Many dealerships invest heavily in their marketing and advertising campaigns. But they are only of real value if the dealer knows exactly which customers they have reached and at what stage they are at in the buying journey, writes Alex Wright.
In order to do that, they need to be able to track the customer across all online and offline touchpoints, and measure which channels best generate showroom visits, sales and aftersales bookings.
In terms of strategy, Waylands Automotive has focused on the top of the funnel, shifting both its budget and attention there, long before a customer is ready to configure a car or look at their finance options.
To build a long-term, sustainable marketing approach, the motor retail group now has to plan for longer, more educational journeys that build trust, not just traffic.
“You do see high enquiry volumes, but you’ve got to do a lot more work in terms of nurturing those things and educating them, about the brand heritage, about some of the great tech – and that’s a more protracted sales journey,” said Vicky Hart, marketing director at Waylands Automotive.
Beyond clicks and lead counts
Carol Fairchild, COO, CitNOW Group, said that gone are the days when dealers could measure marketing success in clicks, impressions and lead counts. With tighter margins, sharper competition and volume alone no longer covering the gap, she said that retailers need to know precisely what is selling cars, servicing and parts.
“The question senior leaders want answered isn’t how many leads came in, it’s how many converted, into which part of the business, and why some did while others didn’t,” said Fairchild. “Answering that means looking beyond the last click before conversion and tracking every customer interaction, online and offline, to understand what separates a lead that buys from one that goes cold.
Fairchild said that the key issue for dealerships is the proliferation of systems, bought at different times for different problems and never joined up. She said that a CRM, DMS and other enquiry and marketing tools count for little if they don’t share information with each other, and every system that sits outside the flow is another place where a customer’s history goes missing.
“Increasingly, it’s the CRM where the commercial value gets created,” said Fairchild. “More than just a system of record: it’s what lets a retailer spot an opportunity, trigger the right engagement and follow a customer from their first enquiry through to their next service booking. Dealers who treat the CRM as the hub of that ecosystem, rather than one tool among many, are the ones converting more leads into sales and retaining customers for longer.
“Only when you have this information together can you understand behavioural signals which are a powerful predictor here: a customer who books a test drive is 70% more likely to convert, and one who watches a video is 21% more likely to convert. Having this data at your fingertips by group, brand, region is key to drive sales.”
Fairchild added it’s also important to remember that not every lead is of the same quality, and treating them all the same risks wasting a sales team’s time on enquiries that are unlikely to convert. The dealers seeing the strongest returns, she said, are scoring leads by intent and prioritising accordingly, meaning that the highest-scoring leads get attention first.
Automating without losing people
Turning leads into sales isn’t just about tracking results more accurately either, said Fairchild. It’s about showing how automation removes the manual effort standing between a lead and a response, she said.
“The value of automating the routine chasing, qualifying and acknowledging is that it frees the sales team for the moments that actually need a person: the high-intent enquiry, the part-exchange conversation, the customer weighing up a specific vehicle,” said Fairchild.
“Those are the points where a human in the loop personalises the experience and builds the trust that closes a deal, and no automated sequence replicates that. Used well, the combination of AI, speed and automation is what turns leads into faster, more predictable sales – and puts people in front of the customers where they make the difference – rather than a cost dealers simply have to absorb.”
Connecting dealership systems
Keyloop’s chief strategy officer Tim Smith said that the biggest barrier to tracking customer interactions stems from not having systems that connect effectively. The inevitable by-product, he said, is that the retailer and the customer having to repeatedly re-enter information, causing both friction and delay.
“We have already seen multiple European countries calling for, and implementing, legislation to ban tracking pixels without explicit consumer consent, which highlights the need for retailers to rely on a centralised store of customer information and behaviour,” said Smith.
Among the touchpoints that are increasingly difficult to track, said Smith, are those across large language models (LLMs); something retailers have already seen with increasing drops in organic search traffic as a result of AI search.
To prevent further losses in traffic, he said that retailers need to introduce innovated AI conversation agents. Hosting their own AI agent that can act as another member of the sales team, he said, offers customers more than a standard unaffiliated LLM does, providing the ability to search and recommend live stock and book appointments for test drives.
Smith added that many retailers still measure and record marketing metrics which hold little relevance compared to customer car-buying behaviours. Looking solely at click-through rates and cost-per-click, he said, can mean that retailers miss the bigger picture, sometimes ignoring showroom visits and the rising use of AI agents.
“Cost-per-lead is fundamental to assessing the success of any campaign; the lower the marketing spend per lead, the more efficient dealers’ campaigns will be,” said Smith. “But retailers should be tracking the underlying metrics independently rather than aggregating, as this can result in the causes of wasted budget being hidden. Retailers should establish benchmarks for success to compare against, and then continuously monitor and adjust their campaign efforts.
“We typically say that a lead-to-sale conversion rate above six per cent for vehicle sales suggests strong lead handling within the sales department, whereas a rate below four per cent points to process problems, not just issues with marketing.
“A strong conquest rate demonstrates to a retailer whether they are growing and reaching new audiences. Retailers are tuned in to the importance of maintaining loyal customers, but the value of reaching new prospective customers is not to be ignored. Lower performance across these areas highlights wider issues beyond the marketing campaigns; improving sales workflows and efficiency drives stronger conversion than increasing spend.
“The reason most dealerships struggle to measure any of these metrics accurately is structural. Marketing platforms track digital behaviour. CRM systems track lead handling. The dealer management tools tracks sales outcomes. These three systems rarely share data in real time, and without that connection, you can’t close the loop between campaign spend and sales revenue.
The gap in enquiry-to-sale performance almost always comes down to response speed, lead quality scoring, and follow-up consistency, none of which are visible if the CRM and DMS aren’t integrated. Without a connected data system, attributing a customer becomes guesswork to know which campaigns are driving tangible results.”
Identifying genuine buyer intent
Autotrader has developed its Buying Signals programme, a consumer intelligence tool designed to help retailers better understand the intent behind an enquiry, identify and prioritise leads.
Since its launch, more than one million enquiries have been enriched with Buying Signals, giving retailers greater visibility of buyer behaviour and helping them identify which customers are most engaged in the purchase process.
“Over the last 12 months, the product has continued to evolve, giving retailers increasingly richer insight into where buyers are in their journey and the actions they’re taking along the way,” said Karolina Edwards-Smajda, chief product officer at Autotrader.
“By bringing together signals such as the vehicles a buyer has viewed, saved and engaged with, Buying Signals provides valuable context around their needs, preferences and readiness to act.
“That helps retailers prioritise follow-up more effectively, qualify opportunities earlier and have more relevant conversations from the outset. As the product continues to evolve, we’re giving retailers increasingly richer insight into the behaviours and actions that indicate genuine purchase intent.”
Edwards-Smajda said that the challenge for retailers today isn’t simply collecting more data, but rather connecting online activity with real-world buying behaviour.
“Buyers leave valuable signals throughout their journey, from the vehicles they view and save, to the finance options they explore and the enquiries they submit,” said Edwards-Smajda. “Bringing those interactions together helps retailers build a clearer picture of buyer intent and better understand where a customer is in their purchase journey before they ever step onto the forecourt.
“The goal isn’t to track every click in isolation. It’s to connect those digital touchpoints to meaningful outcomes, helping retailers understand which buyers are showing the clearest signs of purchase intent, where they’re in their journey and how best to support them next.”
In terms of identifying which channels best generate showroom visits, sales and aftersales bookings, Edwards-Smajda said that it was key to understand what activities are driving meaningful engagement and are, ultimately, contributing to sales outcomes.
“That means looking at the quality of interactions, the level of buyer intent being demonstrated and whether those buyers are progressing through the purchase journey,” said Edwards-Smajda. “The challenge is connecting those digital interactions to real-world outcomes.
“The more retailers can understand the intent behind a buyer’s actions, the easier it becomes to identify which activity is creating genuine sales opportunities rather than simply generating traffic.”
This issue will be explored further during AM’s free webinar, Identifying the innovations that count, at 2pm on Thursday, 24 September.
Our expert panel will examine how dealership leaders can distinguish technology that produces a meaningful return from tools that merely add another layer to an already crowded technology stack.
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