According to the State of Automotive Attribution study, most dealers felt that accurate measurement of their marketing campaigns is important, with most relying on in-house reporting (68 percent) and/or vendor reporting (64 percent).

However, only 30 percent of dealers reported being satisfied with how they measure data.

When asked how knowledgeable they were about marketing attribution, 30 percent said they believe attribution and analytics are important, but don’t know where to begin.

20 percent said they didn’t know anything about marketing attribution.

According to the study, 68 percent of dealership aren’t effectively using (or, worse, failing to use) any type of marketing attribution to measure their advertising results.

Attribution, the ability to track marketing investments along the path to purchase, is an essential tool for automotive dealerships when it comes to understanding which elements within their marketing basket are the most effective at generating sales.

Analytics are also key when it comes to tracking and measuring data; after all, without them, what would you be tracking?

So what should your dealership be measuring?

Buyer Analytics

In the early 2010s, dealer analytics leaned heavily on vehicle pricing tools, letting dealers see the pricing information in their markets and price the vehicles on their lots accordingly.

While it’s still a valuable tool, it’s widespread and commonly used and thus, unfortunately, less likely to set you apart.

Understanding the “right buyer” for your dealership and aligning the right inventory for that right buyer can be critical to moving customers down the purchase funnel.

You shouldn’t just be tracking customers who’ve made purchases at your dealership; it’s important to also analyze the customers that considered buying a vehicle from you.

“These statistics can prove to be invaluable to dealerships as it causes them to consider questions regarding those consumers. Consumers that were touched by the media who entered the dealership’s showroom, or visited their car lot, but didn’t make a purchase can be vital for the dealerships. These figures can be tracked by implementing physical beacons or even through mobile listening.”

Predictive Analytics

To stay ahead, you need to understand in which direction the market is moving, not where it used to be.

Ask yourself: which vehicles should you be stocking based on target buyers?

Do you currently stock vehicles unlikely to drive demand, whether they don’t match your dealership profile or align to target customers?

Still, data is no replacement for experience; the two work together.

Dealers who combine their experience with the right data outputs can allow the best, most informed decisions to be made.

This is, after all, where predictive analytics’s strength lies: providing leading indicators based on things like market movements, competitive actions, and inventory shifts to help your dealership come out on top.

Sales end in the dealership showroom, but, more often than not, they begin online.

And as technology evolves and moves forward, so do attribution models.

Plus, consumers have access to (and are thus being influenced by) a number of sources like comparing sites and reviews of automakers, models, and dealerships when searching for the best deal.

It’s more important now than ever that dealers be on top of their marketing game in order to get as many customers as possible.

Knowing which sources lead customers to your business - and which are a waste of money - is an enormous help when it comes to making your marketing decisions.

As such, it’s vital for your dealership’s success that you measure analytics and attribution to make sure everything is running smoothly.