Study results will be used to help auto dealers better understand which marketing investments actually lead to vehicle sales

Columbus, OH (March 23, 2017) – Clarivoy, the auto industry’s leading provider of Multi-Touch Attribution, today announced the launch of an industry-wide study to better understand the current state and usage of attribution in the retail automotive industry.

“While Multi-Touch Attribution has been a big ‘buzzword’ lately, we think there is still a long way for us to go in educating dealers on its importance. The results of this study will help us gauge dealers’ baseline understanding of attribution, and their use of it, so that we as an industry can better help dealers understand and appreciate the dynamic and ever-changing customer journey that is not always accurately measured. Our end goal is that the results will help more dealers gain the knowledge to answer the question they have been asking themselves forever, ‘Is my investment helping me sell more vehicles?’” said Clarivoy CEO Steve White.

Auto dealers who wish to participate in the study can visit www.clarivoy.com/survey. Participants who complete the survey can register to receive an advanced copy of the study results and the chance to win one of several $100 Amazon Gift Cards.

There are several different types of attribution, all of which have their own logic. When
it comes to digital, up until now most dealers have relied on first or last-click attribution provided by Google Analytics which only measures engagements - not sales. However, as consumers are now influenced by multiple offline and online touchpoints, this type of attribution cannot provide the full picture of what – and how much – influence each marketing partner had in bringing a customer into the dealership and producing an actual sale.

Rather than rely on first or last click attribution to determine what’s effective, dealers can get a better picture of how their offline and online marketing works together to bring buyers to their doorstep by using Multi-Touch-Attribution.

With Multi-Touch-Attribution it is possible to more accurately track and measure the multiple (and growing) influencing factors that contribute to an auto buyer’s journey from start to finish -- even connect the dots between offline and online touchpoints. It enables a true picture of how marketing dollars actually influence customers.

According to Steve White, in today’s digital culture, consumers are influenced by multiple sources. “They read reviews of vehicle models and dealerships, search prices and bounce around from site to site like never before. As a result, the average number of dealerships visited before purchasing a vehicle is dwindling. It is more important than ever before that dealers know how effective their marketing dollars are at bringing those prospects from the anonymous browser into their showroom. This study will provide valuable information about the state of attribution we can share with the industry” White stated.

For more information visit: http://www.clarivoy.com, or to take the survey visit: www.clarivoy.com/survey.

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About Clarivoy

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s leading provider of Multi-Touch Sales Attribution. Their solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales.  The company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline.  Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com

Per Wikipedia, a black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing – not even light – can escape from inside it. For many dealers, trying to make sense of the data provided by a vendor’s dashboard can be like trying to escape from a black hole. Most don’t understand what the data means and have to access ten or more portals to get a true holistic view of what’s going on in their digital marketing – ending up with what is essentially a black hole of data.

As a dealer, you are probably already overwhelmed with data. Even if you understand the metrics and analytics you see in your reports, my bet is that you would be hard-pressed to take all that information, combine it and create a report that makes sense and is accurate. Because the data is siloed, without a staff of individuals working on it full-time, it is almost impossible to then take that data and fractionalize it so that you can properly attribute credit across the multiple touch points and see the complete buyer’s journey.

Why is this? Every vendor report uses different metrics and attribution models. How can you compare apples to apples if one vendor uses last-click attribution, while another uses first-click? You can’t. The sad fact is that it will always be in a vendor’s best interest to choose the attribution model that best illustrates their solution’s performance -- not what is best for your dealership.

How many times have you argued with multiple vendors claiming credit for a sale? Or been charged multiple times by different vendors for the same customer conversion? I’m betting it has happened a lot. Perhaps the customer converted via one vendor 45 days ago, but no sale occurred. Then, they convert again via a PPC campaign, end up on your website where they fill out a trade-appraisal form. Who gets credited for the sale?

If you ask the first company, they captured the customer first (first-click). The second company would say their efforts brought the customer to your website. The trade appraisal tool would say that, ultimately, their widget converted the customer (last-click). Then there is the possibility that the customer was exposed to retargeting, billboards, radio and even television ads -- not to mention the multiple other sites they may have visited, but didn’t convert or click on (view-through).

The fact is that ALL these various sources are probably accurate and contributed to the customer ending up at the dealership. However, you will more than likely get data from each of these vendors stating, “Hey, look what a great job we did!” – And they’re all talking about the same customer. Most reporting is basic and is also not specific to the customer. On the surface, you may simply give full credit to all the vendors, not realizing that your reports all reference the same customer.

Without a workable solution in place, or a data analytics superman on staff to figure all of this out, the data might as well go straight into that black hole because, in the end, it is meaningless.

Today, it’s more important than ever to know and understand how your marketing efforts perform so that you can make accurate decisions and adjust your spend accordingly for the best ROI. You simply cannot let that data slip past you into a black hole. It is vital to have a workable way to capture and decrypt it all in a format you understand and can use to make smart marketing decisions, leading to increased profitability and sales.

There are many ways to prevent that data from being unintelligible and non-actionable. The first step is to truly understand the value that proper attribution offers. Once you do, you can finally escape from the black hole.

Consumers have gravitated to the Internet for – well – just about everything. So, when it comes to digital marketing, it’s more important than ever for marketers to know what’s working and what’s not. Everything from SEO, to content, to social media and display ads contributes to the lure which brings consumers into dealership showrooms.

Currently, the single biggest asset digital marketers use to determine marketing effectiveness is Google Analytics. Many look at Google as an independent, unbiased third-party where they can get accurate measurements of what is actually driving activity to their websites and converting into sales. Sadly, they are wrong. Here’s why:

Google slowly and indirectly crept into the auto industry, similar to how it dominated every other industry -- through pay-per-click advertising. Google then developed a department specifically dedicated to the automotive industry, which has been around for about the past five years. This is because between auto manufacturers, third-party listing sites, lead providers and dealers, the auto industry is very lucrative for them, which naturally drives their motivation to favor attribution that makes them look good. It also justifies the huge budgets some dealers put into pay-per-click.

In my opinion, Google Analytics is the #1 competitor to third party sites and digital vendors. The reason is that Google Analytics’ settings, by default, are configured for last-click attribution. And where do most clicks come from? Either organic or paid search results. It doesn’t matter if the customer saw your vehicle on a third-party site, then later did a search for the dealer’s name and clicked on the link (organic or paid), guess who gets credit for that click? You got it, Google.

One of the biggest issues for most dealers is that they simply do not have the time or available resources to pay attention and measure attribution properly. Therefore, they take the easy route and use the default Google Analytics setting for their marketing decisions. It is imperative that you upgrade your Google Analytics configuration so that you can get a more accurate picture of all your marketing investments. I promise you any time spent is a wise investment.

It takes quite a bit of knowledge, and time, to properly setup Google Analytics with every touchpoint, conversion form and social media ad to register and attribute properly within Google Analytics. Frankly, most dealerships just don’t have those resources. Perhaps they have an Internet department filled with Internet managers. But what I see across the industry is that 99% of those positions have pay plans that revolve around sales – not digital marketing. This forces Internet managers to choose between doing the activities that make them money (sales), and those that don’t. In the end, the only attribution source with data that shows if that dealer’s marketing is working or not is Google Analytics and the CRM. Thus dealers end up making poor decisions regarding their marketing tactics and spend.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. Pay-per-click and SEO efforts are certainly vital and can certainly perform well if properly executed. However, accepting everything that Google’s reporting platform tells you as fact is like accepting ANY vendor’s reports as fact.

In the end, Google is simply one of your vendors and, like most vendors, the reporting is configured to benefit them so as to justify your investment in their services.

You would be wise to stop taking Google Analytics reporting purely on face value as a 100% accurate measurement of online marketing results. Google isn’t an independent, third-party. They’re a vendor selling a service just like any other… and their reporting should be viewed with the same micro-inspection that you give any other vendor’s reports.

When talking to dealers about measuring marketing results from their various vendors, I often hear them bemoaning the fact that they have to log into multiple dashboards, I refer to this as “ADD.” Perhaps not the ADD you’re thinking of – here it stands for “Another Damn Dashboard!” What dealer isn’t fed up with too many dashboards making it impossible to focus on the data? Honestly, ADD has grown to epidemic levels in dealerships!

Think about the day in the life of the average dealer and just how many dashboards they are required to log into to see the results of all their marketing campaigns. Anyone would be confused by this lack of data unification. Also, stop and think for a minute about the self–serving nature of vendor dashboards, and why they were created in the first place – to make the vendor look good! The biggest offender being Google Analytics. Dealers are sure as heck not getting an accurate, 360 degree view of their data. These vendors should take a more attribution-friendly approach and make their data more accessible to companies that are trying to pull this data together to help dealers make sense of it all.

Let’s put it into perspective. Remember the days of the desk log? Every time a customer came in, the salesperson wrote down the customer’s name and recorded what the outcome of that visit was – was there a demo; a write-up; a sale? If a sales manager walked away and went to lunch, he could immediately come back and catch up with what was going on in the store. In addition, that desk log gave the manager actionable data that he could then use to identify and handle any problem areas.

Up until now, there hasn’t been a digital marketing “desk log” if you will. All dealers had were multiple vendor dashboards. In some cases they had to rely on e-mailed PDF reports, or wait for a vendor visit to learn if their investment was selling cars. This is a key reason why last-click attribution was adopted by dealers – it was easy to understand and connect dots. The problem is that it does not provide true attribution data.

With today’s technology, multi-touch attribution is the only way for a marketer to really know whether their marketing influences their customers and ultimately leads them into the dealership, resulting in a sale or repair order. However, without a way for dealers to see an integrated, holistic view of how all their marketing is performing and being interacted with, multi-touch attribution is an arduous and time-consuming process.

I reached out to VistaDash President, Dan Moore, for his thoughts on vendor dashboards and the challenges that dealers have faced over the years.

Dan shared the following: “Today, a dealer has several different providers and has to go into each one of these individual dashboards and then try and make sense of the data. If they are lucky, they can decipher the Morse code. If they happen to be an overachiever, they export that data into a master excel spreadsheet and try to get a single view of how all their campaigns are performing. The problem is that, as dealers, they know one thing – and that is how to sell cars. The aspect of digital marketing to many dealers is still foreign. It’s the ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ dilemma. Even if they tried to figure it out, oftentimes they don’t know what they should be doing or acting upon.”

Dan continued, “An integrated, single dashboard gives them a clear view on what is causing engagement. Generic data like pageviews and impressions don’t mean anything – those seven pageviews could mean their marketing is working, or it could mean their website sucks, because one visitor had to click through seven pages to find what they were looking for. What dealers need to know is if people are engaging with their website in ways that matter – are they clicking on vehicle images on a VDP? Are they filling out trade-in value forms? Credit application forms? And, of course, the bottom line that any dealer wants to know – Is that marketing selling me more cars.”

Before you take on yet “Another Damn Dashboard” - make sure you know the following:

1. What questions are you trying to answer?
2. Does the dashboard provide a holistic view of all your marketing activities? Don’t let perfect get in the way of good. BUT there are some critical pieces that must be included.
3. Does the dashboard include basic attribution or advanced attribution reporting?

Here are some key points that your dashboard should provide on both a basic and advanced level:

Vendors should take a more attribution-friendly approach and make their data more accessible to attribution companies. Then dealers can actually focus on the data and make more informed decisions on budget allocation based on a multi-touch attribution model, rather than relying on data they can’t comprehend. It’s goodbye “Another Damn Dashboard” and hello true actionable data that gets results!

Clarivoy CEO & Founder Steve White discusses the importance of view-through attribution in this short video blog.

The Importance of View-Through Attribution from Clarivoy on Vimeo.

If you utilize paid search, you’re probably paying “Google Tax” without even realizing it.
So what is “Google Tax?”

Four years ago a writer penned a piece on “Google Tax” that explained how businesses are essentially forced to run paid search campaigns on their brand names which, of course, lines Google’s pockets. Since then, with all the changes to the format and display real estate that Google has made, the value of organic listings has declined. This creates a dilemma.

The basic mechanics of paid search revolve around finding and paying for ads that either convert at the lowest cost, or return the highest return on your investment. There are a lot of tricks and tips involved to optimize any paid search campaign. However, pretty much every dealership’s campaign includes a similarity – their own brand name.

In general, any consumer search for a dealership’s name should return a result with the dealership’s website high in organic rankings – most likely the first result on page one. At that point you have two decisions: run paid search ads on your brand name to block competitors from doing conquest ads, or choose not to run brand name keyword campaigns and hope and pray that your competitor is not bidding on your name and fishing for your customers. You become an easy target and most dealers do bid on their competitors.

In the automotive industry, dealers are surrounded by many entities competing to drive that online traffic away from the dealership including their OEM, a competing OEM, competing dealerships, third party lead providers, used car listing sites… the list goes on.  In choosing not to bid on your dealership’s name, you open the door to these competitors running paid search ads that effectively conquest your business. In fact, I know of a dealer who spent a large amount on TV ads but their competition reaped all the benefit as the dealer chose to cease running paid search ads for his brand name. His competitor bid on that dealership’s keywords and had a record sales month. After all the money and energy invested into your dealership it makes no sense to go cheap and not pay for branded keywords.

A long time ago (in a galaxy pretty close by), this was a legitimate choice because paid ads took up significantly less space on the search results page, and more real estate was given to organic results. However, Google has made dramatic changes, little by little, that have effectively reduced the number of organic search results above the fold, while increasing paid search ads – some of which are in prominent places, such as map listings.

“Google Tax” pretty much boils down to the cost of doing business. You never want to open the door for a competitor to hijack valuable search keywords such as your dealership’s name.

So, your choice is to pay the tax or put your head in the sand and not pay for branded keywords and let your competitors merrily steal away your customers. You may save some money on the surface by reducing your paid search ad budget  -- but will that reduction in budget be overshadowed by the sales you may lose to competitors?

If you’re going to play in the paid search sandbox, be ready to pay “Google Tax”. As organic listings continue to get pushed below the fold, and as mobile search results continue to evolve, expect the tax to just keep going up.

Your dealership undoubtedly sees a lot of customers each day. Let’s say that each customer who walks into your showroom wears a different color shirt. Over the course of time, you see a trend in that every single customer who purchased a vehicle wears a red shirt. You’d probably start getting excited when you see a customer come onto the lot wearing a red shirt. In fact, you might come to the conclusion that perhaps you should start marketing to people in red shirts, as those customers are clearly buying vehicles from you. But that would be a bad assumption to make. Why? Because I could visit a dealership five times and each time wear a different colored shirt. It just happened to be a red shirt I wore on the day that I purchased. 

The same thing applies when Google Analytics reports attribution. I like to call this the “Amnesia Effect of Google Analytics.” Google Analytics doesn’t remember that the customer visited the dealership five times, or that the customer wore a different colored shirt. Only the fact that he or she was wearing a red shirt when they purchased a vehicle. So, Google Analytics attributes the sale to the red shirt. 

This may sound illogical, because it is! 

Attribution is a subject close to my heart, and an area of expertise, I’ve recently written quite a bit about over the last few months. The subject can be rather confusing, especially if you don’t understand the different types of attribution models and which ones are more accurate than others. In a previous blog I received a lot of positive feedback on an analogy I used in an attempt to simplify the differences between first, last and multi-touch attribution. I thought I’d expand on the analogy to provide a mini “Attribution 101.”

A scenario that happens every day at most dealerships is that multiple salespeople are involved with the same customer over a period of time. It’s a well-known fact that the majority of customers don’t buy the first time they visit the dealership. 

Mr. and Mrs. Smith come to the dealership. They’re approached by salesperson #1 who greets them. They say they wish to look around by themselves. Salesperson #1 hands them his business card and says he’ll be waiting in case they have any questions or would like to see a specific vehicle. As they leave, he manages to get their names and phone number and enters them into the CRM. 

A week passes and Mr. and Mrs. Smith return to the dealership. Salesperson #1 is off and they don’t remember his name, or ask for him. Salesperson #2 greets them and answers specific questions about a couple of models they have interest in. He test drives both models with them and conducts comprehensive walk arounds explaining the various features and benefits of each vehicle. Mr. and Mrs. Smith thank him for his time and let him know they want to do a little more research. Salesperson #2 gets their information and the customers leave. 

A few days pass and Mr. and Mrs. Smith return. Salesperson #1 and #2 are not on shift. The Smiths are greeted by salesperson #3. They inform salesperson #3 that they are interested in a specific vehicle and would like to get information on pricing and payments. Salesperson #3 sits them at his desk and goes over all that information with them. After the information is presented, the Smiths again say they would like to think about it and they leave. 

The next weekend, the Smiths return and salesperson # 4 greets them. They inform salesperson #4 that they previously visited and test drove a specific car, have already worked out figures and would like to purchase the vehicle. Salesperson #4 sits them down and proceeds to wrap up the deal and delivers the vehicle. 

In this case, how does the sales manager work out who gets credited with the sale?

Assuming everybody involved entered the customer in the CRM and followed up, most dealerships would credit salesperson #1 (first) and salesperson #4 (last). Salesperson #2 and #3 get no part of the commission. However, when viewed from an effort and influence perspective, salesperson #2 and #3 actually did the most work and had the most influence. 

This is an example of first and last touch attribution. In a multi-touch attribution situation, a dealer would have the ability to see that salesperson #2 and #3 actually did the most work and could credit them with the most influence leading to the sale. 

You need a bigger picture with accurate attribution data to make effective marketing decisions. Otherwise you will find you are experiencing the amnesia effect of Google Analytics - wasting money marketing to people wearing red shirts when, in fact, the color of shirt had no influence on the sale. It just happened to be what the customer was wearing when they purchased the vehicle. 

I hope this helps bring about a better understanding as to why a multi-touch attribution model is imperative in making informed decisions based on accurate data that will produce greater ROI from your marketing budget. 

These days, Google searches are much more personalized and localized. For example, when a consumer types in a search query at their home it produces different results to the exact same search conducted at their office 30 miles away.

And, to further complicate matters, consumers increasingly shop and conduct their research using multiple devices, making it that much more difficult to follow them from the beginning of their journey to the end. A consumer may start their shopping journey on a desktop, browse a dealer’s inventory and then jump to a review site, then to a third-party listing site to compare pricing and availability. When they do find a vehicle they like, often they just go to the dealership to see it. Perhaps their visit is preceded by a phone call or internet inquiry to confirm the vehicle’s availability, or maybe they just show up. Once they arrive, they may be attracted to a different vehicle which prompts them to whip out that cell phone and start researching and price checking while standing on the lot. Most consumers don’t buy the vehicle they first inquired about and showrooming is now a common practice -- and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

That being said, understanding the POSSIBILITIES which exist along a consumer’s car-buying path, and ensuring your dealership is present with compelling messages at each touchpoint, can lead the shopper that much further down the funnel and, ultimately, to your dealership.

But when it comes to sourcing that customer, many salespeople only ask surface-level questions which rarely, if ever, provide accurate information needed to identify and accurately measure your marketing spend. Of course, many consumers themselves don’t remember all of the touchpoints they visited that led them to buying a vehicle from you so asking them more questions can still lead to inaccurate results. However, you should still ask customers these questions if only to understand the customer’s perception of what influenced them.

Today most consumers own multiple devices on which they use to shop and conduct their research – work computer, home computer, tablets, cell phones - and now voice-activated services such as Amazon’s Alexa and Siri (amongst others). It’s never been more important to have the data you need to make accurate and reliable marketing decisions.

While in the past, last-click attribution was used simply because the technology didn’t exist to see beyond that, now, successful marketers understand that there is no longer just one source responsible for influencing the entire customer journey. All of your marketing efforts work in their own way in a symbiotic relationship to influence the customer. A review site could be what convinced the customer to look at a specific make and model. A third-party listing site could be what influenced them to narrow their selection down to your specific vehicle. Another review site could then have given them confidence that they would have a good experience at your dealership and be treated fairly. Each of these touchpoints did their job and played a part in providing the customer the information they needed, which ultimately led them into your dealership.

It’s certainly possible that lack of presence on one or any of these touchpoints could influence the consumer into following a different path and onto a competitor’s lot. However, without the data and information showing you which touchpoints are influencing your customers, you’re simply guessing.

In this short video blog, Clarivoy CEO Steve White shares the one question that every dealer should ask of any PPC vendor that they are considering.

The Most Important Factor to Consider When Choosing a PPC Vendor from Clarivoy on Vimeo.

During my Innovation Cup presentation at the 2016 DrivingSales Executive Summit, while presenting our Multi-Touch Attribution software, one of the judges, Robert Karbaum, challenged me saying that Google Analytics already allowed users to import sales data. When the question was asked, I had my attribution hat on, versus my Google Analytics hat, so I was thinking in the context of “can you import sales data AND do user-level attribution.” Given that presenters in the contest have a very limited amount of time, I do not feel I did a good enough job of clarifying my answer in full. With that framework in mind, let me clarify with this blog:

A question that often arises in talking about Multi-Touch Sales Attribution, one of Clarivoy’s core products, is: “How are you doing anything different from what Google Analytics already does for me?”

Well, Multi Touch Sales Attribution incorporates offline sales data and connects ALL the online AND offline marketing touchpoints on a consumer’s purchase path to the eventual sale. Google Analytics on the other hand, lives in the online world only.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear: free analytics tools or platforms, such as Google Analytics, absolutely have their place in a marketer’s bag of tricks. However, while I am not out to end the use of Google Analytics, I want to underscore the downside of relying exclusively on these type of tools. Throughout my 17 years in the digital marketing sector, I have seen an over-reliance on Google Analytics and other web analytics solutions. These platforms, in their default out-of-the-box installations, provide data, but often not intelligent insights.

While marketers are lulled into believing that an out-of-the-box implementation is good enough to get accurate information for their marketing decisions, these free tools only focus on online activity. With so many reports, all the data a marketer needs must be in there somewhere, right? In actuality, what marketers end up with is last-touch, online only attribution.

Google Analytics measures site activity, but not what’s important: SALES! Google Analytics enables you to measure the success of your marketing based on clicks, cost per click, website traffic, number of leads and vehicle detail pages (VDPs) amongst others. Unfortunately, those metrics don’t offer information as to exactly what impacted sales. That is why we call them vanity metrics. How do you improve your marketing and increase sales solely using vanity metrics? Optimizing on those vanity metrics feels productive, but is it, really?

The reality is that Google Analytics only gives you part of the entire picture. You are only looking at digital marketing activities. Looking for marketing insights from only part of the picture may drive you to the wrong conclusions.

For the advanced marketer, Google does offer a more robust analytics platform called Google Analytics 360 (formerly known as "Premium"). This paid platform is intended to solve many of the issues that enterprise customers may have with the free version: for example faster data processing, higher quotas, and a rudimentary version of attribution analytics.

Ultimately, Google Analytics 360 has many of the same issues as the free version. The CMO of a very large auto group recently told me he canceled Google Analytics 360 as he felt the value was just not there. For this sophisticated marketer to say “No, Thanks” to Google’s premium tool speaks volumes about the usefulness of its metrics. While these tools do deliver a substantial amount of information, they lack the substance to actually help optimize marketing decisions because the information delivered isn’t based upon data about what actually caused that sale to happen!

Sadly, in my opinion, free web analytics solutions have given rise to a lackadaisical approach to marketing and website optimization. The attitude is, “Just put Google Analytics on the site…simple…we’re done now.” Such a position has created a laissez faire attitude toward performance objectives. It’s as if Google Analytics lets marketers off the hook -- they’re not held accountable for their true performance or the performance of their marketing initiatives. Relative ignorance has become acceptable.

This ignorance manifests itself in several ways. Google Analytics, by default, gives 100 percent of the sales credit to the last (non-direct) touch. For the vast majority of dealerships, this last touch comes from a brand search for the dealership’s name. As a result, many sales leads are wrongly attributed to search, because most marketers just look at the overall impact of search, and don’t drill down into what keywords actually sell the cars. And, as ignorance is bliss, they invest more into that channel and then pull back on the very marketing campaigns -- display ads, social, TV, etc. – that ARE actually triggering consumers to search for the dealership in the first place.

Consider the following scenario. A customer first discovers your dealership via a third-party auto listing site. Then they come back to your site later by searching your dealer name on Google and clicking on an AdWords listing, which perhaps was right above a free Google organic listing for your website. By default, in Google Analytics, that AdWords click took 100% credit for that visitor, assuming as a fact that it was incredibly valuable, when it may have had no impact at all on whether or not that sale was made.

To further complicate things, approximately 2 out of 3 of all car buyers do not contact the dealership prior to their first dealership visit. So, “walked in” is the most commonly reported method for how initial contact was established. However, 83 percent of consumers reportedly visited a dealer’s website before stepping into the dealership.

Given these facts, nearly 66 percent of leads sourced as “walk-ins” are incorrectly attributed. And, the remaining leads are attributed on a last-click basis. This is a recipe for disastrous marketing decisions which have a long-lasting ripple effect by reducing or eliminating what are in fact effective marketing channels -- display advertising, social, third-party auto listing sites, video and TV. The very channels that keep the dealership top-of-mind throughout the consumer purchase path and trigger consumers to search for a dealership. Even Google underscores the importance of using a variety of mediums to trigger brand searches in their study: “Vehicle Shopper Path to Purchase Study.”

While Google Analytics is touted as “free,” we all know nothing in life is really free. It’s a fallacy to believe there are no costs involved. There are real costs, in dollars, to managing Google Analytics in a way that gives true and valuable insights to marketing. This includes the huge hidden cost of incorrectly allocating marketing spend to the WRONG channels and losing out on the lift that the RIGHT channels would give you.

In addition to investing in modern digital analytics, don't abandon traditional tried and true advertising tactics that have served you well for years. Instead, find a partner that can help to measure and analyze the effectiveness of marketing for the entire purchase path of all your customers– offline, online and everywhere in between. Then make decisions based on real attribution data, not data which is biased towards an attribution model that benefits the company providing free analytics tools. You’ll find your decisions are more beneficial and will see that your marketing spend is much better optimized. And because of that, you’ll sell more cars.

I hope that this blog helps explain in more detail the question I received from the panel during my Innovation Cup presentation at the 2016 DrivingSales Executive Summit. We’re very honored to win the award this year and excited for our future. We look forward to helping dealers sell more vehicles by better optimizing their advertising spend!.