By Marshall Slaton, Bayshore Solutions Digital Marketing Team
What Are the Right Analytics to Use in Automotive & Consumer Marketing?
While attending the last Digital Dealer conference, there was a great session covering analytics and whether we should focus on the website or shopper perspective. For example, if someone showed you the number 14,162 by itself, what would it mean?
Absolutely nothing. Without context, the data has no position in measuring relevance. If your page views go up, or your time on site decreases, how could you compare that to what is happening competitively in your industry? You simply cannot because comparing analytics for different websites is like comparing apples to oranges. However, you can compare consumers.
Today’s automotive shopper visits only 1.3 dealers on average before buying a vehicle, down from 5 just a few years ago. If you cannot win the shopper online, you will lose to your more digital marketing savvy competitors. In todays data driven universe we should focus on shoppers and not users, consumers not clicks.
Here is a quick way to start:
- Auto Shoppers – Identify the attributes and attribution of those shoppers. Do they spend more time looking at new cars vs. preowned vehicles? Once they find the vehicle, do they research finance options on the site?
- Behavior – Understand their intent, level of engagement, intensity of interest. Are they submitting a form or making a call after looking at one vehicle, or after looking at nine?
- Conversion – Define the conversion propensity along with conversion on investment. Is the shopper returning to the site shortly after going through the sales cycle and not purchasing?
Understanding the context of the data is key! Only 1 out of 8 shoppers have an intent to buy and you must distill the data based on shopping behavior and quickly assess who is ready, willing, and able. Effective consumer marketing today is about understanding changing behaviors, whereas it was previously spent on studying outcomes. For example, post sales surveys are not accurate as many businesses are missing data where consumers bought elsewhere. Consider this – 8% of dead leads were found to still be actively shopping.
Focus on shopper analytics when reviewing your website data. Consider context, and you are guaranteed to improve your sales success.
To learn more about how we can help you with effective, results-driven marketing contact us today!