Concerns with local digital marketing company...am I missing something?

[Steve Stauning]

How exactly would one go about doing this?

To put this in the right context, I pulled the entire bullet point from the post with the most important point in bold italics:

"Ask your vendor to tell you how many cars you sold last month from your SEM efforts and which keywords drove those sales. (When your PPC provider properly sets up Google Analytics tracking and your Google Search Console – and perhaps even adds some high-converting landing pages – they should be able to help you get much of this information.)"

Perhaps that helps. Not sure what you're looking for beyond what I wrote. I didn't say they could pinpoint every single sale driven by PPC and Display - nor did I mean that.

However, if they cannot show any calls, leads, chats and texts derived from PPC and Display clicks that ultimately ended in a sale, you have an issue. Certainly - and any smart dealer who is measuring knows this - there are going to be lots of buyers who never submit a lead or call (yet, they visited your website). The reporting from an honest SEM vendor (couple with Google Analytics and your CRM and even a little attribution modeling) will give you a very good picture of what is happening.

That said, most dealers aren't at the "leads and sales" level - that is, they're not using the very basic measurements to determine a digital marketing source's ROI.

Unfortunately, the nature of a blog post - versus a textbook - is that it's not possible to cover every point thoroughly. At 1,800+ words, this post was already twice as long as what most people will read.

 

[Ryan Everson]

To put this in the right context, I pulled the entire bullet point from the post with the most important point in bold italics:

"Ask your vendor to tell you how many cars you sold last month from your SEM efforts and which keywords drove those sales. (When your PPC provider properly sets up Google Analytics tracking and your Google Search Console – and perhaps even adds some high-converting landing pages – they should be able to help you get much of this information.)"

Perhaps that helps. Not sure what you're looking for beyond what I wrote. I didn't say they could pinpoint every single sale driven by PPC and Display - nor did I mean that.

However, if they cannot show any calls, leads, chats and texts derived from PPC and Display clicks that ultimately ended in a sale, you have an issue. Certainly - and any smart dealer who is measuring knows this - there are going to be lots of buyers who never submit a lead or call (yet, they visited your website). The reporting from an honest SEM vendor (couple with Google Analytics and your CRM and even a little attribution modeling) will give you a very good picture of what is happening.

That said, most dealers aren't at the "leads and sales" level - that is, they're not using the very basic measurements to determine a digital marketing source's ROI.

Unfortunately, the nature of a blog post - versus a textbook - is that it's not possible to cover every point thoroughly. At 1,800+ words, this post was already twice as long as what most people will read.

My only fear is that dealers will read that portion of the article and then demand that their vendors or in-house team tell them exactly how many cars they sold last month from SEM. I know if my General Managers read this, that is what they would expect from me.

But as you've alluded to, that isn't completely possible as we can only track leads and calls which leaves a lot of people who probably bought cars out of the equation. I was mainly curious if perhaps I was missing something that would allow me to tell my dealership exactly how many cars we sold from SEM because after all, isn't that what we all want? I know there are some attribution tools like Clarivoy that can help us get closer to answering this.

I know with a blog post it's tough to keep the balance between too much information and over-simplification. I just felt that bullet-point in particular was a little too over simplified for the average dealer manager and they would instantly misinterpret your meaning. Love the message of the blog post though and definitely agree that a good majority of SEM vendors are doing a crappy job for dealers.

 

[ed.brooks]

But as you've alluded to, that isn't completely possible as we can only track leads and calls which leaves a lot of people who probably bought cars out of the equation. I was mainly curious if perhaps I was missing something that would allow me to tell my dealership exactly how many cars we sold from SEM because after all, isn't that what we all want? I know there are some attribution tools like Clarivoy that can help us get closer to answering this.

"Last Click" certainly isn't 'THE' answer and I could argue (and have) that it can absolutely lead you astray. I'm a huge fan of Clarivoy and with that said, if you don't have any budget for analytics tools (and they aren't expensive), at least set up Google Analytics for Assisted Conversions and Multi-Channel Funnels. Brian Pasch has a great post on LinkedIn on how to do this --

Last Click Attribution Lies About The Value of Third-Party Auto Classifieds

Even this Assisted Conversion process is limited to folks who eventually contact you by lead forms, phone calls, chat, or text messages and, as you know, most folks just walk onto the lot after doing tons of research and not contacting the dealership at all.

 

[Alexander Lau]

"Last Click" certainly isn't 'THE' answer and I could argue (and have) that it can absolutely lead you astray. I'm a huge fan of Clarivoy and with that said, if you don't have any budget for analytics tools (and they aren't expensive), at least set up Google Analytics for Assisted Conversions and Multi-Channel Funnels. Brian Pasch has a great post on LinkedIn on how to do this --

Last Click Attribution Lies About The Value of Third-Party Auto Classifieds

Even this Assisted Conversion process is limited to folks who eventually contact you by lead forms, phone calls, chat, or text messages and, as you know, most folks just walk onto the lot after doing tons of research and not contacting the dealership at all.

Precisely and to be fair there are other automotive attribution tools out there.

I'm just going to copy and paste my own quote from https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/thr...average-cost-per-lead-to-get-a-customer.5619/

Cost Per Lead (CPL) is an an important metric (can be calculated via Web Traffic Attribution), but a lot of dealers are more interested in Cost Per Sale (can be calculated via Sales Attribution).

Web traffic attribution evaluates the true cost per engagement and cost per lead model (multi-touch) so you no longer need to rely on last-click attribution. Sales attribution holds vendors accountable for their performance by measuring what really matters – what’s driving sales, not just clicks. DISC = Does It Sell Cars.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Don’t Be Afraid of Multichannel Marketing Attribution
http://multichannelmerchant.com/blog/dont-be-afraid-of-multichannel-marketing-attribution/