Pub. 11 2012-2013 Issue 3

N E W J E R S E Y C O A L I T I O N O F A U T O M O T I V E R E T A I L E R S F A L L 2 0 1 2 30 new jersey auto retailer B efore you cut out vendors that syndicate your inventory, or reduce your ad packages with the various online sites, ask yourself howwell your ownmarketing strategy is getting lo- cal consumers to look at your inventory. The answer may shock you. Research has shown that the more Vehicle Detail Pages (VDP) that are viewed by consumers from the dealer’s inventory, the more opportunities will be generated (calls, leads, chats, show- room ups). These opportunities relate directly to car sales. The relationship between VDP views and car sales has grown in importance as a result of the increase in the number of consum- ers searching for cars on the Internet. Dealers have two choices to in- crease VDP views. The first is to drive more traffic to their own website. The second is to syndicate their inventory where consumers shop for cars. Dealers often have a love hate relationship with third- party classified sites because they think that the advertising of their vehicles is “expensive” yet manda- tory for their success. So, are these syndication sites real- ly expensive? One way to feel better about your marketing investments is to see how much it costs you to generate VDP views on your own website. Then compare this cost to VDP view costs on the third-party sites you do business with. There is any easy way to calculate the VDP views on your dealer- ship website using Google Analytics, which can track the daily VDP views for new cars and used cars. Google Analytics provides “Advanced Segments” which allows you to filter the data based on specific criteria. In the Content Section of Google Analytics, you can clearly identify the number of VDP views for any period of time. In the example below, a dealer using a third-party website, has set up their Google Analytics with two segments, shown by the red arrow. For this dealership’s website, 63% of all page views were Vehicle Detail Pages: 40% were Used Car VDPs and 23% were New Car VDPs. How Well Does Your Marketing Budget Create VDP Views? BY BRIAN PASCH, PCG DIGITAL MARKETING As the New Year approaches, 2013 budget discussion should be coming to a close. Have you recently reviewed your marketing investments and decided to cut a few vendors out of the marketing mix for next year?