- Apr 7, 2009
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- Joe
Its funny how popular DR forums reveal what's happening inside stores all over: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f46/...-more-lead-providers-come-3946.html#post33954
New trend for Showroom Traffic vs. Internet Leads?
- Thread starter Ryan Pesin
- Start date
Its funny how popular DR forums reveal what's happening inside stores all over: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f46/...-more-lead-providers-come-3946.html#post33954
- Apr 10, 2011
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- Manny
I Love The Uncle Joe Rule #211:
"Dealer's are like snowflakes, no two are the same"
"Dealer's are like snowflakes, no two are the same"
- Apr 10, 2011
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- Manny
"Are we seeing a average drop in internet leads to consumers just walking into the dealership?"
We're not seeing it, showroom traffic, lead forms and phone traffic are up. Site traffic has been real finicky this month
We're not seeing it, showroom traffic, lead forms and phone traffic are up. Site traffic has been real finicky this month
- Apr 10, 2011
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- Manny
Joe, thanks for the Fact: Lead source analysis from CRM is a waste of your time. Here's the world as I see it:
Here's Likes
Here's
Likes
- Apr 7, 2009
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- Joe
Yago nailed it.
If your building your own Survey at delivery MUST take into account "fuzzy memories & the power of famous names".
- Apr 7, 2009
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- Joe
FYI, If you want a survey at delivery for your store(s), I am a huge fan of SurveyGizmo.com, used them for all 20,000 surveys and it worked flawlessly. IMO, they're way better than SurveyMonkey.com
Here's a review site FYI Home / The Survey Software Review
HTH
Joe
Here's a review site FYI Home / The Survey Software Review
HTH
Joe
There are really two contradictory answers to this question and I tend to agree with everyone so far, so I guess that puts me on some proverbial fence. I don't mind. I get a more clear picture of the landscape from this vantage.
On one hand, dealers and vendors should strive to source traffic, leads, and sales as well as possible. Then, there are the intangibles. For example, what's the value of an impression? Is it worth it to get your brand message in front of people by paying for Twitter ads? Some would say that it's worthless, even if you target the local area, because people don't go to Twitter to buy cars. Then again, they don't turn on the television in order to buy cars, either, yet many dealers see bumps in sales when they have commercials running. Is $2 a day in Twitter promotion too much in order to get the brand in front of thousands?
On the other hand, people often say that "numbers don't lie". However, interpretations of the numbers can be misleading. In essence, a savvy dealer will be guided by the numbers but won't necessarily let them overrule the results. Quick story to illustrate this...
A client was looking at their SEO, PPC, and social results for their second month with us. The numbers were pretty strong but not overwhelming. Yes, there were major gains in traffic, but they were not seeing much of an increase in leads. However, March was a record breaking month in sales for the store. Was that us? Was that a better television ad that resonated with more people? Was it just the fowl February weather that caused a bottleneck that was happily released in March? They don't know. We don't know. All we can do is look at the trends and continue to drive more traffic. All they can do is dig deeply into the numbers and try to see if our efforts are worth the price.
Bottom line is that it's often hard to attribute success or failure to individual sources and circumstances. As Joe said, if a buyer is exposed to 20 different points of possible interaction with the dealership, which one compelled them to come in and buy? Which 1, 2, or 10 efforts out of the 20 worked the best and made the difference? I'm not sure if there's a pure form answer to the question, which is why I'll happily remain perched on my fence.
On one hand, dealers and vendors should strive to source traffic, leads, and sales as well as possible. Then, there are the intangibles. For example, what's the value of an impression? Is it worth it to get your brand message in front of people by paying for Twitter ads? Some would say that it's worthless, even if you target the local area, because people don't go to Twitter to buy cars. Then again, they don't turn on the television in order to buy cars, either, yet many dealers see bumps in sales when they have commercials running. Is $2 a day in Twitter promotion too much in order to get the brand in front of thousands?
On the other hand, people often say that "numbers don't lie". However, interpretations of the numbers can be misleading. In essence, a savvy dealer will be guided by the numbers but won't necessarily let them overrule the results. Quick story to illustrate this...
A client was looking at their SEO, PPC, and social results for their second month with us. The numbers were pretty strong but not overwhelming. Yes, there were major gains in traffic, but they were not seeing much of an increase in leads. However, March was a record breaking month in sales for the store. Was that us? Was that a better television ad that resonated with more people? Was it just the fowl February weather that caused a bottleneck that was happily released in March? They don't know. We don't know. All we can do is look at the trends and continue to drive more traffic. All they can do is dig deeply into the numbers and try to see if our efforts are worth the price.
Bottom line is that it's often hard to attribute success or failure to individual sources and circumstances. As Joe said, if a buyer is exposed to 20 different points of possible interaction with the dealership, which one compelled them to come in and buy? Which 1, 2, or 10 efforts out of the 20 worked the best and made the difference? I'm not sure if there's a pure form answer to the question, which is why I'll happily remain perched on my fence.
- Nov 20, 2010
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- Frank
Cory using time of visits may not apply so much to adding content to the dealership site unless is a coupon test but does show you the most effective times to do adwords and other search advertising as it will give you prime times that your area does its research and thus best time to get clicks and that will improve the QS and lower cost of the click - having your ad impressions during low visit times will just impact lower ctr and cost you money
- May 1, 2006
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I'm not taking any sides on the messaging although anyone who knows me would know I'm incredibly biassed on this topic. Reasons: 1) a lackluster relationship with ATC & VinSolutions during my dealer days and 2) Autotrader is a competitor. However, I believe I can add to the conversation by pointing out technical problems with walk-in tracking.
Surveys
Post sale surveys are fantastic for trend discovery. If your General Manager(s) has not been exposed to this kind of data it will change his way of looking at the store. Asking the right (non-leading) questions is difficult to do, so this is where a third party can assist in crafting the survey questions. One part is extremely difficult and that is asking marketing questions. Usually the people taking the survey have or are in the process of buying a car from you; they're biased to you. They're also just trying to get the survey over with because marketers typically ask too many questions.
In my experience, most people clicked off what they knew. We found things with stronger brand recognition were cited in responses more, but people couldn't recall actually using that service after drilling into their response deeper (asking them outright). Human psyche plays differently when taking a survey vs. actually buying a car.
CRMs
We all know our staff is either the worst at obtaining the proper information or way more efficient at collecting the right info than the customer is when they submit Internet leads to us. Imported databases and the time when the core of the CRM was originally built also factor. Then you have the practice of how the CRM is used within the sales process. For the record the "accuracy" of the retail CRM is based on:
- -The customer
- -The staff
- -Legacy data (imports) from prior CRMs/ILMs and DMS systems + any list-purchasing endeavors
- -The CRM itself ....fixable
- -The process ....also fixable
I'm going to skip the first three....
Most CRMs available to the car business were built in departmentalized silos. This is especially true of systems built before 2003 (pre-Internet-acceptance-in-the-car-biz years). They concentrated efforts to work with DMS systems that are also silo'd data centers: Deal silo, Service silo, and the Inventory silo are the 3 traditional silos CRM companies built around. Since the Internet lead became such a viable part of business, technologies have been developed to better connect the customer who calls himself "Alex," but is really "Alexander" when signing a contract. The flexibility of today's technologies are a lot better at decreasing the amount of duplication simply because it has had time to evolve in comparison to some older systems being sold today. I can speak about this for ages, but will stop to not bore you.
The dealer's process can be different based on how certain systems are utilized. Do they even care about de-duplication enough to really do something about it? Or, even at its most basic, is a CRM or DMS even used? And there are still a ton of stores (not so much groups anymore) using ILM systems that are foreign to the staff on the floor.
Anyway, if CRM data is used (and I can guess which would have been in this case) to make definite claims, it is full of holes.
Man-in-red-hat tracking
A minority of stores use a way of counting lot traffic by physically doing it with administrative staff (maybe even a manager). Someone watches the lot and puts a tick down for every customer who walks-in with a description of the customer's appearance along with who upped that customer. Then it is the job of the sales agent, who did the upping, to assist the administrator with a name and status as to what happened with that floor up. Overall, this produces some of the most accurate floor traffic counts! And if managed properly it can make some strong connections to information already in the CRM. However, this method isn't widely used so it isn't a viable way of seeing national trends.
What else?
I guess you can try to connect ADF data to DMS data. You can hire companies like Polk to mix registration info in (looks like they did some of that).
Back to my opinion and it is a WTFer:
At the end of the day can we really say people are skipping past submitting Internet leads in droves before walking in? If that's the case why are we seeing increases in Internet lead activity (including chat) from where I'm sitting? Is Autotrader saying more people are visiting the store, leaving, and then submitting Internet leads afterward?
