Your CRM is the BEST Marketing Decision Driver, Right?

[ed.brooks]

...He says that 83% of people visit a dealers website. I would argue that 100% visit a dealers website so in that case everyone is potentially an "Internet Customer"...

The 83% figure is based on a Google study. The DrivingSales study that Jared Hamilton presented tells a very different story -

And the reasons....

 

[Chris Leslie]

Which goes to show the study that supports your narrative wins.

 

[ed.brooks]

Which goes to show the study that supports your narrative wins.

I do agree with you that vast majority of folks that buy a car use the Internet. It may not be 100%, but I think we can agree with the "vast majority" statement.

Where we seem to differ is that I'm wanting to find out the influences that actually drove the customer to make the purchase decision. Maybe if I more fully explained the reasoning behind my desire; if we can determine what influenced the decision (and we can, using the proper tools), we can spend more money in the places that matter and less in the places didn't influence the purchase decision. By continually analyzing and adjusting the marketing buys we can allocate marketing dollars more effectively, eliminate waste, and sell more cars.

With that said, I agree that knowing who your past customers are is immensely important. I'm looking forward to the "ground breaking, first of it’s kind, case study, where we worked with a major publisher and a top 10 dealer group, to redefine the “Type” of customers that visit your dealership and share how to better manage and leverage the data that’s within your CRM." that Darren Haygood promised in his blog post.

 

[Alexander Lau]

You absolutely will sell more things if you keep in touch with existing customers. This is a perfect use of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system! It's also great at tracking interactions with your perspective customers after they have contacted you.

What your CRM doesn't do very well is explain why those customers bought or why those perspective customers contacted you. What influenced those people -

Consider the scenario Steve White wrote about in this blog post,

"A customer first discovers your dealership via a third-party auto listing site. Then they come back to your site later by searching your dealer name on Google and clicking on an AdWords listing, which perhaps was right above a free Google organic listing for your website. By default, in Google Analytics, that AdWords click took 100% credit for that visitor, assuming as a fact that it was incredibly valuable, when it may have had no impact at all on whether or not that sale was made."​

That scenario was written about the limitations of Google Analytics, but the premise holds true; if you don't know what influenced the consumer, you are marketing in the dark.

Precisely, gone are the days of viewing Last Touches alone.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I do agree with you that vast majority of folks that buy a car use the Internet. It may not be 100%, but I think we can agree with the "vast majority" statement.

Where we seem to differ is that I'm wanting to find out the influences that actually drove the customer to make the purchase decision. Maybe if I more fully explained the reasoning behind my desire; if we can determine what influenced the decision (and we can, using the proper tools), we can spend more money in the places that matter and less in the places didn't influence the purchase decision. By continually analyzing and adjusting the marketing buys we can allocate marketing dollars more effectively, eliminate waste, and sell more cars.

With that said, I agree that knowing who your past customers are is immensely important. I'm looking forward to the "ground breaking, first of it’s kind, case study, where we worked with a major publisher and a top 10 dealer group, to redefine the “Type” of customers that visit your dealership and share how to better manage and leverage the data that’s within your CRM." that Darren Haygood promised in his blog post.

I think it was @JoePistell that said "ROBO = Research Online; Buy Offline." Maybe I am overstating the obvious, but it still holds true. You both bring up excellent points.

 

[Alexander Lau]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/google-adwords-please-share-credit-sale-brian-pasch

Multi-Touch Attribution Expands The View

Dealers who move from CRM lead reports to Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics, will start to see the MULTIPLE DIRECT sources that impact conversion and sales. When dealers partner with companies like Clarivoy and Transparency, they can see the indirect influences on vehicles sales. This is good news for dealers using third-party classified partners (read article) and cable tv providers.

VistaDash is upgrading its reporting to include Google's Multi-Channel Funnels data in March. Dealers can import a standardized channel grouping (with a single click) to transform their Google Analytics insights. The VistaDash customized GA channel definition template has over 50 popular automotive referral sources!

Dealers who use Cars.com and Clarivoy will also see audience overlap data directly in Google Analytics and VistaDash in the coming months (read article).

 

[Chris Leslie]

I'm curious as to how you guys would answer this question because these are the kinds of things that I'm questioning.

Scenario 1:
Guy is looking for a truck, has seen us on 3rd party sites, visited the website, never calls or emails but walks in and buys the truck.

Scenario 2:
Guy drives by the dealership everyday on his way to work and has seen a truck he likes on our point for the past 3 days. One day he gets to work googles our name and clicks the ad. He finds the truck on the site and submits a lead. Buys the truck.


How do you source the sale in your CRM?

How do you add multi touch to offline activities that you may not know about like drive by?

 

[ed.brooks]

..How do you source the sale in your CRM?...

That is exactly my point -- I wouldn't 'source' the sale in the CRM. Certainly not to a single source, anyway.

The Data Scientists at a company like Clarivoy would apply their algorithm to the data and we would see a clearer picture of what led up to the sale. In your scenario above, I'm going to assume that recency will play a big part in the resulting attribution allocation. That, along with the order that sites were accessed. If the customer looked at the sites in question a month ago, never went back, and bought the vehicle anyway, my sense is those sites played a minor role in the sale. On the other hand, if they were looking at the 3rd party sites and the dealer site immediately preceding the sale, those sites played a much bigger role.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I'm curious as to how you guys would answer this question because these are the kinds of things that I'm questioning.

Scenario 1:
Guy is looking for a truck, has seen us on 3rd party sites, visited the website, never calls or emails but walks in and buys the truck.

Scenario 2:
Guy drives by the dealership everyday on his way to work and has seen a truck he likes on our point for the past 3 days. One day he gets to work googles our name and clicks the ad. He finds the truck on the site and submits a lead. Buys the truck.


How do you source the sale in your CRM?

How do you add multi touch to offline activities that you may not know about like drive by?

Yes, the offline component is something that causes this to be somewhat flawed. However, it's the best we have now. I guess we could dive into Neuromarketing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing) in terms of attempting to understand what makes consumers truly tick, but that is FAR and AWAY beyond my pay grade and intelligence. LOL!

I could see where offline behavioral attributes could be used in tandem with online. Such as https://findface.pro/en/face-recognition-for-customer-analytics.html. Install in dealerships (biometrics), attempt to connect with online data on customer. Someone will do this in the coming years. There's value in knowing precisely who walked into your store and matching that up with their online behavior. There are plenty of digital efforts (similar to geofencing) that some applications use now (but generally those apps have to be installed) which provide walk-in data from lot insight reports. With biometrics, you just scan their faces and match away!

 

[Alexander Lau]

That is exactly my point -- I wouldn't 'source' the sale in the CRM. Certainly not to a single source, anyway.

The Data Scientists at a company like Clarivoy would apply their algorithm to the data and we would see a clearer picture of what led up to the sale. In your scenario above, I'm going to assume that recency will play a big part in the resulting attribution allocation. That, along with the order that sites were accessed. If the customer looked at the sites in question a month ago, never went back, and bought the vehicle anyway, my sense is those sites played a minor role in the sale. On the other hand, if they were looking at the 3rd party sites and the dealer site immediately preceding the sale, those sites played a much bigger role.

Yes. Additionally, it's just a matter of time before a good, custom Multi-Touch Attribution model is created for Google Analytics. There are options for such things, but it's not being taken advantage of by most. Automotive is simply sleeping on this level.

It's not just these: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1662518?hl=en