By: Andrew Pasternak

I have to admit, most of the dealerships we work with at Potratz are pretty up to speed on things; they have to be. In businesses everywhere competition is fierce. The car selling business is no different. If anything, in this industry, what separates the successful and profitable dealerships from the dealerships who have a lot of negative pressure around the water cooler (which isn’t a good look by the way) is the success or failure of their advertising efforts. So let me ask you, how do you measure the effectiveness of your advertising?

I should mention that there ought to be no wrong answers to this question. There are only better answers.

Most dealers are familiar (and even more comfortable) with traditional media, like television and print, while the rival dealer across town (or the used car dealership you’re not paying attention to) could be billing several deals right now without even having any customers on the lot, as a result of putting their money into new media and digital marketing. The question is which advertising strategy is more effective?

While online automotive advertising results in a significant portion of sales (and you should be doing it) it has an even greater power. Just about every aspect of a dealer’s digital marketing campaigns can be effectively measured. Don’t take that last sentence for granted.

If your dealership isn’t currently monetizing what’s happening online (or worse yet, isn’t even monitoring what’s happening), I urge you to consider what impact you could have on your business if you knew that:

• Investing $2,500 in a pay-per-click campaign would result in 100 leads being submitted via the web
• 11.375% of every 100 leads result in a sale (Automotive Industry Average Conversion Rate)
• The average value of a used car is $1,800 (Automotive Industry Average Transaction Value)
• 11.375 (used cars sold) x $1,800 (average used car transaction value) = $20,475.00

This is just grazing the surface of what digital marketing can do for a car dealership.

While it’s not always necessary to know all the nitty-gritty details of how a car ends up selling, having access to all of that information certainly unlocks a lot of possibilities.