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Show Me It Works and I Have Unlimited Money

C Dorman

Bone King
Aug 7, 2018
63
51
First Name
Chip
DISC.png

If I had a dollar for every time I've had an owner or GM say, "Chip, show me it works and I've got unlimited money" I'd be sipping umbrella drinks on a beach full time.

Sure, I can show dealers the ROI from different lead sources in their CRM systems, but we all know that's not the full story. Who was responsible for all those web leads, walk-ins and drive bys? Yes, I can use Google Analytics to fill in those blanks with conversions and store visits, but it's never the direct marketing expense to a sales figure report owners and GMs are really looking for when they ask, "did it sell cars?"

Well, that's changed.

Look at the screen shot above. You've never seen anything like it in automotive before. And the reason for that is because while the rest of the digital marketing world has been taking advantage of Google Analytic's eCommerce tools for years, car dealers have been left out because they don't actually sell cars online.

Even if dealers use a digital retailing tool, the vast majority of car buyers do not complete the sale online. And even if they did, because so many of them are addons that don't work with a dealer's Google Analytics, they still could not use these reports.

Until recently.

Now there is a new service that uses an algorithm to "detect" sales on automotive websites, which then fires virtual sale events into Google Analytics to unlock all of their E-Commerce features (Assisted Sales, Attribution, Time to Sale, Visit Paths to Sale, Revenue Generated per Campaign...the list goes on and on.)

Is it 100% accurate?

No, but it's only about a month into beta and it's already 80% to 90%, and with a little more time and more data from additional dealers, it's expected to be solidly 90% accurate very soon.

So while it's not perfect, when the standard has been nothing for years, a model that's 80% to 90% accurate is incredibly powerful.

Not to mention that it shows dealers a direct relationship between marketing expenses and sales for the first time ever. And believe me when I say this, there are going to be a lot of pissed off vendors because this exposes them for the overpriced frauds that they really are.

It's also not expensive, only $199 for a single website with quantity discounts for larger dealers.

Dealer Refreshers can get a 10% discount too.

There's more to this than space permits here, so if you'd like to check it out, call me at 949.910.0421 or email me at [email protected] and I'll walk you through it and give you all the details.
 
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Sounds interesting Chip. BTW - this thread actually belongs in the Deals4Dealers forum. I'll let it ride some time out here before moving it.

Where are the conversion values coming from?
Sorry Jeff, most of the stuff I post is about Analytics and I never know where to post it.

It'd be nice if we had our forum for analytics geeks :)

Conversion vales are coming from the dealer's website prices.

There's also a direct DMS tie in for even more accurate numbers for a few bucks more if dealers want to go that route.
 
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For the life of me, I don't understand why everybody and their brother is using GA as a primary means of reporting. Chip, it looks like you have a really, really nice product. Personally, I would not use GA to house this data your talking about though. I get it. GA is huge! Alot of ppl use it but... every single piece of reporting in GA can be manipulated. And, theres no filter you can built or create to put in place to stop it or even detect it.
 
For the life of me, I don't understand why everybody and their brother is using GA as a primary means of reporting. Chip, it looks like you have a really, really nice product. Personally, I would not use GA to house this data your talking about though. I get it. GA is huge! Alot of ppl use it but... every single piece of reporting in GA can be manipulated. And, theres no filter you can built or create to put in place to stop it or even detect it.
Rick, you're right, GA is far from perfect. Back in the day, I used to pull raw server log files for my analytics. But when I did, and then compared them to what I could do with GA for free and a whole lot faster, using GA was a no brainer.

If you understand that all web analytics are imperfect, that they are an indicator of performance, then you're even further ahead of the game. If you know what you're doing, you can easily spot bias and slanted data. Unfortunately, most dealers don't have this capability inhouse. But they need it desperately, whether it's an inhouse employee or an outside consultant with only the dealer's best interests at heart, they need to know what they're doing with their digital marketing.

Who ever controls the data will control the customer.

It's that simple. If a dealer wants to control their own destiny they need to control their data. If this is too much for them, then they should seriously consider selling their dealerships now while valuations are high and investing in one year treasuries. With a 2.73% annual rate, that's more profit on their capital then a lot of them are making now according to NADA.

So yes, while there are better ways of housing and using this data, for most dealers Google Analytics is a lot better than what they're doing now. And it's going to get better and more transparent because of the competition from Facebook and soon Amazon.
 
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