Author: Lindsay Rinner

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...

08 August, 2016

Brian Pasch from PCG recently released a report explaining and showing what to look for in Google Analytics for Bot Traffic, and yet some dealerships are still wasting their money on what appears to be fraudulent traffic. Link to Brian’s report:  http://www.dropbox.com/s/jkfc8uy1t8vt7i0/PCG-Conquest-Email-Marketing-Report.pdf?dl=1 I have been analyzing Google Analytics for a few years now. In that period of time I have noticed that there is no other companies which brings more web traffic to a site than Google. There have been many companies that claim that they come close but never reach that goal, until now. An associate of mine Mark Morin...

27 July, 2016

 Yesterday I published a post and offered dealers a free Google Analytics review.  This dealer reached out within a few minutes of my post. He was concerned about the quality of the traffic coming to his site from his new conquest email provider. Here are the red flags I found: 1. An insane amount of traffic over just a couple of weeks. Any traffic source ranking higher than Google should send a major red flag to anyone.  But 6 times the amount of google traffic...

15 July, 2016

As with all marketing, dealerships are forced to wait for Buyers to contact them.  They advertise on TV, Radio, Bill Boards, Internet and more. This is like throwing darts at the wall and hope that more stick than fall to the floor. This is time and money consumed and not knowing the actual results. Suppose there was a way to actually have the list of Opt-In Buyers that are coming off a lease or in their buying cycle in your hand. With this opportunity you would actually same time and money, because you would be contacting buyers directly instead of waiting...

28 June, 2016

Take your head out of the clouds. How can any company guarantee a specific amount of car sales? Let’s be realistic, that is not truly possible. There are too many factors that prove this wrong (The salesperson has a bad day, weather, lack of inventory, the customer cannot get financed) just name a few. There are companies that do guarantee sales. I have found that these companies suppress everyone who is in the dealerships database from their list of what they call prospects or potential buyers. These companies will then take claim to every sale from there on. That is absolutely absurd....

23 June, 2016

Recently there has been so much chatter around the automotive industry about the effectiveness of email marketing.  There are dozens of email vendors and even more agencies reselling those same products as a white label offering.  I’ve seen companies guaranteeing X number of sales per month, huge increases in traffic, and while all this sounds amazing, the fact is – most of the results they claim are either not incremental or smoke and mirrors; looking at your data and finding tenuous matches at best, which they try to take credit for.  Quick Story: Most email vendors request dealer’s sales data each month to...

22 June, 2016

Your DMS is one place to look, but not the ONLY place! New vehicle sales national growth is predicted to level off in the near future (we are seeing it as EARLY is May 2016!).  This means that the natural growth that dealerships have enjoyed over the last 5 or 6 years will also fade.  This begs the question – how can I continue my store’s sales growth amid a cooling market? The answer is conquest!  Buyers who’ve NEVER purchased at your dealership before, and maybe haven’t even looked at your BRAND in the past. As ALL manufacturers step up their games –...

27 May, 2016

Brian Pasch discusses telltale signs of abnormal traffic in Conquest Email Marketing. He calls them "Red Flags", I call them the "Fake 5". Below are the 5 factors to look for to determine for yourself if you consider them Fake Traffic. Percentage of Out of Market Visitors – If the majority of visits to the dealership’s website were outside of the dealership’s primary market area (PMA), it is characterized as abnormal traffic. Percentage of Desktop to Mobile Devices – If the percentage of visits to the dealership’s website from desktop devices is higher than 90%, it is characterized as abnormal...

15 April, 2016

Would you pay $16,000.00 a month for 20 leads? According to Daniel Kim, founder of Orbee he discovered a dealership in California doing just that. The dealership was using a company for their email marketing which Daniel did not mention the name. According to Google Analytics the dealership received 6 Thousand hits to their website from the email company they were using. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? After Orbee reviewed the data for the dealership they discovered that out of the 6 Thousand hits they received, 4 Thousand of those hits were from BOT Traffic. When the smoke finally cleared...

08 April, 2016

It has come to my attention through years of working with dealers and walking them through their own individual Google Analytics accounts, as well as following Brian Pasch and the industry as a whole, most dealerships are not able to inspect their own Google Analytics. In fact, most General Manager's I have had the pleasure of working with did not know if they had Google Analytics, or what the log-in was. It had to be tracked down, or we had to set up a new account for the dealership. Throughout the years, I have learned the average GM wants to see...

27 January, 2016
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