Picture someone managing a dealership service department, constantly addressing staffing issues, putting out fires with difficult customers, and managing the on-the-ground details every day. Sound familiar? It can be challenging – to say the least – to focus on improvement and growth, especially for your marketing budget that’s paltry compared to the sales teams.

Attribution is the key to building customer loyalty and retention for auto services.

The work you do on a daily basis produces valuable data that provides insight, clarity, and a competitive advantage for your dealership.

Your team grabs engagement stats from social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Clickthrough rates from email blasts. Traffic from web lurkers on your website through Google Analytics (have you migrated to GA4 yet?). And any traffic from your CRM system factors in there somewhere too. Inbound marketing data streams in from every source you’ve invested in, but what does it all mean to you?

Are you even collecting the right data? What about relevant data? Can you trust your data source?

The car biz is worth billions upon billions of dollars in the US alone, and all you want is to get a fair share of the pie… and perhaps a little extra. Smart marketing can give you an edge against the competition and help you figure out what methods are working well to compel clients and would-be customers to come back for a visit. And that requires a good grasp of the raw data piling in from all of those channels.

But looking at the raw data may not serve the purpose you’re after. As it is, it could mislead you, making you push all your chips into a marketing channel that’s not as effective as it appears. Not all data is equal, and it needs to be put through a filter to determine what stays and what goes.