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.