This session, originally presented by C-4 Analytics on the Digital Dealer platform, addresses a critical need for modern dealerships: evolving performance measurement criteria. In a tightening or flattening market, traditional metrics—like simply seeing website traffic or VDP views increase—can be misleading. Sophisticated dealers are moving past vanity metrics to align their digital strategy with true business goals.
For years, the industry measured success reactively using basic metrics that don't prove causation or attribution:
Website Traffic, Time on Site, Pages Viewed
Cost per Click (a variable metric that doesn't account for market)
VDP Views (Vehicle Detail Page views)
The historical failure to achieve true attribution forced the industry to chase these proxy metrics. However, a dealership could see website traffic decrease, but sales increase, wrecking traditional measurement systems while making for a very profitable year.
Leading dealers are moving toward a comprehensive measurement system that connects both offline and online data to prove ROI.
These are the non-negotiable metrics that must drive the conversation:
Sales Performance: Tracking new and used vehicle sales and Fixed Ops performance.
OEM Reports (Market Share): Critical for understanding the fight:
Regional Sales Ranking: How your store performs against on-brand rivals.
Pump-in / Pump-out: Tracking how many new vehicles are registered in your Primary Market Area (PMA) that you didn't sell (pump-ins) versus what you sell into your rivals' areas.
Competitive Make Registrations: Tracking the sales performance of key competitors (e.g., Ram's growth against Ford and Chevy).
Mystery Shop Results: Simple process metrics are the best predictors of immediate sales:
Callback Time: Did the prospect get a call back within 20 minutes?
Online Lead Ratios: Measuring the ratio from Lead Submission to Appointment Set to Appointment Kept to Sale. These ratios directly determine the cost-per-acquired customer.
These metrics are being adapted to better reflect a shopper's movement through the buying funnel:
Forms and Calls: Measuring forms submitted and calls tracked (as phone calls are making a comeback when presented as a sole option).
Impression Share by Micro-Moment: The industry is moving toward measuring impression share across the entire Google Buying Moments (e.g., "Is it right for me?", "Am I getting a deal?"). This helps dealers understand their mindshare across all stages of the customer journey, not just for simple campaigns.
Store Visits: Google's Store Visits metric is essential. Though not tied to exact clicks, this advanced modeling estimates how digital advertising (including viewable impressions) influences visits to your physical location. Ignoring high-bounce conquest campaigns because of a poor abandonment rate could mean pulling out of a campaign that is actually driving hundreds of physical visits.
If your digital agency cannot support you with these key metrics, it may indicate their capabilities are not aligned with your goal of increasing sales, share, and profit margin in 2020. Give the GM what they want (simple performance metrics) but weave in the sophisticated data points needed to make informed, high-ROI decisions.
For a deeper dive into these topics and to hear directly from Rob Stoesser, Vice President of OEM, watch the full webinar below.