Digital Dealer - April 2019 - 32

M A R K E T ING & ADVERT ISING: Da ta & Anal yt i cs

By IIana Shabtay
Director of Business
Development, AutoLeadStar

It's Time to
Stop Guessing
About Your
Marketing ROI
Your dealership's
digital marketing
strategy has a lot of moving
parts. Paid search, organic
content, social media
campaigns, website offers,
and more- it can be a real
challenge understanding
how all these pieces work
together, and what each of
them contributes to your
ROI. One survey found that
across industries, only two
out of five CMOs could
demonstrate the quantitative impact of their marketing spend (https://econsultancy.com/

the-five-things-marketersmust-do-to-prove-digitalmarketing-roi/).
In another, marketers
stated that their biggest
marketing challenge is
measuring ROI. (https://
marketinginsidergroup.com/
content-marketing/marketers-frustrated-with-digital-advertising-roi/)
But despite the challenges, you shouldn't give up
accuracy as a goal. First
of all, guessing when it
comes to your ROI means
missed opportunities and
lost money. Second of all,

getting more precise results
is more within reach than
ever. Let's identify some
key areas where imprecision has a negative impact,
and then explore solutions
for keeping the guesswork
out of your ROI.
WHY GUESSING
HAPPENS- AND WHY
IT HURTS YOUR
DEALERSHIP

Customers interact with
your dealership across
many touchpoints.
One major reason it's
so hard to assess the
value of marketing efforts

is that there are so many
of them- even customers
don't always know which
ones really influenced
them. Attributing a sale to
a Google ad, a Facebook
post, a third-party listing,
or a recommendation from
a friend is tempting, but
nearly impossible. What's
more, a fragmented view
of your customers' path to
sale, where each step is
viewed as distinct rather
than part of a whole, leads
to inaccuracy.
Here's an example. Your
customer, Sarah, clicks a
Facebook ad and arrives
on your VDP, which she
returns to numerous times
before converting on a
trade-in tool and eventually
making a purchase. Credit
might be given to the ad, or
to the trade-in tool, or split
between the two, without
taking into account the VDP
views. And yet, this page
likely had a major impact
on Sarah's decision to buy-
and thus deserves some
investment of time and
budget. Not taking all the
touchpoints into account
leads to misallocating marketing dollars.
GATHERING DATA IS
DIFFICULT

If you've ever had to wait
way too long for reports
to pull from your CRM, or
spent hours trying to comb
through and connect data
from different dashboards,
you are not alone. Studies
show that people spend
more time finding and
organizing data than they
do actually using it to guide
strategy (www.marketwired.
com/press-release/
32

APRIL 2019

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

http://www.marketinginsidergroup.com/ http://www.marketinginsidergroup.com/ http://www.econsultancy.com/ http://www.econsultancy.com/ http://www.marketwired. com/press-release/ http://www.marketwired. com/press-release/ http://www.DIGITALDEALER.COM

Digital Dealer - April 2019

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