It seems to me that one of the biggest pains for automotive website managers is tracking the website to showroom walk-in conversion rate (i.e. people who go onto website but don't phone or email ahead).
Web form inquiries, live chats and to a lesser extent phone-ups can all be automatically traced back to the website, down to what specific page instigated the lead and who was the referrer (classified listing, ppc, organic search, etc).
However, attributing internet sourced walk-in leads is usually much more difficult and error-prone, relying on post-purchase surveys and such like to give an estimate. It's almost always under-estimated.
Not knowing the website to walk-in figure to a reasonable level of accuracy could have a significant effect on digital marketing and website design decisions. For example, are website optimization changes that are intended to increase "internet lead" conversions (web form, chat) negatively affecting our web to walk-in conversion rate? Also, if your bonus relies on internet/website attributions, you don't want this figure on the low side.
Does anyone here have any other techniques they'd like to share about how they ensure accurate internet to walk-in attributions? Is your current process for doing so "good enough" or would you like to improve it?
An idea that I was thinking of was to generate a short code on the VDP (and SERP) which is displayed close to the contact call-to-action buttons (Call, Inquire, Chat). This code would be unique to each web visitor and could then be used to identify what page they're on and who referred them. The visitor would then be given a small incentive to quote this code when they make contact (either over the phone or walk-in). For example, "Quote 'V24601' to get your 1st service free if you decide to buy this vehicle from us" (probably could phrase that better).
When the visitor then calls or walks in, the sales rep can enter the code into the CRM and boom, you have your full attribution data from the website joined up to the customer record.
The key idea is to make it in the customer's interest to help you accurately attribute the lead source and to create an attribution point (the generated quote code) which links to the required data.
Now shoot this down, refreshers!
Web form inquiries, live chats and to a lesser extent phone-ups can all be automatically traced back to the website, down to what specific page instigated the lead and who was the referrer (classified listing, ppc, organic search, etc).
However, attributing internet sourced walk-in leads is usually much more difficult and error-prone, relying on post-purchase surveys and such like to give an estimate. It's almost always under-estimated.
Not knowing the website to walk-in figure to a reasonable level of accuracy could have a significant effect on digital marketing and website design decisions. For example, are website optimization changes that are intended to increase "internet lead" conversions (web form, chat) negatively affecting our web to walk-in conversion rate? Also, if your bonus relies on internet/website attributions, you don't want this figure on the low side.
Does anyone here have any other techniques they'd like to share about how they ensure accurate internet to walk-in attributions? Is your current process for doing so "good enough" or would you like to improve it?
An idea that I was thinking of was to generate a short code on the VDP (and SERP) which is displayed close to the contact call-to-action buttons (Call, Inquire, Chat). This code would be unique to each web visitor and could then be used to identify what page they're on and who referred them. The visitor would then be given a small incentive to quote this code when they make contact (either over the phone or walk-in). For example, "Quote 'V24601' to get your 1st service free if you decide to buy this vehicle from us" (probably could phrase that better).
When the visitor then calls or walks in, the sales rep can enter the code into the CRM and boom, you have your full attribution data from the website joined up to the customer record.
The key idea is to make it in the customer's interest to help you accurately attribute the lead source and to create an attribution point (the generated quote code) which links to the required data.
Now shoot this down, refreshers!
