08 Aug How Many of Your Vendors Hold Themselves Accountable?
Auto dealers utilize dozens (OK, probably hundreds) of vendors in order to operate. From their DMS, CRM, web provider and digital vendor, to their advertiser, lead provider and vehicle image database – the list goes on and on.
One of the more difficult tasks to accomplish is measuring the success of any given vendor.
When I was on the retail side, my web provider would tout, “Look at all the sales calls that came from the website.” They would measure this by how many times people dialed the ‘sales’ phone number, but 80% of those calls were NOT fresh phone-ups or even sales related at all. Oddly enough, the highest percentage of those calls were for service. If we truly wanted to measure the amount of traffic, we had to listen to the calls ourselves to see how many were true ‘sales calls’. (Fortunately my BDC had a strong phone-up process so we could track them easily.)
Digital vendors do the same thing. “We drove this much traffic to your website! Look at all the business we are sending you.” But rarely do they sit with you to dive deep into the data. They are afraid that doing so may expose questionable traffic or bot-created traffic.
They don’t want to hold themselves accountable.
That means that we have to hold them accountable. How many dealerships have the time or staff to do that?
When I left the retail auto industry, I had a lot of choices in front of me and a lot of paths to explore. I chose CityTwist for three reasons –
- The product works – we had great success at my dealership.
- They hold themselves accountable – your account manager will go over the analytics with you to make sure you are getting the quality traffic that we (and you) expect.
- It was a reasonable commute from my South Florida home.
In my short time here I’ve seen dozens of success stories that were similar to what I had experienced while working at my dealership. When I tell my dealer-clients that we will actually review the Google Analytics together, their response is usually, “None of my vendors do that with me.” It truly is a differentiator!
If you are looking to reach conquest buyers who have been identified by RL Polk® as “in-market” to buy a vehicle, CityTwist can do it … and we will hold ourselves accountable.
Written by:
Troy Germain
Automotive Digital Marketing & Lead Handling Specialist