Believe it or not, most dealers are flying mostly blind as to what marketing efforts are actually driving their sales because they are tracking only a fraction of the customer journey. Yes, you read that right, even in today’s digital and data driven times, the blind spot is huge.
Hard to believe? Well, you’re not the only one – we didn’t believe how big of a blind spot we were seeing either. So Cox Automotive independently commissioned Perficient to conduct a whitepaper to do research on what shifts have happened, or are happening, and make recommendations for smarter marketing measurements for our dealer partners as well as the industry to protect spend and drive more ROI.
And the findings, as well as stats were eye-opening… According to the newly released whitepaper from Perficient fueled by Clarivoy data, stats like how over 92% of sales are not tracked properly in a dealer’s CRM were uncovered. That’s a massive blind spot.
As a result, many dealerships are making advertising and spend decisions based on a narrow view of performance and missing critical opportunities to influence buyers earlier in the journey. It’s not that their data is wrong – it’s just incomplete. Many of those missed opportunities, these so-called ‘leaky leads,’ often go unnoticed in your CRM – hidden in phone calls, chats, or form and tool submissions. And when those interactions aren’t tracked, it becomes harder to meet customers where they are, or understand what brought them in.
Together let’s explore the limitations of your current approach to sales tracking, introduce the concept of Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) and uncover hidden opportunities for new ways for you to improve your marketing ROI to close the gap on that large blind spot.
First, a Little Background on this Game-Changing Research
It wasn’t just Autotrader seeing these large discrepancies on sales reporting, CRM gaps, attribution, and lack of knowledge of what was truly performing when it came to marketing spend. It’s been a hot topic for the automotive industry since independent data tracking agencies came onto the digital marketing data scene, which have become heightened over the past 5 years since the pandemic.
One of those leading automotive data agencies is Clarivoy, which Cox Automotive called on to independently supply data they collected to Perficient to conduct the whitepaper. Call it grading your homework, but we believe in having a neutral source of truth. The data collected by Clarivoy more clearly highlights the degree to which dealerships may fail to understand all the forces driving their sales: out of a larger data set of 1.18 million sales tracked by Clarivoy last year, over a third of them occurred without a lead conversion.2
Clarivoy found that over a third of 1.18 million tracked sales
occurred without a lead conversion.
The findings confirmed a significant portion of sales are influenced by touchpoints that are not captured by traditional lead-based tracking methods. In other words, most dealers are only seeing a small slice of the full buyer journey.
The Problem with Lead-Based Tracking
Many dealers still evaluate marketing success based on lead volume. But leads are just data points, not people. And most buyers never were identified as a lead in your CRM. Relying only on form submissions or asking, ‘how did you hear about us?’ narrows the view of your buyers. Without visibility into all touchpoints, you may miss what’s really driving sales. It’s time for dealers to move beyond leads and start measuring influence and engagement to truly understand marketing ROI.
Actions you can take:
- Audit your CRM: Identify how many sales originated from untracked sources.
- Stop relying solely on Cost Per Lead (CPL) as your Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
- Start asking: “What influenced this buyer’s journey?”
What Is Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA)?
Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) tracks every marketing touchpoint a customer interacts with – before, during, and after they engage with your dealership. Unlike first or last-touch attribution, which gives all credit to the initial or final interaction, MTA distributes credit across all touchpoints like marketplace listings, social ads, and YouTube reviews.
According to the whitepaper and Clarivoy data sets, in 2024 buyers interacted with an average of 62 touchpoints before purchase and spend over 7 hours researching online, engaging with nearly 4 distinct channels. Looked at altogether, MTA reveals the full buyer journey, allowing dealers to see the true impact of their marketing efforts. And when you have the full picture, you can make better decisions where to maximize and protect your spend.
What you should do next:
- Ask your marketing team if they’re using MTA.
- Identify which channels influence early and mid-funnel behavior roof top by roof top.
- Decide where you need to turn the dial up – leave it as is – turn down to protect your spend and maximize ROI.
- Connect with your Autotrader rep to uncover your channel ROI with MTA.
The Autotrader Example
We’d like to share something that hit home. While the independent whitepaper was being completed, it was determined that based on Clarivoy’s dataset, Autotrader influenced over 55% of sales, but only 4% of those showed up as leads.
“Autotrader influenced over 55% of sales in Clarivoy’s dataset,
but only 4% of those showed up as leads.”
Why is this a big problem for dealers? Because dealers relying on lead tracking alone would miss this entirely. And not knowing where your spend and traffic is coming from is like throwing darts blind at a dartboard. Reassessing your marketplace strategy and using MTA can uncover hidden value in your digital channels and show you where your budget focus should be.
Get started:
- Reassess your marketplace strategy by looking at the FULL lead tracking path.
- Use MTA to uncover hidden value in your digital channels.
- Shift your strategy, focus and budget toward channels that influence and not just convert.
For the Road Forward
Dealers can’t afford to ignore the 92% blind spot. With Multi-Touch Attribution, you’re no longer guessing, you’re seeing the full story. And most importantly, you’ll have the ability to protect and maximize your marketing spend to start measuring what actually matters.
It’s time to move beyond leads and start measuring what really matters: influence, engagement, and ROI. The data is there. Now it’s up to you to use it.
At Autotrader, we can help you fast-track a click-to-close. In today’s times you need to go where the shoppers are. And 7 out of 10 shoppers are on Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book.
Autotrader is considered best-in-class for a reason, especially as the #1 marketplace for better leads and higher profits. We have ready-to-buy shoppers and know what they want. Our goal is to match them with our dealer partners, driving quality leads that have the highest gross profit on average industry wide. We connect you with customers virtually, to move shoppers to you, so that you can focus on building and letting your brand shine.
See the Cox Automotive + Perficient Whitepaper
See and download the full findings on how to improve your marketing strategy
Sourcing:
2This data set, containing over 1.18 million sales, forms the basis for all multi-touch attribution insights presented in this
white paper. Insights were developed using Clarivoy’s platform and proprietary analysis of this data set. For more
information on the Clarivoy data, see the “Sources” section at the end of this white paper.
