Last year around 16 million automobiles were sold in the US. To put it into perspective that’s enough cars to fill 21,333 Costco parking lots, sold in only one year. While many may hear this statistic and instantly dread their next trip to the grocery store, automakers view this as an opportunity. Using what I have learned from my recent Google Analytics Certification and Digital Marketing Class at Western Washington University, I’ll explore how web analytics help digital marketers understand the buyer journey and why these insights are key to the success of automotive companies.
Shopping for cars has never been easier for consumers, in fact thanks to CARVANA, you can now purchase cars straight from a vending machine. As you can imagine, the process for researching new cars has shifted as well. A recent study from Forrester found that over 90% of buyers conduct extensive online research before purchasing a car. By understanding what features potential buyers are looking for, digital marketers can use web analytics to tailor both ads and products in order to increase sales! Google Analytics now gives digital marketers the ability to track the buyer journey more closely than ever. Let’s take a look at how this works:
- As soon as google analytics is opened, marketers can see how many potential car buyers have opened their site, from where they are viewing it, and even how likely they are to churn, which can help them form valuable insights on user acquisition.
- Next let’s talk about user behavior. On the website, users interactions can be tracked through what is known as events. Our marketer notices significantly more events on the new hybrid model compared to the diesel. What could that show us? Possibly that customers are more interested in hybrid models or is it something else entirely?
- Finally Conversion, the step every marketer wants to see. Using Google Analytics, we see what vehicles customers are buying, what trim levels they are adding, and most importantly, if they are repeat customers.
Now that we got a good look at how Web Analytics programs such as Google Analytics can improve data collection, let’s shift gears (no pun intended) and look at what this means for automotive marketers.
Using important metrics such as age, location, preferences, and many more collected from the user journey, Marketers can start to form insights and implement changes. Starting off they can be used to identify areas of growth. Using metrics such as page views, marketers can see what vehicle features are being viewed repeatedly and purchased vs which ones are neglected. This can be a great way to choose what feature to promote in their next ad campaign. Taking a step further by combining acquisition and conversion metrics, marketers can identify the gender, age, and location of customers buying specific cars, creating insights that help them fine-tune future targeting.
We have seen how analytics can be used by the automotive industry to turn metrics into actionable insights. By utilizing this data, companies can reach the right customers, highlight the features that matter most, stay ahead of the competition, and sell more cars (filling more parking lots in the process).
Interested in learning more about marketing strategies? Explore more of my blog posts on my website.
Leave a Reply