Why Call Tracking for Offline and Off-Site Sources Is Critical in Your Dealership

Call tracking isn’t a stranger in digital marketing, yet there are dealerships who haven’t considered it an essential piece of their advertising strategy. Auto dealerships use offline, third-party, and online marketing to get customers into their showroom, and while it's one thing to have your phone number on these channels, dealerships often forget to capitalize on this data beyond them. What most auto dealers don't realize is that they have an untapped source of first-party data readily available for leveraging.

Call tracking data is an untapped goldmine for marketing

If you’re still reading this and your dealership still hasn't implemented call tracking, you’re already missing out on crucial data about your shoppers. Every minute of the day, you need to be collecting vital information about your customers to connect the dots from their shopping journey starting with your BDC department answering incoming phone calls.

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If I’m in the market for a vehicle and I want my questions answered immediately, the first thing I’m going to do is call the dealership. While on the call, your team needs to be gathering knowledge about who the customer is and what they’re looking for to build their profile using your CRM. But behind the scenes, you don't know where they came from unless you have call tracking implemented. At the dealership, how are you going to tell if there’s going to be a busy time for phone calls and prepare for those times? The only way you can prepare for these calls is by having call tracking data to back up your employees and support your shoppers.

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What you might be thinking next is, “I already use Car Wars; I already use CallRail.” That’s not the point. What we’re talking about is that they’re used for different purposes. So sure, keep using Car Wars, keep using CallRail, but put in front of it a call tracking number that is used for marketing optimization. It’s simple. It’s easy. And it won’t stop the other call tracking number from doing what it needs to do and you’ll get the most out of both platforms.

Get the most leads and stop wasting money on what doesn't work

Your customer is probably not going to tell you that they saw or heard your advertisement when they’re on the phone with you. You really wouldn’t know unless you blatantly ask them, and that’s not likely going to happen. So what are you supposed to do then? I think you know by now that you’re supposed to get call tracking, but let me tell you why.

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You’ve been sold by channels such as radio station networks like iHeartRadio or car portals like CarFax that their leads are the best. But how do you really know? Let’s face it, they all claim that your closed sales are theirs. Using call tracking gives you a new level of transparency if and when those shoppers are actually engaged with that advertisement when they see or hear it, or when they visit the portal. Once you have this form of tracking, you can ensure that each of these advertising channels isn’t taking the credit for your website traffic and your closed leads.

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I think you get my point. Call tracking is going to give you all the information you need to take control of your data and your advertising. You’re going to look at where your shoppers are calling from and you’ll be able to choose which channels are worth putting your advertising dollars into. It’s a win-win if you’re getting quality leads while spending advertising dollars in the right places.

Retargeting done right

Let’s say a shopper called in from Google My Business. Does this mean you start serving them Facebook ads? No, you don’t. What you’re going to do is show these shoppers ads on Google’s Display Network. A person that uses Google to call is going to use Google when they’re searching for a car.

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The same goes for emails. You know that your customer is calling the phone number from an email that you sent out. Now you know that this customer reads your email campaigns and likes to communicate via email and through the phone. To make things clear, now you know you can retarget these customers through email campaigns and you shouldn’t be afraid to pick up the phone and follow up with this shopper.

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Don’t believe me? Well, Google found that 60% of car shoppers are more likely to call an auto dealership directly from the search engine results page and that adding a phone number to mobile search ads results in an average click through rate increase of 8%. If you’re serving search ads on Google’s advertising network with a call extension attached to it, you will know that half of the impressions you’ve received will want to call your dealership. Just by adding a phone number onto your advertisements, your dealership should find an increase in receiving solid leads for your BDC and sales department to follow up on.

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What this means is that if this shopper called using Google My Business, and then retargeted using a Google search advertisement and called from the ad, this means that the shopper is calling for a second time to your dealership. Google finds that 31% of consumers call more frequently when they’re ready to make a purchase. How does this percentage correlate to retargeting? It shows you that if a shopper is calling frequently, it means that they are more likely to make a purchase and your sales team should be reaching out to nurture this lead.

Key Takeaways

What you need to know:

• If you don’t have call tracking yet, you need to get on it now
• Multi-layer call tracking enables you to add a call tracking number on top of the one you already have
• Call tracking data gives auto dealers an abundance of shopper information to:
• Retarget callers based on where they’re calling from
• Obtain more leads and better optimize marketing strategies
• Take charge of your advertising and leads

Call tracking is an essential part of any digital marketing plan. It’s absolutely necessary that you get it installed so that you can connect your offline to online channels for the best experience for your employees and shoppers. We know for a fact that call tracking can only benefit your dealership without any intrusion, and it’s easy to implement. All you need to do is contact your call tracking vendor and you can get started.

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If you want to see what Orbee can do for you with call tracking, let’s get started.