Automotive marketing is much more robust and intentional than ever before. With that said, what statistics should you pay attention to?

Marketing used to be a hit or miss venture. Most companies weren’t sure how effective their marketing efforts were, unless customers filled out forms and answered where they heard about the deals or products. Today, online tools and resources have changed the marketing landscape. Most companies can directly map the path users take on their websites, showing where they began, what pages they viewed, and when they stopped and left the website. This allows automotive marketing to be more calculated and intentional than in the past.

What performance marketing analytics should you pay attention to? Here are some that should help.

Follow-up time

How quickly does your dealership follow up with online leads? Its important to reach out and connect with potential customers within 24 hours of them visiting your website. This is an important statistic to maintain engagement with customers. Currently, 23.5% o dealer leads miss this follow-up timeframe, and 13.3% of those vanish before CRM entry, which leads to nearly 37% of online leads being missed.

Customer content engagement

Social media users love to share their lives online, especially when they have something big to share, like a new vehicle purchase. Statistics show that one in three buyers share their new ride online. Part of your automotive marketing strategy should be to get these buyers to hashtag your car dealership in their posts. This helps boost your authenticity and allows your dealership to be shown and engaged with broader audiences through customer content. This can be a tricky stat to track and manage.

It all starts online

As many as 95% of car shoppers rely on online resources to research and review vehicles and dealerships. This makes online tools and resources more important than ever before. Some shoppers don’t want in-person contact with the dealership until it’s time to buy their next ride, while others enjoy the ability to shop for vehicles from home in their free time. Regardless, the car shopping experience begins online, and dealerships must have the tools to market properly and benefit from advanced reporting.

Cost per lead

How much do you to spend to get a lead? The average cost of automotive marketing per lead is $283. Considering this investment in each lead, it doesn’t make sense to miss the follow-up timeframe or to lose a potential customer. In addition to the cost per lead, you’ve got a golden opportunity to sell most customers on your inventory because only one in three potential car buyers knows the exact vehicle they want to buy. This means it should be easy to present models that make sense for each buyer.

Phone calls matter

The use of AI chatbots and online tools has grown exponentially, but many customers have shown they would rather speak to a person than only connect online. This makes it important that dealers have staff answer phone calls during business hours. Recently, as many as 84% of marketers report phone calls having a higher conversion rate with larger order values compared to online engagement. This can be a huge boost for any dealership, despite the need to have service providers ready to answer phone calls as they come in.

Test-drive videos are huge

Why take a test drive when you can watch a video of a test drive? Automotive marketing should include video watch time, which shows that the time online users spend watching “test drive” videos on YouTube has grown by more than 65% in the past two years. This means many shoppers are going deeper into the purchase process, away from the dealership, than ever before. When professionally done test drive videos are shared, they make it much easier for viewers to enjoy the content and make informed decisions.

Reviews are key

Your reporting must include customer reviews and their ratings. It’s also helpful to know which customers haven’t provided any feedback, which gives you a follow-up list. Your online reviews and reputation matter and have become the lifeblood of most dealerships. If you don’t have high ratings, many shoppers will look elsewhere for the products and services they desire. Your reviews and ratings are as important as your follow-up skills and customer engagement processes.

These are only a few of the automotive marketing statistics that you should pay attention to and utilize in your efforts to turn leads into sales. Where will you focus your efforts this week?