kbb.com?

[mikeelmore]

Yes, I use their reports, our CRM, our web site's tracking and the sales force(this is cruical) and most importantly, our phone tracking tool and just recently incorporated that with our CRM and it's like..........wow, all of a sudden, we've got up's!

 

[Jason Walter]

Yes, I use their reports, our CRM, our web site's tracking and the sales force(this is cruical) and most importantly, our phone tracking tool and just recently incorporated that with our CRM and it's like..........wow, all of a sudden, we've got up's!

Ok...we do the same...we have all our calls populate in our CRM and we also use our F&I office get leadsource info. IF they dont get it than our CSI manager on her follow up call will do so. We get about 98% of our delivered customers correct leadsource. The issue with us was that there was no direct traffic to our website, no phone calls and no leads. We left it running for about 90 days.

It might be that your market is more in tuned with the KBB site than mine. It is interesting to know that it is working for others though....

Thanks,

 

[mikeelmore]

Ok...we do the same...we have all our calls populate in our CRM and we also use our F&I office get leadsource info. IF they dont get it than our CSI manager on her follow up call will do so. We get about 98% of our delivered customers correct leadsource. The issue with us was that there was no direct traffic to our website, no phone calls and no leads. We left it running for about 90 days.

It might be that your market is more in tuned with the KBB site than mine. It is interesting to know that it is working for others though....

Thanks,

That's what I think they call the "rub" KBB allows visitors to move right to our site, and although they have "click thru's" on their reports like some other vendors, i.e., cars.com, atc, I've really donated a ton of time to ensure I'm getting my cents worth with advertising w/ KBB, and lately, it has been one of my top performers. I'm a curious, how do other ISM's feel about vendors that allow potential customers thru to their sites and loose that hard data to track exactly where a lead/sale came from? If I had that little "start a thread" icon available to me, I'd start one!

 

[Jason Walter]

That's what I think they call the "rub" KBB allows visitors to move right to our site, and although they have "click thru's" on their reports like some other vendors, i.e., cars.com, atc, I've really donated a ton of time to ensure I'm getting my cents worth with advertising w/ KBB, and lately, it has been one of my top performers. I'm a curious, how do other ISM's feel about vendors that allow potential customers thru to their sites and loose that hard data to track exactly where a lead/sale came from? If I had that little "start a thread" icon available to me, I'd start one!

You should still be able to use Omniture or Google Analytics to track your referring domains. That way you can see if you are getting any traffic from KBB.

 

[mikeelmore]

You should still be able to use Omniture or Google Analytics to track your referring domains. That way you can see if you are getting any traffic from KBB.

Yes, those may be good tools, my thing is that being anal to this point; you know how GM always spouts that they have over 300 lead providers that offer "qualified leads" and verify those leads and that's why we should be happy and rolling in the sales with their 3rd party lead system? Well, what if someone searched for a rig, and clicked thru to one site, then from that site clicked to another, then clicked from that site to another, and again, and again, and so on and on...then finally asked for a quote or information or something from that site and then that site is recorded as the site of record, when all along it was another site that really was the contributing site but does not get the credit, it could even have been my site (your site), well, it just begs to be asked, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

 

[Alex Snyder]

There is an old saying: "Out of every dollar you spend on advertising half will do something" and there is no reprieve for where the other $0.50 went. That was before the Internet. I think it is even worse today because there is so much advertising and so much customer desensitization to it.

I say all this because, Mike, there are going to be quite a few scenarios where all the advertising worked together and others where it was just one single source. There are going to be times when the egg and the chicken are the same bird. The traditional rhymes and reasons to advertising no longer exist.

But the thing your describing happens enough to just about every online advertising source, that you can still hold them all equally accountable with your analytics.

 

[Jason Walter]

There is an old saying: "Out of every dollar you spend on advertising half will do something" and there is no reprieve for where the other $0.50 went. That was before the Internet. I think it is even worse today because there is so much advertising and so much customer desensitization to it.

I say all this because, Mike, there are going to be quite a few scenarios where all the advertising worked together and others where it was just one single source. There are going to be times when the egg and the chicken are the same bird. The traditional rhymes and reasons to advertising no longer exist.

But the thing your describing happens enough to just about every online advertising source, that you can still hold them all equally accountable with your analytics.

Agreed...I think the bottom line is that you must figure out what analytics you can/need to track for each source and then do so. ie with ATC I track a lot of different metrics...SRP's/VDP's, phone calls, web leads...etc and CPC we track CTR, cost of conversions Cost per click, phone calls etc. With every source there is something to track that is finite. Once I find that out I then can break it down to see if it is worth the money...

 

[mikeelmore]

Agreed...I think the bottom line is that you must figure out what analytics you can/need to track for each source and then do so. ie with ATC I track a lot of different metrics...SRP's/VDP's, phone calls, web leads...etc and CPC we track CTR, cost of conversions Cost per click, phone calls etc. With every source there is something to track that is finite. Once I find that out I then can break it down to see if it is worth the money...

I find that to be "just the thing" when it comes to sourcing a sold customer, I want to know exactly where, when and how they found us, sometimes it's easy, but most times, as you well know, to get that exact ad source, it can be burdensome on the customer to keep asking them how they got to us, they don't want any more questions and could care less about our survey's, when they just want to finally get out of the dealership with their new car..so, we'll keep on tracking as best as we can with the tools that are available to us and keep a tight rein on our vendors to ensure we get that bang for that buck, or the half of buck, or whatever the buck!