I asked in another thread weeks ago, but how do you best evaluate advertising efforts in this situation (attribution of the sale)? The dealers that give me good feedback about my advertising service are the ones with a paper survey after the sale. It feels silly to recommend that my dealerships push a paper survey to evaluate performance of my digital advertisement. But, my shoppers will just walk on the dealer's lot when they see a vehicle on my website they like. No web form, no phone call.
What is the highest priority for your dealership marketing efforts?
- Thread starter The QR Code Guy
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I asked in another thread weeks ago, but how do you best evaluate advertising efforts in this situation (attribution of the sale)? The dealers that give me good feedback about my advertising service are the ones with a paper survey after the sale. It feels silly to recommend that my dealerships push a paper survey to evaluate performance of my digital advertisement. But, my shoppers will just walk on the dealer's lot when they see a vehicle on my website they like. No web form, no phone call.
100% attribution is is not linear, nor achievable. Paper survey, Autotrader gets "checked" - dealer has not been on Autotrader in a year, etc. I like open ended write/fillable questions if you ARE doing a survey - no checkboxes.
Instead we look at spend, and movement in inventory, that spend "should" affect.
Examples:
1 - Current used turn is 2.0. If I sign up with a primarily used provider for $X,XXX incremental advertising dollars, and 6 months later I am still at 2.0 turn, that spend really did nothing for me. If 6 months later I am at 2.2 turn, then they most likely had an impact.
2 - Current new market share is 12% (zone, region, etc - doesn't matter as long as the data is consistent). I sign up for your program at $X,XXX incremental advertising dollars, and 6 months later I am still at 12%, again it did nothing for me. 6 months later I am at 14%, incremental spend had an impact.
Same examples can be used for spend swap …. IE: canceling one thing to pay for another. If 6 months after canceling one program and signing up for another I am at the same turn, market share, etc - then I just traded one vender for another, and all the headache that comes along with changing.
Are there other things that can affect the above examples == yes. We use it as a baseline in evaluation of venders/products/tech.
Great info. My website is a 20 year old brand in the region so that likely helps on the survey (shhhh). If every dealer was so patient and thoughtful in evaluation of sales metrics vs cost metrics, that would be amazing. Some believe they can decide after one month if the product works or not.
I appreciate you sharing your insight!
-Alex
- Feb 4, 2022
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"Closing the loop" is something we help dealerships do, though it requires either the dealer or their marketing vendor to know the analytics so when we capture the buyer at the lot, they can attribute the VDP view we deliver (UTM encoded of course) and correlate that all traffic from us (QR code) is from the lot.
For example - Johnny came to dealer website via 3rd party, so the attribution of that website traffic is known, though Johnny has never filled out a form so he's still anonymous. Though through all his web visits, there's a pretty good looking cookie trail but still - he's anonymous. When he visits the dealership and looks at inventory, our strategy to get a QR code scan changes everything. Now we connect that initial 3rd party click (and the cost to get that click plus anything else that user cookie did) all the way to the dealership visit, and can attribute the spend to delivering a lot visit. In addition - we made the connection with a VIN specific lead, so there's the vehicle data plus now we have Johnny's name, phone, etc. and he's no longer anonymous. So we close the loop in marketing PLUS turn his visit into an identified lead for sales to take action on. It's not perfect attribution, but it is another piece of the puzzle towards the total picture.
Sounds cool. So the shopper uses a generic QR scanner that directs the device's browser to a URL where we hope he has an existing cookie to scoop up? Is that a first party or third party cookie?
Sounds like 3PL VDP -> to dealer website (w/UTM) -> First party cookie
QR scan -> dealer website -> ties out to stored cookie
Is there data collection on the other side of the QR code to collect the personal info?
- Feb 4, 2022
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Any mobile phone today can scan QR codes - no special app needed. We automatically capture the VIN specific lead and then deliver the user to the dealership VDP page on the website so master cookie access is fulfilled. We send over the link UTM encoded from us so that analytics can denote the traffic as needed. The lead is emailed or injected into the CRM immediately with name, phone, VIN and a few more fields.
- May 17, 2023
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I don't think it should be the number 1 priority, but having a proper website that is built to convert it critical in todays world. Nothing will have a bigger impact on the overall success or failure of your Internet marketing strategy than your website and its ability to convert visitors to callers at the highest level possible. Let's face it...your website is the HUB for all of your other marketing (online and offline) leads. If it's failing to convert, then none of your marketing will work as well as it could or should.
- Feb 4, 2022
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100%! So many dealer websites are complete trash when viewed on mobile - which is the majority of the users. There's a lot to be gained here with cleaning up the VDP view, reducing CTA options/buttons, ditch the chat, ditch the "ads"/internal promotions. Pretty much all platforms have "feature creeped" and dealers have added third party functionality to the point that automotive retail websites are some of the worst at converting in all of internet retail.
- May 17, 2023
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I agree completely. When it comes to website optimization for conversion (I just finished hosting a webinar on this today) simplicity can be a great thing. Especially when your aim is conversion, it doesn't take a million features and add ons to do so. A lot of the time dealers forget about the fundamentals in place of "fancy chats" or promotions.
