27 February 2019

Unsurprisingly one of the key focus areas on show at NADA was the use of digital marketing strategies. While most progressive dealers are working hard to improve the effectiveness of their digital marketing activities, one of the most asked questions is ‘what do we measure, and how?’

Measuring the value of digital

In order to succeed in this competitive market dealers need to understand exactly what people want and assist them to get it. On average there are 24 touchpoints while researching for a vehicle and 19 of those are digital. But how do we measure the digital?

Establish the right metrics

Direct feedback from Google tells us that only 26% of the people who bought a car in the past six months filled out a lead form. So, success metrics need to move beyond the lead form and look at wider interactions, such as phone calls, chat bots, page views and time on site. It all depends on what dealers are trying to achieve. Daily management and measurement of the incoming sales funnel is of paramount importance.

Campaign objectives can be broadly defined as driving awareness of your dealership and inventory; keeping yourself top of mind for shoppers; and closing car buyers who know that they want.

It is possible to gain an insight into the performance of each campaign with conversion tracking.

Look at attribution (more later!)

Overall dealer traffic in most markets is reported to be declining, but 60% of dealers report a rise in conversion rates; so buyers are more purchase-ready than ever. But shoppers rarely follow a linear path to purchase and valuable insights can emerge when looking at the entire journey.

Attribution models beyond a simple ‘last-click’ can help. The linear model gives equal weight across all keywords clicked during the search process. A position-based attribution model might rely heavily on the first and last keywords clicked in the process, while a time-decay model gives more weight to more recent clicks.

Dealers need to find a model that suits them, their campaign objectives and their target audience. Moving beyond last click does seem to pay off; marketers who have made this move report 5% more conversions, on average, at a similar cost.

Build a local strategy

Digital is growing but 97% of vehicle sales still happen at the dealership. So, it is important dealers reach consumers with local ads across all the channels. This should not be restricted to Search, but also Search, Maps, YouTube and Display.

Dealers should drive awareness with their Google My Business listing and make sure it is fully complete. Complete listings get, on average, seven times more clicks than empty listings.

Shoppers near a dealer’s business are going to be more valuable and bid-by-location can be implemented to attract more of them. When shoppers within five miles of a dealership clicked on a search ad, their physical visit was 1.7 times more likely to be incremental than shoppers beyond five miles.

The summary actions from the Google session were to plan campaign objectives and metrics, think beyond last-click attribution, complete Google My Business listing and develop bid by location to find local shoppers.

What do great dealers do especially well with digital?

A session by the CEO of Adpearance covered the learning from a review of the data from over 100 million dealer website visits and followed those visits down the sales pipeline to tens of thousands of car sales. In doing so, it believes it has identified the five attributes that are making some dealers outperform the rest.

1. Strategic incremental change is far more effective than wholesale change

Don’t chop and change but work constantly to improve what you are doing. Focus on one moment in any process and think about what the customers feel at that point. Then try to imagine how you want them to feel and try to achieve it.

2. Go back to the basics

Where are you getting your leads and how effectively are you closing them? One of the problems here is that the digital space has created confusion and it is harder than ever to identify and focus on genuine leads. An interaction is not a lead and many so-called ‘leads’ are not genuine sales prospects.

Analysis of over 15 million ‘leads’ suggests that, while 61% might be phone contacts, only 15% of those are actually sales prospects. Of the 33% that are enquiry forms, 69% are actually sales prospects and, of the 7% that are chat-based, 65% are genuine sales prospects.

By focusing on the genuine leads, you will up your performance and get a better idea of genuine close rates.

3. Empower your people

Staff turnover is killing many dealerships and if you are going to have a lasting, sustainable impact on sales, you have to look at what can be done to improve daily job satisfaction. Bear in mind that, because so much research is done on the internet, customers don’t feel they need to talk to you – and sales people might not feel needed. Empowering them will make them feel better about themselves and work more effectively.

4. Sort out data delivery

You don’t need another dashboard, you just need accurate data delivered to you in a quickly understood and actionable form.

5. Sales process outguns marketing, every time

Working on improving the sales process will give you a way bigger lift than spending on marketing.

On the other hand, there is a tendency to blame marketing when sales processes go wrong. Double check hidden processes, such as front desk handling, call handling and broken forms on websites.

Clearly there is a lot of validity in these ideas, especially in the context of 100 million web visits.

The summary actions include the need to work on continuous focus on incremental process improvements, ensure the dealer team is empowered to respond to all opportunities quickly, track your genuine sales leads with a particular focus on live chats, define what data is essential and make sure it is easy to receive and constantly check for hidden process breakdowns.

YOUR ACTION PLAN

• Set measurements based on your goals
• Move beyond ‘last-click’ attribution
• Target local buyers online
• Start with small changes rather than sweeping ones
• Empower staff to cut down turnover
• Don’t add a dashboard, refine your existing one
• Prioritise sales processes over marketing

By Mike Jones

Tags: ASE, google, NADA