TAMPA – In gauging the effectiveness of auto dealership marketing, some things are more measurable than others, says Mike Spadafore, a product-strategy marketing director for data-cruncher R.L. Polk & Co.
“A lot of stuff is going on that can’t be measured,” he says at the Ward’s Automotive Spring Training Conference presented by Autobytel here. “Branding is hardly ever measured, yet you know it has a positive effect.”
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But elsewhere, metrics are available to assess online-marketing efforts, including emails, banner ads, search-engine optimization and sales leads from various sources.
“It can be highly measured, that’s why it’s great,” says Spadafore, yet some dealers neglect to use such data.
He is not an advocate of flooding dealers with excessive information that he dubs “infobesity” – the inflated result of “producing data because you can.”
But measuring, analyzing and acting on relevant performance data is crucial to a modern dealership, he says. “The reason you are measuring it is so you can change what is wrong. So be prepared to pull the trigger.”
Polk offers a service in which dealership Internet leads are ranked by their likelihood of resulting in sales. The system helps determine if a store is getting bad leads or if sales people are bungling good ones.
Lead quality can be a sore spot with dealers. Many of them fret over leads, says Matt Strickroot, a vice president at Digitas, a digital-marketing firm.
“Most dealers worry about buying leads, because they worry their sales people will drop the ball,” says Strickroot, a former dealership group Internet director.
“About 45% of leads go unanswered, he says. “Some dealers are paying $18 per lead and not tracking them.”
Spadafore says dealers should ask themselves:
Are my leads likely to close?
Do I have too many leads?
Do the leads my store fails to close end up being closed elsewhere?
Understand lost opportunities, he says. “And only measure what you will use to drive change.”
Ward’s Automotive Spring Training