Industry News

The Mother of Four Letter Words that Terrifies Marketing Vendors

With Halloween almost here, we think it is a perfect time to discuss a dealership marketing topic that’s incredibly scary. In fact, it’s so scary, most marketing vendors tremble in fear just hearing it. They’re so afraid of it, many won’t even talk about it. If they hear it mentioned, they immediately close their eyes, ignore it exists, and hope it quickly goes away.

So what is it that’s so scary it makes marketers tremble in fear and hide under the bed? It’s the mother of all four letter words in the world of retail. The word is SALE.

Specifically, how many vehicles do your marketing vendors help you sell?

Sure, plenty of automotive marketing vendors report measurements. However, too many vendors shy away from talking about the measurement that matters most – an actual vehicle sold.

To measure true marketing ROI, this is a problem too big to ignore. In order to understand what tactics are producing the best results possible, dealerships need end-to-end tracking that closes the sales loop and ties marketing investment back to measurable revenue.

Linking Tactics to Cash is Key

Most marketing vendors and media companies can generate activity reports that tally and measure website visits, VDP views, time on site, form submissions, phone calls, click counts, reach, frequency, and rating points.

Several of these metrics can be valuable insights. However, others are just fluff for trying to validate marketing performance that may or may not be working.

Without end-to-end tracking to a sale, it’s impossible to see which marketing tactics are making your dealership money versus the ones just making your marketing vendors money.

 

Tracking Marketing to a Sale Closes the Loop

Advanced marketing strategies and data technology exist that can merge consumer tracking information with a dealership’s DMS to measure which marketing tactics play a part in moving customers down the path to an actual purchase.

Upon implementation, it takes marketing accountability to a new, higher level. In turn, allowing dealerships to see if their marketing providers are driving audience engagement and if that engagement is helping to turn the audience into revenue generating customers.
Linking marketing campaigns to actual sales and revenue offers dealerships fact based insight to ensure they’re squeezing the most value out of every dollar invested in their marketing efforts.

If your marketing vendors aren’t reporting on the sales their services are generating for your dealership, ask them why not? They can and should be. It’s just too scary not knowing how much you could add to your bottom line if you were able to separate the true performers from the pretenders.