Written by Steve White and David Metter

One of the hottest topics for dealers today is attribution – and it’s been a long time coming! Technology now exists which finally allows dealers to get a true picture of how their marketing influences consumers along their car buying journey. For eons dealers have been forced to rely on last-click attribution, simply because that’s all they had. 

It is very easy to see a lead pop into the CRM and trace it to a sale. However, dealers doing this are missing the other marketing efforts which contributed to that conversion. And that data is important to know. 

While AutoHook and Clarivoy solve attribution problems from two different perspectives, we are in complete agreement that the dealer’s perspective is what matters most. Dealers are not, nor should they ever be expected to be data analysts or mathematicians. It should never be a dealer’s responsibility to scrutinize the 20 different vendor reports received in a typical month and find trends that point to sales and marketing success or failure. Nor should it be the dealer’s job to assign fractionalized credit to the multiple touchpoints that led to a sale. 

Too often, dealerships are debilitated by the excessive amount of vendor reports that flood their inbox every month. What good is all that data if you can’t understand it and basically need an instruction manual to sift through and try to pinpoint exactly what’s working and what’s not? 

If you use outdated attribution models, you’re essentially making marketing decisions based on 10% of what is happening. Did you know that only 10% of consumers self-identify? Therefore, decisions are made without knowing what most consumers are doing, and/or which marketing efforts are influencing them. That is a HUGE marketing blind spot that leads to tens of thousands of dollars wasted on sources that don’t convert. 

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if you could simply get a clear view of your sales and defection trends, all in one place? Or quickly identify deficiencies in both your internal and external processes so that you can more efficiently assign responsibilities to your staff? And, what if you could get more ROI out of your third-party lead or traffic drivers? 

Most dealers have been lacking a complete, 360° view of their sales operations, along with a view of any sales lost to their biggest competitors. How can you improve the way you sell cars if you are unaware of the leads in your CRM that have already purchased elsewhere? There is a reason for every lost sale, and that reason is exactly what you should use to act and reclaim lost opportunities. 

Without accurate data, you cannot make marketing decisions which can be relied upon. You need data you can trust to provide the correct insights into the buying habits of your consumers and the performance of your marketing partners. 

Technology has brought us more current attribution models which show the big picture of your marketing performance. It can enlighten you and help make decisions that improve performance and stimulate sales without necessarily having to increase budgets. You can define the sources responsible for your greatest opportunities and losses, down to an individual salesperson, lead traffic source, competing brand or dealer, and more. 

Make the decision to take control of your marketing by leveraging technology. Stop trying to make sense of 20 different vendor reports with 20 different attribution models. By adopting more current attribution models, you’ll be able to spend less time guessing and more time knowing. And that’s most of the battle.