We all know that organic traffic converts into leads that end up in sales at higher percentages. It’s more relevant than ever, and it’s what has been missing all along.
Let me get right to it; as an industry, we have overlooked one of the greatest assets we have ever had our hands on and have done a very poor job of managing it. That asset is ALL of the FREE website traffic dealership’s websites currently get and what can be easily improved.
Why we missed it is pretty easy too. Google Analytics (GA), as we know it, is
compartmentalized and fairly linear. We look at organic traffic, direct hits, referrals, and Google Business Profiles, all separately. Not many dealerships (that I have met) truly lump these all together into the “asset” class of ALL FREE traffic. Once dealerships do this, it becomes much easier to see it as its own “class” of traffic and be able to look deeper.
The next thing many dealerships have missed for almost a decade (not all, but a high enough percentage for me to make a point here) is the true conversion rate of that traffic. The traffic’s conversion rates are also an asset class that needs to be managed and optimized.
Let me put it all together in a way that makes the argument why dealerships should all pay more attention to these assets. (Have I used the word “asset” enough to get you thinking?) The opposite of “free” is “paid.” I would guess that many dealerships jumped to paid traffic sources, including Google Ads, paid social media, third-party listing sites, lead generation companies, etc., before even exhausting (or even trying) all of the optimization opportunities to maximize their free traffic results.
I am not arguing that “paid” doesn’t have its place like many SEO-only companies may advise. It has its place and, in many instances, has excellent value and return on investment (ROI). I am a huge fan of a well-run paid campaign with an eye on ROI. Recently, we saw 680 leads generated at $14 per lead with a $9,500 optimized campaign. If I were a dealership, I would spend that $9,500 every day of the week. That campaign helped the dealership break records in just about every category.
Back to FREE.
I’d ask dealerships to take a look at their conversion rates first. If website analytics aren’t set up to track true “conversational conversions,” then the first step is to ensure that they are. You have to measure properly to manage it properly.
Many dealerships reading this already have that handled, but again, if a dealership does not have its website tagged correctly, that’s the first thing it should do. The next thing dealerships need to know is the conversion rates on all free traffic sources. What percentage of the dealership’s overall traffic turns into a lead – and not just any lead – but one that can be tracked and is a “conversational conversion,” a phone call, a form lead (email), a chat lead (not initiation only), and/or a text conversation.
If that number is below 3.5% to – 4.5%, then the dealership has some work to do to maximize the value of that free traffic. As an example, a properly optimized website getting 10,000 free visits per month – that is set up to convert and generate true conversions (leads) at 4.5% or above from all of the free traffic sources – will yield 250 more leads ( FOR FREE ) than a site converting at 2 percent! So, again, that is 250 more leads!
Sounds easy, sounds obvious, and maybe even trivial. If you’re thinking: Yeah, duh, Troy, we get it; that’s just simple math and makes for a great article, I’d probably agree. However, I would ask any dealership to track these metrics and let me know the results because it will be very eye-opening once a dealership completes a basic audit.
By crunching all these numbers faster, dealerships can get a sense of all the free traffic coming to their website at all conversion levels. No matter how much dealerships are willing to invest in paid traffic, converting free traffic at the higher end of the benchmarks (at a minimum) is the desired goal. So, doing this is a great place to start.
And here is why:
Those 250 more leads should yield around 20 – 25 more sales. When dealerships do use paid solutions to grow their traffic even more, they should see a better ROI from those paid campaigns if their website is set up properly to convert ALL traffic into leads and sales.
Last, I’ll tell you another little trick dealerships can use to decipher the quality of their website traffic. If a dealership’s paid traffic is not converting at the “free traffic” levels (or even higher), then the dealership has a quality problem. This knowledge will allow dealerships to optimize their campaigns, audiences, and creative content to convert at the benchmark that dealerships should see from their free traffic.
In summary, dealerships should pay (more) attention to all their free traffic. Dealerships should pay (more) attention to their overall conversion rates and treat all FREE traffic like the asset it is. By doing so, dealerships will be able to do one of two things with a properly set up website and free traffic strategy:
- Sell the same amount of cars with less ad spend.
- Scale easier and sell more cars for the same ad spend.
Then, there is a third. Dealerships can scale their business easier to levels they didn’t think possible. With these strategies in place, dealerships can trust the conversions from their website more, thus spending with more confidence to scale.
That, in my book, is a ton of fun and a whole lot less stressful.
Originally Published in the Sept/Oct 2022 issue of Dealer magazine.
Troy Spring is the owner of Dealer World, Agency 345, and co-founder of Dealer Funnel. His roots in advertising started while he managed four automotive dealerships and the large advertising budgets for the stores. The dealerships all grew under his watch. He credits much of that growth to the advertising decisions he made to drive more business to each location. He has spent the last decade perfecting what he calls the four pillars of advertising: reach, frequency, creative, and cost. He is a strong advocate of this formula. He spends much of his time sharing these concepts as a national speaker and occasional guest on podcasts.