The Top 5 Benefits of Using Test Drive Incentives

Contrary to popular belief, vehicle purchase decisions are still being made at physical dealerships, most likely following a test drive – NOT exclusively online. By using targeted test drive offers on your website, third-party sites and across channels, Dealers can positively disrupt a customer shopping online just long enough to influence them by giving them a reason to visit your showroom instead of your competitors’. Test drive incentives are one of the most cost-effective marketing tactics, consistently delivering buyers into Dealer showrooms and in the drivers’ seat of a vehicle. Below are the top five benefits of using test drive incentives at your dealership.

1.      Drive High Intent to Buy Showroom Traffic

Convert your highest intent-to-buy website traffic and third-party site traffic into showroom visits with highly targeted, private test drive incentive offers, redeemable only by test driving a vehicle at your dealership. By presenting customers browsing your inventory online with a $25-$75 incentive to test drive one of your vehicles, you’re giving them a reason to visit your store over the competition. We know shoppers viewing specific inventory pages online are lower down in the purchase funnel, therefore using incentives only further increases your likelihood of converting online traffic into showroom traffic.

2.      Execute Custom Incentive Campaigns Based on Your Greatest Areas of Opportunity

With science on your side, you can see whether the leads in your CRM ended up purchasing from you or someone else. Being able to see where, how and why you’re losing sales makes it easy for Dealers to make smarter decisions about how to spend finite, often unvalidated marketing dollars. Test drive incentive campaigns can be executed across all digital channels and customized in-flight to support each Dealer’s unique initiatives. Target underperforming models, ZIP codes or lead sources with higher value incentive offers to reduce your defection rates. In addition to your website visitors, send email incentive campaigns to re-engage all your third party leads and further combat defections and drive customers into your showroom.

3.      Increase Incremental Sales

New vehicle sales may start online, but they end at the dealership. The best digital marketing tools attribute all sales and showroom visits back to a single offer or campaign, so your ROI is never in question. Use trackable test drive incentives across channels as one of the most effective, cost-efficient ways to get customers in your showroom and behind the wheel, while properly attributing incremental sales directly back to an offer. Leads generated from these private offers consistently close at both a high rate and a low cost-per-sale.

4.      Increase New-to-Brand, Repeat Buyers

Car buyers today might be less brand loyal than ever before. CarMax says only 19.4% of their customers in 2017 purchased the same brand as their trade-in, while the remaining 80.6% bought a different brand. Our own studies show that across all OEMs, an average of 78% of buyers that submit an AutoHook test drive lead are new to the brand, meaning these are not repeat customers that would have come in anyways. If you’re able to provide your customers with a great initial buying experience when they come in to redeem their free gift card, the chance of them returning for a second or third purchase increases, thus improving your likelihood of gaining repeat, loyal buyers.

5.      Increase Lead Conversion

This one might be a given, but it had to go on the list. We know Dealers have the best chance of converting a lead to a closed sale when they can get the customer physically in front of them. Getting customers offline and into the showroom is the entire purpose of using test drive incentive offers.

Is Your Paid Search Paying Off?

By David Metter

It’s time for a reality check. I’d like to begin with pointing out the fact that more often than we realize, the correct solution to a problem is both obvious and simple. We live in a common sense world, but I think people forget that sometimes. From a young age, we’re programed to be “critical thinkers” and to look at a situation from all vantage points. Our encoded mental paradigms tell us we should analyze, overanalyze, and overcomplicate every possible variable that may contribute to a desired outcome. On the contrary, according to Ockham’s Razor, a scientific theory dating back to the 14th century, “the simplest solution is usually the correct one.” Spending my entire career in the auto industry, with much of it in a dealership, we skip most of this (thankfully) but there should be a happy medium. It’s where common sense meets analyzed data. 

Paid search, or pay-per-click, while it may appear to be an affordable form of advertising, there is a significant breakdown in the attribution no matter how transparent and detailed the reporting. Plain and simple, paid search is complicated. As one of the first automotive marketers to use paid search over 10 years ago, I have “complicated” scars. Yes, you can see the amount of clicks your campaign received. You can see the impressions. You can see the engagements. But can you see, validate, and know that a paid click led directly to a showroom visit without any other factors involved? Absolutely not. People looking for information doesn’t in any way translate to a sale. So, how do you measure the true ROI?

Think about how much you spend driving people to your website each month. Thousands upon thousands of dollars are devoted to driving potential customers to your site in hopes of converting a click to a sale. As of today, the vast majority of customers cannot and will not purchase a car on your website. Therefore, dealers depend on leads to attempt to convert web traffic into showroom traffic.

The stats speak for themselves. There is no arguing that well under 5% of website visitors will complete the standard dealership lead form. Specifically, WardsAuto, DealerRefresh, and other industry leaders report 3-7% of automotive shoppers actually submit leads. CDK’s Digital Business Intelligence study shows only 1% of auto shoppers submit email leads from dealer websites.

It’s time we stop chasing imaginary attribution lines. If something isn’t working 95%-99% of the time, we need to do something about it. We need to direct our attention towards something we can quantify without a shadow of a doubt that led to a sale. We need to change the game – or more specifically, change the average lead form.

Let me provide you with a real life example. Just a few weeks ago, in February, 2016 (with only five days left in the month), a leading OEM came to my team asking what we could do to help push them to a stronger close. Typically, OEMs will rush to spend more money on search or display to increase traffic and then hope and pray that web traffic will convert to leads and showroom visits before the month ends. Unfortunately, that’s tough to do in five days. Its tough to do in 10 days, but manufacturers and dealers chase this same avenue month after month. But this particular OEM knew they had sufficient site traffic. What they needed was to see it convert in the showroom. AutoHook’s incentives generated more than 1,800 showroom visits in just five days and these customers were directly attributed to nearly 800 sales in the same time period - something I would challenge any digital effort to perform and validate.

In the Bounce Exchange’s latest Guide to PPC they acknowledge the tremendous waste potential of paid search. “Whether you’re a do-it-yourself small business or an agency managing hundreds of thousands of PPC dollars, you are leaving money on the table right now. Guaranteed.” Even worse, you could unknowingly be creating more opportunities for your competitors or just tossing money straight to Google. Their advice? “Move your budget into something that works.” More importantly, make sure that you have better and bigger nets to catch the fish. 

Let’s be clear. I am not saying don’t do paid search. It can be a great tool for driving traffic to your website, however it’s not ideal for converting actual sales or showroom visits. The reality is, paid search is not simple, and you can’t draw a straight line from your search campaign to a vehicle sold. A smart PPC provider, and more importantly a smart marketer, knows the difference between “researcher” and “buyer” search terms and online actions. Which do your campaigns target? What about your inventory? Are your search efforts boosting aging units or wasting ad dollars on high demand vehicles that will sell on their own?

Buyer search terms are specific and measurable. Buyers know what they want down to the year, make, model, and color. Most will not contact you before coming in for a test drive, UNLESS your website provides an experience that gives them something in return for submitting their personal information. Yes, I’m referring to offering incentives just for coming in for a test drive. It’s so simple. Give something to get something. If you are willing to pay for a click, why wouldn’t you be willing to pay for a showroom visit? Heck, they probably would have clicked anyway.

At the end of the day, you can empty your pockets in attempt to drive the world to your website. But the real question is, does your website convert once they arrive?  

3 Ways to Avoid Mobile Marketing Mayhem

By David Metter

The accelerating rate of mobile usage is not a trend. It’s certainly not going out of style. Mobile best practices need to be hard coded in the DNA of every brand, dealer, and marketer – guiding your digital strategy from this very micro-moment on. No longer is mobile marketing a segment or part of your approach, but rather it should dominate your approach, and that’s huge.

We’ve been watching consumer behavior in the retail segment for years. The Automotive industry is following in the tracks of larger retailers like Target, Home Depot, and of course, Amazon. This mobile-driven shopping behavior is rapidly translating from buying a T.V. at Best Buy to purchasing a vehicle at a dealership. “Showrooming,” or shopping on other dealer’s sites on a mobile device while physically at a dealership is an increasing problem that needs to be handled proactively. If consumers are going to compare prices on their smartphones for a $20 item or an $800 item, the probability is even stronger that they’ll do the same for a $40,000-$50,000 item while on a dealer’s lot.

We’ve been in the space long enough to know that with all up-and-coming technologies come growing pains. The following are the top three ways to own mobile and avoid the problems that other marketers have faced.

1. Ensure You Have Access to Accurate, Real-Time Attribution Reporting: According to AdRoll’s State of the Industry, 41% of U.S. marketers said the lack of attribution transparency was one of the biggest, if not the biggest challenge of mobile advertising today. The ultimate goal for dealers and OEMs is to choose a vendor that has the ability to attribute every sale and every showroom visit to a single campaign at nearly 100% effectiveness, regardless of the device or media channel that led them to you.

Leverage technology that knows the exact coordinates of every franchise dealership in the country, so you can pinpoint the exact location of a customer at a nearby competitor. You can then target with highly specific and dynamic messaging, giving you the control to conquest other brands and more importantly, protect your own backyard. Dealers cannot possibly do this by themselves. Unite technology with intelligent data that executes well and has the attribution reporting to prove it.

2. Eliminate Extra Steps: Digital marketing can get complicated when you break down all the moving pieces that make up a comprehensive, synergetic strategy. With mobile, it’s actually quite simple. Think of a single goal your mobile campaign must accomplish. For most, it should be to get a buyer into your showroom. Then, map out the easiest, most straightforward route to get there. The less pages, forms, and steps your audience has to navigate through, the higher the chances of conversion.

According to eMarketer, over one-third of advertisers say users or consumers not converting on mobile is yet another challenge. Friction is the enemy here. If a customer gets “stuck” either waiting for a page to load or navigating through irrelevant content they will move on faster than you can say Ferrari. Always put both speed and simplicity into play when it comes to increasing conversion rates on mobile. Focus on one goal, one call to action, and one destination – your dealership.

3. Zero-In on Buyers: Through location and behavioral targeting, we can build a consumer profile that offers great insight into who is in-market and ready to make a purchase, and who is still in the research phase of buying a car. 90% of consumers leave their location services enabled. Google advises marketers to take advantage of these built-in GPS systems. In addition, “61% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from mobile sites and apps that customize information to their location.”

At the end of the day, great marketing is really about one thing; and that’s relating to people. With all the information, analytics and tools available to us, we’ve perhaps created an overly complicated, multi-faceted, omnichannel approach of simply trying to relate to people. The evolution of mobile is much more simplistic than that. It’s just about connecting with people on another level (that happens to be in their pocket, purse, or in their hands roughly 99% of the time).

Mobile usage rates have already exceeded desktop. Try not to blink, because before you know it, over 90% of showroom traffic will be attributable to a mobile device. So rather than being reactive, you better be there, and be ready.

Click here to read the new Mobile eBook, Auto Dealers and the State of Mobile Marketing 2016.

Cracking the Conversion Code

By David Metter

Behind every screen, device, or smartphone in today’s consumer economy resides something that has perhaps gotten lost in the unstoppable avalanche of digital noise. Are we as an industry starting to focus too much on the device, and not enough on the person behind it? All we hear today is ways we can target better on mobile and that we need to use the latest in mobile tracking and mobile marketing technologies. When it comes to selling cars, or converting leads into buyers, let’s begin the New Year with an emphasis on the customer behind the device in order to connect with them better and resonate with them in a more positive way. This is the first step towards improving conversion for your dealership.

The second step is understanding the digital roadmap, or digital learning path that leads to a buying decision. If you want to increase your overall conversion rates, start by only spending money on the consumers that are ready to make a purchase and identify those in-market customers using proper attribution methods. Spend your precious ad dollars on the people that have demonstrated ready-to-buy behavior.

Buying a car is a huge decision for the average consumer – the second largest purchase of their life after buying a home. It’s a really big deal. In 2016, it is imperative that we remember there is a human being on the other side of that screen – complete with thoughts, skepticism, and emotions that come to define their shopping experience, and more importantly, their probability of converting.

So how can we increase conversion and increase the number of buyers we send into our showroom? First, let’s define what conversion means to the average dealership. Then let’s set the bar higher. Conversion is simply the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, whether that’s filling out a lead or incentive form on your site, or their final signature on a new lease. Techopedia defines conversion rate as, “An equation that online advertisers and marketers use to compare the total number of visitors to a website to the number that become paying customers, subscribers or users.”

According to a November, 2015 Dataium study, the average dealer website gets roughly 6,109 unique monthly visitors. Of those 6,109 people, only 1.5% completed a lead form, or in other words, only 1.5% converted. This is our industry’s standard, and we can absolutely do better.

Average should not be an acceptable word in your vocabulary when it comes to your conversion rate. Make it a goal, or a new year’s resolution to demolish “average” and demand to rise above. Write down your goal, and then commit to knocking it out of the park!

So what should your conversion goal be? Many dealers make the mistake of leaving their conversion rates up to their web provider, or placing blame on their website platform for lower than desired conversions. Progressive dealerships see a conversion rate of 6% or more compared to the average dealer’s 1-4%. The truth however, is that dealers themselves hold much more power than they think they do. Do you want to be average or do you want to have upwards of a 6% website conversion rate?

The power dealers have when they’re face-to-face with a customer is vastly underrated. Thus, using incentives to get customers in the showroom may be the most obvious solution to increasing your conversion ratio. If your objection is, “The customer is going to probably come in anyways so why should I spend money to incentive them?” then you should probably stop advertising all-together...which would be a bad move.  Hopefully, you get my point.  If not, stop reading now. 

Sometimes we have to change the way we sell in order to sell better. In the year ahead, our processes should involve taking a step back from “targeting” consumers on their devices, and really focus in on how to connect with low-funnel buyers through the benefits that accompany being a knowledgeable sales person and providing a superior in-showroom experience. Keep in mind that conversion happens at a much higher rate when a customer is physically in front of you than it does online with the standard lead form so be different than your competition.

Behind the screens we hide behind that track our every move, search and click lies a conversion opportunity that can be better accomplished when you focus more on consumers themselves and how they behave while researching their next vehicle. To be clear, I don’t want to downplay the importance of mobile. You have to be where your customers are and they are most certainly on mobile – however if you’re going to ask them for their information you better be positive their experience filling out their information on their mobile device is seamless.

Think about the design of your mobile site and ask yourself, is it optimized for conversion? This means you have to consider things like your call-to-action button and its placement, or if it’s consistent with the average person’s thumb size. According to Apple, “The human fingertip is around 46 pixels squared, so size your buttons accordingly.”

If you’re making digital advertising decisions and you’re not seeing the connectivity into the showroom, and more importantly, sales, you may be either spending your money unwisely, or you have a breakdown in your data that doesn’t allow you to connect these things. When you have great data you can tell a great story. It’s also not just about big data, it’s about good data. Leveraging third-party data partners like IHS Polk we can build a much stronger attribution model and thus determine what exactly led to the conversion of a lead.

Knowledge is power. Knowing which actions along the road to a purchase led to that sale vastly increases your probability of conversion, and more importantly, makes the most out of your ad budget. 

Four Simple Steps to Increase Website Conversion

By David Metter

Dealerships are constantly working to increase their website conversion – and for good reason. Organic conversions typically see the highest closing rates. However, I frequently encounter dealerships that wonder why they aren’t getting higher conversion rates, despite adding the latest gizmo or widget. Conversion rate optimization is tricky. Thankfully, there are some simple things that can be done to increase the chances your visitors convert.

1.     Mobile – Today’s car buyers use their smartphones to gather information. The lack of a mobile-optimized website will unquestionably decrease your conversion rates. With the huge increase in Internet searches via mobile devices, if your site isn’t mobile enabled, it’s as if you are hiding your dealership from the majority of today’s online shoppers. I’m sure you would never fail to have good signage for your physical showroom. Well, the same can be said for your online presence. Make sure that you provide a great experience across all devices for your customers. That alone will help to increase conversions.

2.     Simple Navigation – How many times have you visited a website, searched for information, and became frustrated because you couldn’t find it? What do you do when that happens? I bet you leave and look elsewhere. The harder it is for a customer to find the information they are looking for on your website, the more likely they will leave. Think of your home page as the beginning of a path. Most visitors came to your site with a destination in mind. Make it easy for them to find that information.

3.     KISS – I’m sure that you’ve all heard the phrase, “Keep it simple, stupid.” This absolutely applies to conversion rate optimization. Far too many dealers overwhelm their website visitors with multiple conversion methods on every page of their site. Things like chat windows floating all over the screen, pop-ups appearing with each new page view, or forms all over the place. Examine each page of your website and put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Ask yourself this simple question: “If I was on THIS page of my website, WHY would I be here?” The better you can answer that question, the more you’ll understand the motivation of the customer, and provide a better conversion method that is attractive to the customer. Stop inundating customers with multiple conversion paths on every page of your website. Keep it simple and make sure the path you want the customer to take is very clear.

4.     Contact Information – The single best conversion method for any dealership’s website is contact information. The majority of the visitors to your website are seeking this. Yet many times this information is the hardest to find. Make sure that your contact information, address and phone numbers, as well as your dealership’s hours of operation for both sales and service are prominently displayed at the top of your home page. Don’t make customers scroll to the bottom. Or, even worse, have to navigate their way to an “About Us” page to find this information.

Optimizing your website for conversion translates to simply providing a great customer experience. Reduce the noise and friction from your customers’ browsing experience and lead them down the path towards the information they seek. Once they arrive, give them a single, relevant and compelling reason to convert - and you’ll be surprised by how many do just that. 

KIA Dealerships Using HookLogic - Performance and Results

Last year we posted several of our OEM Performance and Purchase Analysis results in the form of info-graphics. The response was amazing, due to the eye opening data we are able to provide buy utilizing our partnership with IHS / Polk. Partnering with IHS / Polk allows us acquire and validate Lead to Close performance. In return, showing lead attribution from lead conception all the way to the sale. Not just a sale at your dealership but a *sale all-together.

The first OEM we’re going to analyze this year is KIA.

Let’s review the KIA Purchase Analysis Report from top to bottom...

Hooklogic Performance for Kia dealers in 2014

Starting from the top, you see “Leads Generated“. During the months of  6/1/2013 – 5/31/2014 HookLogic generated and incentivized 22,338 leads for our Kia dealerships.

Of the 22,338incentivized vehicle leads, 6,472 of those customers leads walked into a Kia dealership, that utilized HookLogic’s suite of products (during this time frame) to test drive a vehicle after engaging with either Wed2Show or Lead2Show.

Of the total amount of leads generated, 3 in 10 showed up at a Kia dealership for a 29% Lead to Show Rate. This is more than twice the national average (17%) Show Rate on internet leads.

KIA Sales Data

Of the 6,472 leads that were incentivized and walked into this group of Kia dealers for a test drive, 64% purchased a vehicle. 

This group of Kia dealers are closing HookLogic incentivized showroom ups at 64% with an overall lead closing ratio of 19%.

Most dealers do a good job at measuring their lead closing ratios and closing the customer once they’re in the showroom. What dealers miss out on measuring is their Lead-to-Show rate.

This year we've added 2 new sections to the Performance Infographic: Loyalty / Defection and Conquest Sales. For our Kia dealers, the Loyalty / Defection rate is 65%. Meaning, of those customers that sent in a lead for a Kia, bought a Kia. Our Kia dealers also have a STRONG 71% Conquest Sales Rate.

*A conquest sale occurs when a consumer purchases a Kia product and did not have a Kia vehicle in their garage. Kia’s average conquest sales rate: 29%. 

Whether it’s a lead originating from your dealer’s website, 3rd Party Lead, Online Chat lead or HookLogic Web2Show – By getting more in-market shoppers to Show Up at your dealership, you get more opportunities to make a sale.

If you're a Kia dealer and looking to increase your website leads, increase your lead-to-show rate and overall sales opportunities, contact us for a full demo!

Are You Conquesting Enough New Vehicle Sales? - Webinar

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Webinar: Are You Conquesting Enough New Vehicle Sales?

Showrooming

Conquesting New Vehicle Sales is More Important Than Ever.

In today’s ultra competitive automotive marketplace each and every new vehicle sale is either a win for one dealership or OEM/ manufacturer or a lost opportunity for another one. Understanding the underlying motivations and needs of the core consumer is more important than ever in order to turn lost opportunities into wins.

Join David in this 30 minute webinar as he shares best practices around conquesting.

Here are a few key take-aways:

• How to best position your dealership to conquest more new vehicle sales
• How to increase loyalty/retention rates while at the same time conquest more new vehicle sales
• How to develop best practices around conquesting that will help differentiate your dealership​

Join us on:

DATE: Tuesday, December 16th 2014TIME: 3pm EST / 12pm PST (about 20-30 minutes long)

david-metter

PRESENTERS:David Metter, President, HookLogic, Automotive

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Dataium Integration with HookLogic Reactivates Leads at Significant Rates - Virtual Strategy Magazine

Dataium Integration with HookLogic Reactivates Leads at Significant Rates - Virtual Strategy Magazine