Making sure that your offline marketing efforts for your dealership can still be measured and have an impact on your online initiatives is crucial to your marketing success. Many of our dealers are very firm in their belief around focusing on traditional marketing strategies such as word-of-mouth, which is great! Online elements, like your website, can help you ensure your offline marketing efforts are paying off as well.

Marketing Land posted a helpful article mapping out some great ways to track offline marketing with online tools. We take a look at them in more detail below.

Google Analytics

Setting up Google Analytics is essential to tracking your offline marketing success, and many of the specific ways to ensure your offline marketing is working that we list below utilize Google Analytics to determine your success. If you’re strategic in integrating your website into your offline marketing initiatives, Google Analytics will show you hard data in relation to those efforts.

In order to set up these analytics, you need to start by installing a tracking code on your website so Google can pull data from your website. Google will give you an almost overwhelming amount of data and results from you site. Think about talking to your CAM or our Search Services team who are extremely well-versed in Google Analytics.

Specific URLs

This technique is considered one of the easiest ways to track your offline results. Creating a specific landing page and URL for your offline strategies is a no-brainer. These links should also be short and easy to memorize. If you can’t make them shorter for some reason, use a link shortening tool such as Google’s link shortener here.

An example of how your dealership could utilize specific links is if you go to an in-person event for face-time with prospective customers you’re likely bringing some marketing collateral with you, such as flyers, cards, etc. If you list the specific URL of this landing page on these marketing pieces, you can see how many people visited it after the event. You can also do something similar for print ads. Then you can compare and contrast how much traffic is coming from these efforts and strategize around what approach is working better.

Tying this method into Google Analytics, you will not only be provided with the number of visitors, but you will also be given deeper information into their behavior. For example, it will show the average time spent on a page, bounce rate and conversions.

Non-Referral Traffic

Looking at the non-referral traffic, or rather the direct traffic, to your website is another big indicator of your offline marketing strategies being a success. Direct traffic essentially means that the visitor didn’t come through an online ad campaign, a regular Google search or social media. Instead, they directly looked up your website by typing it in a browser. Therefore, the visitor is already familiar enough with your dealership to know the website and actively search for it. If you’ve been pushing your website in offline marketing efforts, such as in-person conversations, ads, etc., then you will see results in this area of analytics.

You can find this in your Google Analytics by utilizing the following steps:

1. Go to your Google Analytics
2. Click on “Acquisition” on the left-hand toolbar
3. Select “Overview” from the drop-down menu
4. Select a timeline (in the upper right-hand corner) that begins with the date when you started your offline marketing initiative
5. Look at the “Direct” hits to your website

Here’s an example of what you may see:

Discount Codes

If you’re using a discount code with a promotion you’re offering, this is a great way to track the progress of that campaign.

For example, if you’re running an ad in your local newspaper, list a specific code that can be entered on your website or by calling. Then you’ll know where the traffic is coming from. If you’re running multiple ads at the same time, such as TV, radio, print or flyers, it’s a good idea to have a separate code for each so you can gauge where the most traffic is coming from.

—

Want more information on how you can set these kinds of features up, or better integrate your offline marketing efforts into your online ones? Speak with your designated Client Advocate Manager or reach out to us at marketing@commercialwebservices.com.