what hand-built paid media looks like at group scale.
“Six franchises, six baselines, one hand-built playbook. Paid Google traffic across the Thayer group doubled in the first 60 days, every store lifted, engagement held between 65% and 96%, and by August the smallest store was running 23 times the paid search traffic it had a year earlier. The program was measured from the first dollar, and it is still holding.”
Paid Media Launch Analysis
Six-Store Group, First 60 Days and Beyond
Thayer Auto Group
Key Takeaways
Small franchises are where group paid programs pay off fastest. Three Thayer stores went 5x to 10x in 60 days because they had been starved of paid attention, and they engaged at 84% to 96%
The big stores grew too, just less dramatically. Ford and Toyota added thousands of sessions a month at 1.2x to 1.7x with no drop in quality, and Toyota kept climbing to 2.2x by July
Turn on conversion tracking the month you launch. Thayer Chevrolet's lead event started firing in March, so there was never a period of unmeasured spend
Judge paid traffic by engagement, not volume. Volume can be bought. Sessions that stay, scroll and convert cannot
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