Stop Wasting Money, Start Selling Cars with Analytics

Transcription

1 Stop Wasting Money, Start Selling Cars with Analytics Chris Deringer, Chief Marketing Officer DealerOn Derwood, MD

2 The views and opinions presented in this educational program and any accompanying handout material are those of the speakers, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of NADA. The speakers are not NADA representatives, and their presence on the program is not a NADA endorsement or sponsorship of the speaker or the speaker s company, product, or services. Nothing that is presented during this educational program is intended as legal advice, and this program may not address all federal, state, or local regulatory or other legal issues raised by the subject matter it addresses. The purpose of the program is to help dealers improve the effectiveness of their business practices. The information presented is also not intended to urge or suggest that dealers adopt any specific practices or policies for their dealerships, nor is it intended to encourage concerted action among competitors or any other action on the part of dealers that would in any manner fix or stabilize the price or any element of the price of any good or service.

3 Workshop Synopsis Consumers are using the internet more than ever before to do their research prior to buying a car. Practically every customer that enters a dealer s showroom has been on their website in advance of their visit. Dealers spend 27 percent of their ad budget online (versus only five percent in 2002), and yet over 90 percent of consumers who report an ad source that led them to the dealership (not a referral from a friend, walk-in, or prior relationship) give the Internet as the source, so regardless of how they developed awareness of the dealership, the Internet/website is the final step to the showroom. Additionally, less than 30 percent of car buyers visit more than one physical dealership so essentially all of their comparison-shopping is done online. When these facts are combined, its clear that regardless of a dealer s mix of traditional versus digital spend, every effective ad dollar (~$400K on average in 2012) that a dealer spends eventually results in a consumer visit to their website. Dealer Internet departments have matured to the extent that roughly 90 percent of them have had their websites coded with Google Analytics. However, less than one in three dealers reports using their data to impact the $400K in annual ad-spend. There is a huge opportunity for dealers to leverage the work they ve already started to optimize their marketing effectiveness.

4 Learning Objectives After attending this workshop you will: 1. Understand the impact of having a highly effective website on dealership performance. 2. Know how to set up Google Analytics Goals and Values tracking so they can accurately measure the complete impact of website changes, marketing changes, and vendor changes on their dealership s overall performance. 3. Have a comprehensive template of website conversion goals and values to use as a starting point to measure their performance. 4. Know how to measure a wide variety of vendors (SEO, PPC, , Social Media, Website Provider, Traditional Media, etc.) via their website analytics. 5. Know how to demographically profile their website customers and how to improve their marketing effectiveness with this information. 6. Know how to dynamically remarket each vehicle on their website directly to any consumer who viewed it on their site across Google s entire display network.

5 Topic #1 Important Dealership and Consumer Trends and Impacts Why Your Website Is SO Important (Slides 3-4) Dealers spend 27 percent of Ad dollars on Internet, making it their biggest marketing channel. Consumers report that the ad source (if any) that led them to the dealership was the Internet (website). So, regardless of where you spend your ad budget (traditonal or digital), practically ALL of the consumers you reach with your marketing go to your WEBSITE, before your dealership!

6 Topic #2 Dealership Website Conversion (Slides 5-7) So if a dealer s website is so critical to their success, their websites must all be great? Not So Fast o MOST dealer sites convert at less than 1.7 percent. o Less than one in 50 dealer sites converts at six percent Nearly ALL dealers do NO formal website or digital marketing testing. They rely on the HIPPO!

7 FACT There are dealers that effectively manage their website conversion can generate four times the website leads of their direct competitors, selling the SAME makes and models in the SAME market, with the SAME demographics. So how do some dealers generate such dramatically better website results than other dealers? THEY MEASURE, TRACK, and OPTIMIZE! The First Step is

8 Topic #3 How to Measure Your Site Create Goals (Slides 8-14) Dealers should track ALL website actions that they WANT the customers that they drive to their site (whether from print, radio, TV, digital, , etc.) to take. For example, dealers want their website visitors to fill out vehicle-lead forms, so the thank-you page for such a visit should be set up as a GOAL for their site. Another VERY valuable action for dealers that a consumer can take on a dealer s website is filling out a credit application. These lead-form completions should be tracked (and tracked separately, as they represent a different type of goal). The goals that dealers have for traffic visiting their websites are NOT limited to simply lead forms. Most inmarket automotive consumers are not comfortable submitting their contact information to a dealership before they visit. BUT, they will view vehicle-details pages, find hours and directions pages, or print a window sticker we want to track ALL of these Interactions.

9 In fact, dealers should track ALL website actions that provide value to the dealership (not JUST website leads), even service-coupon prints, service appointmets, etc. Dealers should make a list of ALL consumer website actions that represent benefit to the dealership and then work with their website provider (you re paying them after all) to implement (after testing to ensure accuracy) these goals within Google Analytics.

10 Topic #4 How to Measure Your Site Assign Values to Goals (Slides 15-20) The goals for your website will be of WIDELY differing value. A credit application lead submission (likely coming from a HIGHLY qualified buyer, who may have limited credit options) is worth MUCH more than two views of a vehicle-details page, so we can t just count goals and be done measuring our website, we need to VALUE each goal appropriately relative to each other. For example, perhaps your credit-application lead slightly more than a new vehicle lead (due to closing rate and total front and back margin), and your website new-vehicle leads are worth $50. So your credit-application leads might be worth $60! $60 At the same time, while any time a customer views a vehicle-details page, it may provide you some value, its probably NOT worth $10, perhaps it s worth $1 each time a consumer views a vehicle on your site. $1

11 Here is the same dealer who s now assigned VALUES to each of the goals for his site:

12 Topic #5 Track Your Digital Marketing (Slides 21-22) EVERY dollar that your dealership spends on digital marketing (Google Paid Search, Display, Retargeting, SEO, Social Media, , Third-Party Sites Autotrader, Cars.com) can be tracked and you can measure how much VALUE the traffic that each of these media sends to your dealership s website actually produces! For ANY media that you buy you should REQUIRE your vendor to tag the traffic that they send to your site so you can measure the goals and value that it produces! GOOGLE URL BUILDER ANY link to your site can be run through Google s URL builder in under 15 seconds to create trackable, MEANINGFUL information within Google Analytics so you can measure the return on your spend.

13 Topic #6 Measure Your Digital Marketing (Slides 23-29) Precisely Measure Changes/Tests on Your Website Sample website testing analysis slide provides record of test and Outcomes based on goals/values. Leverage multi-channel attribution to measure the complete value of your marketing investments Work with vendors to prepare monthly scorecard reports. Visits Medium This Month Last Month Change Organic 9,020 8,663 4% CPC 2,595 2,732-5% Direct 2,684 2,526 6% Referral 1,519 1,608-6% % Other % Total 15,925 15,602 2% Leads Medium This Month Last Month Change Organic % CPC % Direct % Referral % % Other 1 1 0% Total % Value Medium This Month Last Month Change Organic $ 9,810 $ 8,667 13% CPC $ 3,910 $ 5,047-23% Direct $ 3,843 $ 3,118 23% Referral $ 4,095 $ 3,460 18% $ 43 $ 45-4% Other $ 14 $ 15-7% Total $ 21,715 $ 20,351 7%

14 How to Use These Tools to Measure Each Type of Vendor Reference Guide: Vendor Type Type Of Traffic/Description Metrics Assisted Conversion PPC Paid Search, Campaign, Keywords, Landing Pages Visits, Leads, Calls, Value Important Display Campaigns, Landing Pages, Branded Organic & Paid Search Visits, Leads, Value Very Important SEO Non-Branded Organic Search Visits, Leads, Value Important Referral, Campaigns, Landing Pages Visits, Leads, Value Less Important Social Media Social Referral Visits, Leads, Value Important Traditional Branding Branded Organic & Paid Search Visits, Leads, Value Very Important Website All Traffic Organic Search Visits, Total Leads, Total Value Not Important

15 Topic #7 Understanding Your Website Customers (Slides 30-35) Understand who (age, gender, city, state, interests, in-market shoppers, etc.) is visiting your site and how effective it is for them. Apply these learnings to your marketing investments to make the same marketing budget drive percent more leads/sales. Identify advertising opportunities in Google s Display Network by analyzing your existing customers/web traffic. Dynamically remarket each piece of inventory directly to each visitor who viewed it. Topic #8 New Handy Analytics Tools (Slides 36-38) Check the site speed for any/all pages on your site to identify issues. Use channel reports to quickly identify any marketing or vendor problems.

16 Takeaways 1. EVERYONE who is going to buy from your dealership will have been to your website first. Your website s performance impacts all of the $400K a dealer spends on advertising. 2. Set up goals and values for ALL important consumer actions on your website. Set up tracking for ALL inbound links (PPC, Display, Retargeting, Social, , etc.) will help you properly measure and optimize your marketing efforts and your website changes. 3. Create a Google Analytics-based monthly scorecard in combination with your vendors will make them more effective and increase the return you re getting value from your investment. 4. Enabling and using Google Analytics demographic and interest data will not only make you smarter about your traffic, your website, and marketing effectiveness, but it will also allow you to begin using Google remarketing lists and dynamic remarketing My Takeaways: