Data Shift

As someone who has been in the digital marketing industry for close to 20 years, and specifically within the automotive space for more than a decade, I have seen the changes in expectations, data and tracking evolve over that time.

As we step into 2024, I think it’s important to focus on where we are going when it comes to these things in automotive digital marketing.

EXPECTATIONS, DATA & TRACKING

In 2006, I got my first social media marketing job and at that time, it was all about creating a social media profile (on MySpace!) for this company and developing fun images and content for the page. I also wrote blogs for them in an effort to increase their SEO ranking. If companies were thinking digital, that’s where most companies and dealerships were at the time – maybe a social page and helping build their online presence through website SEO. They wanted to see consistent relevant content and they wanted to see their website appear when doing a search.

As time has gone on, expectations have shifted with the media sources and the amount of time spent online. Paid search came into the picture and Facebook opened up to everyone. Email marketing to customer lists surged here as well. Blogging and SEO continued to be an important piece. Now, businesses and dealerships wanted to see their ads pop up and wanted to know just how many people saw their ad, post or email. Most were focused here on impressions and clicks. We were in our CTR (click-through rate) era.

About five to seven years ago, we saw another shift. Impressions and clicks were no longer the golden data source and businesses started to invest time and energy into learning more about Google Analytics and the data it provided. Conversions and goals became key factors in what businesses wanted to see. They wanted to know what those impressions and clicks were getting them. Was it phone calls? How many people clicked a certain button on the site? Most importantly, how many people converted to a lead?

Now over the past couple of years, the data expectations have transitioned to solely focus on leads and beyond that, what kind of leads and what is happening with the leads? Are the leads converting to appointments and sales?

The tricky part about this for an automotive digital marketing company is that we are not on the other end to help turn those leads into appointments and sales yet we are being held accountable for it. We want our clients to succeed – that is our one main goal with each and every one.

BEYOND THE LEAD

In order to make a true connection and increase conversion between marketing and sales, we knew we had to dive into the post-lead area of a dealership. That is where our partnership with Call Team Six (CT6) now makes us one of the most unique marketing companies available to dealerships across the country. This partnership enables us to deliver highly targeted ads to in-market shoppers, drive them to a lead and then take that lead and follow it until the customer makes an appointment or becomes a sale.

It is the truest form of a completely comprehensive marketing program there is. We now have the ability to use our market data to develop the very best most aggressive digital campaigns with clean, professional, compliant creative, bring that user to the lead funnel and then move that user through the funnel until they show up at your door.

For dealer principles, GMs and GSMs, this probably sounds like an ideal scenario, and it is. If you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level in 2024, contact us today to learn more.