Walk-in shoppers are a sizable and important audience. According to recent research conducted by Cars.com, 43 percent of car shoppers don’t contact a dealership before walking onto the lot via traditional “lead” methods, meaning that about 4 out of 10 shoppers have narrowed their vehicle search without ever contacting a dealership.  And, these walk-in shoppers are valuable: two-thirds of them make a purchase within 72 hours of their on-the-lot visit, and 40 percent buy within the same day.

The prevalence of walk-in shopping is a challenge and a catalyst for dealers to adopt multi-touch attribution to maximize marketing effectiveness.

Walk-in traffic has always been a challenge to quantify. I suspect that the number of consumers who walk on to the lot to purchase vehicles will create stress an industry whose key systems to gauging sales process and marketing effectiveness (CRM, Google Analytics and dealership management systems) are already antiquated.

 Walk-in Traffic and Multi-Touch Attribution

Walk-in shoppers are influenced by a number of touch points, ranging from organic searches to reviews and third-party sites such as Cars.com. Armed with a wealth of research, they’re visiting dealers’ lots confident that they don’t need to engage with a dealer ahead of time. Consequently, dealers need to use multi-touch attribution strategies, not just last touch attribution or traditional lead metrics, to understand the value of their digital marketing.

However, dealers continue to invest in tactics that support last-click/single-source attribution and are not even necessarily driving sales. For example, in 2016, more than 50 percent of  dealerships’ digital spend went to promoting their website via paid search and display (according to eMarketer). As I wrote recently, when our dealer customers listen to inbound phone calls that originate from branded paid search terms, they realize that close to 90 percent of these “leads” are not leads at all – they are recovery searches for post-influence service. The industry needs to move away from metrics that support last click/single source to advertising that wins with consumer preference and walk in traffic

Winning with the Walk-in Consumer

The walk-in consumer is a great opportunity of sales for the dealer community. To turn walk-in consumers into customers, dealers need to understand their motivations and behaviors. Our data paints the picture of a ready-to-buy shopper  who uses their devices to determine what, where and from whom to buy. They’re using their mobile devices on-the-lot to make smarter decisions:

• 64-percent use smart phones to compare vehicle prices.

• 51-percent compare vehicle makes and models.

• 41-percent read reviews.

Dealers need to train their sales teams to understand how to engage with walk-in shoppers – and assume that all walk in traffic are consumers who have spent time online researching their future vehicle purchase.  Walk-in shoppers are engaged and ready to talk prices and details about makes and models, and a large number continue their research online while at the dealership’s lot.  Sales associates should understand what key review sites like Cars.com are saying about the vehicles, the dealership, and sales people

On-the-Lot is the New Normal

Dealers need to face a hard reality: their lead data is incomplete and CRMs and Google Analytics currently only support single source attribution. Dealerships that rely solely on last-touch attribution and “internet” lead data to make advertising decisions are missing a sizeable and growing segment of on-the-lot customers — and these are customers who are more than likely ready to make a purchase.  To this end, our industry needs to become literate in the digital experiences, expectations and needs of walk-in consumers to best work with the growing legion of walk in traffic.