Automotive dealers primarily advertise to sell cars and build brand awareness. Print publications have always met both desired marketing objectives but measuring the impact print has on selling cars has become complicated. This is due to the internet drastically changing the purchase funnel for shoppers.
The challenge for a publisher is showing a print ad was a catalyst for a purchase. The buyer has a variety of routes and sources of information. We have listed below normal routes.
- directly call the dealership
- go to the dealership’s physical location
- go to the dealership's website
- go to the print publication’s website
- search Google for the car they saw in the print ad
The option that precedes the actual contact of the dealer is never clear. According to C+R Research, Digital Influence in Automotive 2014, today’s shopper is influenced by 6-7 sources with 3 normally being online sources.
We have given a considerable amount of time trying to track and evaluate results auto dealers receive from our print and website products. Earlier this year, we had a auto dealer increase his spending over 2x the amount he had previously been spending in print. He also reverted back after this increase period to his previous spending level. This large increase in spending and then decrease gave us the perfect data to analyze. We analyzed four different time periods to chart the correlation between the increase in spending and contacts made to the dealer through our website. Our website’s url was not in the dealer’s print ads. This means our website arguably could have been the lowest source of contacts and definitely not the main source. The dealer’s print ads were predominantly full pages. The line charts below show this correlation. The number of contacts increased as spending increased and as the spending decreased the contacts decreased.
Our allySites software can give your company the ability to automatically import auto dealer inventories onto your website. We can build you a vertical automotive website or a horizontal marketplace with a variety of categories.
ABOUT C+R RESEARCH C+R Research is a consumer and market insights firm. For more than 50 years, the company has provided its clients with insights on the thinking behind consumer behavior in a variety of industries, including consumer packaged goods, financial services and retail.
