How call tracking makes a difference in the automotive sector

Case – Automotive

Whereas buying a car used to involve circa ten visits to a showroom, most people now use the internet to do much of the preliminary work. When visitors enter a showroom these days, they usually know exactly what they want. On average, a person looking to buy a car only visits a showroom once or twice.

In this case, we will take a closer look at a major car company with multiple locations in a single region. The car company sells new, second-hand and lease cars. It targets both consumers and businesses. The car company is an official dealer of Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda and Seat.

CHALLENGE

Modern car companies no longer face the challenge of selling a car to visitors of their showroom. Instead, the challenge is now to get potential customers into the showroom in the first place. To realise that, it is important to gain insight into the journey that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase.

The biggest challenge was gaining insight into all contact moments with a potential customer. Since many conversions occur by phone, a wealth of data was missing. The company only measured its online conversions. In addition to gaining more insight into what keywords in the Google Ads campaigns generate calls, there is also the challenge of acquiring insight into how the different portals (e.g. Marktplaats, AutoScout and AutoTrack) perform in relation to each other.

SOLUTION

The solution is dynamic call tracking in combination with offsite call tracking. With dynamic call tracking, every new website visitor is shown a unique telephone number, which grants insight into the referring traffic source. This reveals the traffic sources and keywords that generate call conversions. With offsite call tracking, you can measure traffic that contacts your organisation directly via e.g. a portal such as AutoTrack. It lets you measure how often people contact your business directly, without first visiting your website. By combining these two call tracking methods, you get a complete overview of all your incoming telephone traffic.

RESULT

By utilising dynamic call tracking in combination with offsite call tracking, the car company has acquired more insight into its various contact moments. For example, it became clear that there are major differences in the number of conversions generated by the different portals. AutoTrack generates highly valuable leads that often call for more information or to schedule a test drive. Marktplaats, on the other hand, generates less valuable leads.

The company has also acquired more insight into the results of its Google Ads campaigns. Whereas the organisation used to only measure its online conversions, it is now clear what keywords actually generate conversions. By measuring both online and call conversions, the car company is able to calculate a reliable Return On Investment.

Via Google Ads, the following information is available about the period during which call tracking was used. The insight into its call conversions allowed the company to implement optimisations based on valuable keywords. This has resulted in a higher conversion rate and lower costs per conversion.

With the help of call tracking, the car company acquired…

… insight into all contact moments

… insight into leads generated by portals

… reliable information regarding its ROI