Marketing Efficiency
How to Sell your GM on an Attribution Tool
“What brought you in today?” It’s a common question car salespeople ask every customer. It’s a tactic to get the shopper talking and opening up, and it can help find out what channels bring in dealership traffic. But it’s inaccurate, and it doesn’t account for much more than the most recent touchpoint a customer recalls. And it’s not the best way to measure marketing metrics. That’s where attribution comes into play.
It can be hard to justify the investment in attribution: why do you need it, what are potential benefits and how can it help meet your dealership’s goals? You know that there is a great deal of value in having an attribution tool, but what about convincing others? This blog post will give you some ideas for selling your general manager on investing in an attribution tool.
Education
How to Prepare for Falling Used Car Prices
The strength of the US economy has pushed interest rates up, attempting to slow inflation to near-normal rates. Caught in the crossfire between outrageous spending and government policy is the fifth-largest industry in the country: auto retail. And sure as the day is long, pricing is bound to soften as consumers’ budgets are constricted by rising everyday costs of groceries, mortgages, and utilities. That’s particularly true for the used car market.
How-To
HOW TO WIN 2023
No one really knows if there will be a recession, or a challenging economy, or what will come next given the last 3 years have been so unpredictable, but it’s good to be prepared. The best way to win when you get thrown curveballs, is to get back to basics.
We’ve scoured the automotive community for insights and some of these are sure to help. (ASOTU and the All Things Used Cars podcast were great sources of information for this piece – they are fantastic resources we recommend subscribing to if you don’t already.)
Marketing Strategy
Setting Your Dealership Marketing Budget for the new year
It’s that time of year again. Time to look back and evaluate what went wrong, and what you did right. No one can really tell you what next year will bring, but somehow you’re expected to know and plan for it. A dealership marketing budget doesn’t define itself, you do.
Even if you aren’t a novice, it’s always good to review your process.
Marketing Strategy
Making Marketing Decisions in A Tough Market
Making Marketing Decisions in A Tough Market
Head of Customer Experience
When I started to write this, my initial thought was to write about how dealers and the automotive industry are facing some upcoming challenges with inventory and inflation… but I stopped myself because in all reality the automotive industry and dealers in particular have been turned on their heads for the last 3 years. So I’m going to start with,
“Hold on to your hats. We’re in for another wild ride.”
DataSherpa
How Attribution Can Take Your Dealership’s Decision-making to the Next Level!
With the rising competition in the automobile dealership industry, more and more car dealers are looking for new ways to retain their existing customers as well as gain new consumers. While there’s no denying the fact that keeping long-term relationships with customers can be a daunting task, dealers can still do it by learning more about their target audience. Fortunately, attribution solves this problem by enabling dealers to recognize their customer’s needs and perceptions easily. Attribution can not only help your dealership in identifying customers’ requirements but also in creating new marketing strategies.
Let’s find out what attribution is and how it can improve your dealership’s decision-making.
Behind the Wheel
FACEBOOK IS MAKING CHANGES, AGAIN…
It seems like every month there is another change that creates challenges for dealerships. Here’s another that may affect you…
“Starting on January 30, 2023, Meta will no longer support the ability for all sellers to create vehicle listings using a Facebook business Page, along with the vehicles tab and manage inventory tab in markets where this feature is currently available.” This will impact the U.S. and Canada.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/492940666175475
SO WHAT NOW?
Behind the Wheel
Data Can Transform Your Business – Here’s How
Data is the buzzword right now, how to collect it, manage it, store it, and leverage it. Data Stacks, Data Lakes, First Party Data, Etcetera.
- Without data, you are just another person with an opinion
- Without an opinion, you’re just another person with data
That’s because data doesn’t have any intrinsic value on its own. It is useful only when it is interpreted correctly and used to create positive changes within your company.
Behind the Wheel
GA4 – What Dealers Need to Know
Google has announced that Universal Analytics will be officially replaced on July 1st, 2023. GA4, the latest version of Google’s analytics platform and the eventual replacement for Universal Analytics has been available since October 2020 but has not been widely adopted. This new analytics platform is largely focused on visitor engagement and event tracking.
When Should You Start with GA4?
The short answer is now.
Behind the Wheel
Hard & Soft Conversions
There’s a lot of lingo out there when it comes to digital marketing, especially in the automotive space.
At sMedia, we’ve run into a few scenarios where a vendor may be using a term like lead or conversion and it’s not totally clear as to what they’re referring to. We encourage our dealers and our team to clarify when they’re having conversations exactly what they mean, asking questions like “what are you counting as a lead?” and “what is a conversion in this report?”
Vendor reports sometimes only measure those things that the vendor requires for their product or service to perform well. We, therefore, think it’s essential for dealers to have a solid understanding of terms like conversions, leads and attribution mean so that you can have better conversations with your vendors and your sMedia Customer Success Manager.
Ready to learn? Read on.
