The best 5 internet reports for dealers

How can you tell if your internet strategy is working? The only way is to get the right reports and use them in the right way to get results.

But there are stacks of different reports you can get on your internet audience, traffic and trends. You don’t have time to trawl through them all. So which reports should you pay most attention to? 

Given the importance of the digital strategy, these are the top 5 reports that will provide the right ammunition to keep your teams and vendors accountable. 

Dealers need their reports to answer 3 questions:

1.      Invest or not?
2.      Insource or outsource?
3.      How do we hold our sales and marketing teams accountable?

The 5 top reports are:

1.      SEO
2.      Inventory Classified Report
3.      Website Analytics
4.      Lead Handling Scoring Matrix
5.      ROI – Revenue by Source Report

SEO Report:

- Key is to use a third party solution – typically Google Analytics (GA)
- Enter in the keywords that you think customers are using to find your website and then track how your site is ranking in effectiveness. 
- GA will tell you if your traffic is going up or down for each keyword. 
- GA can track across many different search engines, such as Bing, Google, Yahoo, and others.
- Tools like seomoz.com can show rankings each week for domains.
- Domain Authority Report – shows how “authorities” your domain will be considered over competing domains for keywords.

•  You can put your competitors in here and it will show you how you fit.
•  Higher ranking authority means higher SEO rank.
• The key metric for Domain Authority is inbound links.

Inventory Classified Reports:

- These reports show how many times a car is listed in a search result and how many times it is clicked to view detail. You should know your Search Engine Result Page view to Vehicle Detail View ratio. It will vary for each type of car (new, used, etc.)
- A good report will track this to leads generated and visits into the dealership. Know your numbers, if they are going up or down based on the strategy you are taking.
- Baseline your reports – every dealership/car type is unique and cannot be easily compared to others.
- Focus on doing better week on week.

Website Analytics for Advertising and Paid Keywords:

- Website analytics shows the aggregated traffic, but these same reports will show you the return on your investment for each campaign. 
- Tag each campaign with metadata to be sure you are measuring the source.
- These reports are setup around “goals” which can be anything from a homepage visit to a view on a particular car. For most dealerships, the goal is a lead sent. 
- Key analytic points are Number of Visits, Cost of Campaign, Number of Page Impressions, Click-Through Ratio, Cost Per Click, % of New Visitors, Bounce Rate, Goal Conversion Rate, Cost per Conversion. 
- Bounce Rate is key – not too high, not too low. Working this number will have the biggest effect on conversions. 
- A/B-test your campaigns to understand what is working and what is not.
- Focus on ROI!

Process/Lead Handling Score Card

- All internet sales people need to be properly trained. Simply assuming these staff know what to do - or treating these leads the same way as a walk-in - will not work.
- Managers must continually score sales team to ensure they are meeting certain criteria that deliver proven success.
- Not managing leads correctly will COST the company money.
- Metrics could include:

• How fast did they respond?
• Were they transparent in price/options/availability/trade?
• Did they provide vehicle options?
• Did they provide links to other info?
• Did they supply the advantages of product or dealership?
• Did they make an appointment request?
• Were they professional and polite?
• Was a long term follow up performed?

57% of leads NOT from dealership sites will close within 30 days after the lead is sent in.

ROI Report:

- The final report tallies all the others together to understand the total cost of each investment and the return.
- The report should cover SEM, SEO, Display, Facebook, and Referral (such as Carsguide.com.au)
- Impressions, Costs, CTR, Visits, Conversions, Leads, Closing %, Deals, Gross per users, Total ROI for channel.

Carsguide’s Chief Technical Officer Joey Caisse cherry-picked the best of the workshops at the annual NADA convention in Los Angeles. He’ll be presenting executive summaries of the best of the convention over the next couple of weeks.