One of the most famous stories about the Wild West was the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. There have been books and even famous movies written about it. The tale of the Earps, Doc Holliday, Clairborne, the Clantons, and McLaury brothers will always live in our history. But, as much as we believe in that story, most of it isn’t true. In fact, a gun!ght with eight people lasted 30 seconds, and it didn’t take place in the O.K. Corral. Interesting fact, yes? Maybe there are parallels in the marketing world.
When your marketing manager or agency talks to you about clicks or traffic to the site and how everything looks “healthy,” I dare you to ask them if they know whether it sells more cars?
This article is to help you navigate vendors that are hiding behind numbers that you don’t understand entirely or glaze over when reviewing your digital advertising month – that is engaging, relevant, and easy for you to digest and to understand how it affects your sales and bottom line.
For example, who cares how many clicks a campaign gets if the clicks do not convert? And when I say convert, I do not mean a goal completion based on activity on the website (i.e., a scroll, time on site, or went to another page.) I mean, how many people converted to a lead.
That is called a “User Conversion Rate” and means that out of all your users on the website during the time period you are looking at, how many of them clicked to call, initiated a text, a chat conversation, filled out a form lead or go far enough down the DR tool to become a lead. The hardest lead to get is a true conversion on your site.
How many of those did that “Healthy” campaign that provided 598 clicks into your site yield?
Why is this not your typical conversation with an agency? I think it’s easier to play the “blame game” on the website for not converting. You see, a website provider does just that, provides a website. Some of them are terri!c at helping you optimize its lead performance, and others, well, not so much. It stands to reason why an agency can say, “We drove the traffic. It’s all here! 5,678 clicks into your site!” I can’t speak for why you’re not seeing more leads and sales. You will have to ask your website rep. I am, however, calling BS on that conversation.
Someone has to stand up and say, these two things go hand in hand. I think more agencies need to dig deeper and be more holistic and accountable as to whether the site converts. We have seen sites convert up to 8% of users to leads. That is incredible! A well-designed website optimized for customer engagement that is clean, easy to navigate, and provides a frictionless journey for a customer can see eight out of 100 visitors engaging. That means visitors who initiate a chat, fill out a trade-in or buy my car form, maybe a finance form, a check availability form, start a text thread, are inspired to hit the click to call button and start a conversation with you about buying a car, truck, or SUV. When it is working right, it is a beautiful thing.
Here are a few things to consider:
- Start tracking leads from your digital ads more than clicks.
- Have a professional website optimization specialist set up your site to convert better.
- Sit back and count the dollars as you talk to more leads (customers) because they did not just visit your site; they engaged with it.
While the Wild West isn’t the World Wide Web, it is still the Wild West (in a way). But you can win every shootout with a little help and a solid strategy – whether it happens at the O.K. Corral or otherwise.
Originally published in the March/April 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.