Which ad source gets credit for the sale?

[Rick Buffkin]

Come on guys... "Which ad source gets credit for the Sale"?!?!?! That's so simple. We all know it's "Location" that gets the credit in the CRM! LOL We don't need any "Clarivoy" dashboard to tell us that!

 

[Chris Leslie]

I feel like third parties think these conversations are helping their cause. My opinion is that they are mudding up the waters even more as we sit here and wonder what it is they actually do for us.

At some point, we as marketers have to ask the questions "What are you selling and what am I buying?"

 

[john.quinn]

In my book, the source that spawns the actual conversation with the customer is the one that gets the most weight -- the stuff that happens before and after is really inconsequential (as far as naming/identifying a "source") -- I'm talking to my customer after they interacted with X.

From there, I'm not interested in giving "Credit" for a particular sale (or lost sale)-- but I am very much interested in tracking patterns: was this particular interaction a fluke? Am I seeing a lot of interactions in the same pattern? If I "play," can I increase these interactions? How do these interactions compare to Y? Does playing with Y affect X?

So for those out there saying that this information is useless, I say this: make the best use of the actual data you can track by understanding what the data can actually mean.

And then just keep spending all your money on radio and TV! LOL!!

 

[Alex Snyder]

In my book, the source that spawns the actual conversation with the customer is the one that gets the most weight -- the stuff that happens before and after is really inconsequential (as far as naming/identifying a "source")

Marketing is not science; marketing is a faith. This is due to the extreme complexities of dealing with a human mind across time through a journey between digital and physical media. It could be that a team of scientists and psychiatrists endowed with a budget on par with the Hadron Collider could postulate some sort of theory, but we're in the car business folks.

Unfortunately, we've been trained to believe there is one ad source to rule them all. On top of that we try to make everyday nuances into ad sources as well: referrals and drive by's are two examples. CRM systems haven't helped here as their ad tracking methods are the most narrow. So, the smart marketer is the one who knows her market best. She understands that her Honda store's regular customers watch local news, love sports, and play on Facebook. The bulk of her budget is going to local TV advertising, display ads on ESPN-like sites, and Facebook advertising while maintaining a good SEM/SEO presence and third-party placements. On the other hand, her BMW store sports both the more financially established and the newly able. This requires two different approaches in her marketplace. And there are no reliable technologies that can science this assessment. So sorry to quite a few of my current colleagues at the office, but it just don't exist. Google might know how best to spend a buck on their network, but they only know how to spend a buck best on their own network.

So, as with all things in business you're only as good as your people. That's my argument. It ain't about assigning an ad source. If you're worried about tracking a single ad source then you're not seeing the forest through the trees.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Marketing is not science; marketing is a faith. This is due to the extreme complexities of dealing with a human mind across time through a journey between digital and physical media. It could be that a team of scientists and psychiatrists endowed with a budget on par with the Hadron Collider could postulate some sort of theory, but we're in the car business folks.

Unfortunately, we've been trained to believe there is one ad source to rule them all. On top of that we try to make everyday nuances into ad sources as well: referrals and drive by's are two examples. CRM systems haven't helped here as their ad tracking methods are the most narrow. So, the smart marketer is the one who knows her market best. She understands that her Honda store's regular customers watch local news, love sports, and play on Facebook. The bulk of her budget is going to local TV advertising, display ads on ESPN-like sites, and Facebook advertising while maintaining a good SEM/SEO presence and third-party placements. On the other hand, her BMW store sports both the more financially established and the newly able. This requires two different approaches in her marketplace. And there are no reliable technologies that can science this assessment. So sorry to quite a few of my current colleagues at the office, but it just don't exist. Google might know how best to spend a buck on their network, but they only know how to spend a buck best on their own network.

So, as with all things in business you're only as good as your people. That's my argument. It ain't about assigning an ad source. If you're worried about tracking a single ad source then you're not seeing the forest through the trees.

I've said this many times in these waters, Neuromarketing is a field of marketing research that studies consumers' sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing. Obviously, there are many reasons that bring in a car buyer to the showroom floor to buy (ultimate conversion) and I am under the impression it's generally a combination of both traditional and digital marketing reasons.

The technologies behind it have to start somewhere. It's the offline stuff that is almost impossible to measure.

 

[ryan.gerardi]

Marketing is not science; marketing is a faith. This is due to the extreme complexities of dealing with a human mind across time through a journey between digital and physical media. It could be that a team of scientists and psychiatrists endowed with a budget on par with the Hadron Collider could postulate some sort of theory, but we're in the car business folks.

@Alex Snyder that is so deep!

You pose a good argument which I think helps get more to the bottom of things where we should be asking WHY.

Attribution only has meaning when you ask WHY you want to know something. Asking which source gets credit for the sale is the wrong question. The rep that assisted the customer with the transaction is who drove the sale. Not the lead source. Lead sources can be attributed for driving website traffic, providing contact info, providing insight, etc. Not sales.

I think I'm actually growing tired of everyone trying to take (or attribute) credit for the sale of cars. Marketing attribution is about how advertising affects your marketing objectives. In this business, advertising doesn't sell cars. People do.

 

[Alexander Lau]

There's a big difference between web traffic attribution and sales attribution. I think a lot of dealers get confused by it and that's part of the education that needs to occur.

 

[Alexander Lau]

In my book, the source that spawns the actual conversation with the customer is the one that gets the most weight -- the stuff that happens before and after is really inconsequential (as far as naming/identifying a "source") -- I'm talking to my customer after they interacted with X.

From there, I'm not interested in giving "Credit" for a particular sale (or lost sale)-- but I am very much interested in tracking patterns: was this particular interaction a fluke? Am I seeing a lot of interactions in the same pattern? If I "play," can I increase these interactions? How do these interactions compare to Y? Does playing with Y affect X?

So for those out there saying that this information is useless, I say this: make the best use of the actual data you can track by understanding what the data can actually mean.

And then just keep spending all your money on radio and TV! LOL!!

Well said! Make the most out of your data.

 

[ed.brooks]

And this was during the DealerRefresh panel - amazing
"...the DealerRefresh panel moderated by Subi Ghosh and Ryan Gerardi in keynote hall. There was a lot of discussion about attribution (2nd buzzword!) and how best to measure it. Brad Paschal might have had the best quote with “Dealers don’t really care about attribution as long as they are selling cars”. Speaking of which, I could insert several words to replace “attribution” and that quote would still be applicable. I was a bit discouraged to hear near the end of this panel that many dealers still believe “last click” attribution is the best model. Uh – no. Our industry is much better than this. There are many assists in the shoppers journey to purchase and we must continue to work on best measuring this. And for me, I lean towards the time decay model and I would love to hear your input."
bit.ly/DD23Review

 

[Chris Leslie]

As we sit here today there are 8 different attribution models including last click.

EIGHT !

So who's right?