Ted Ings Presents, Fixed Ops Roundtable: Data Intelligence
The future of online marketing is here and Owen Moon is ready to lead the charge! Owen talks data intelligence, engagements, and conversions in this month’s Fixed Ops Round Table. What is the difference between engagements and conversions and what call to actions actually make an impact on sales? Find out in this informative discussion on the ins and outs of fixed ops marketing.
00:00:00
Owen Moon: The presentation that I have put together is called using data intelligence in your online service marketing. So, you know, we really feel like that intelligence is something that, you know, when we first started, you know, nobody was doing online service marketing. So for us, it really became an opportunity for us to, you know, kind of help evolve our dealerships and kind of move that direction. But with that became the responsibility to actually showcase the results and really show dealers how to know if their marketing is working. So today we’re going to focus on a few different things. The first thing I want to focus on is the difference between online engagements and conversions. And then I got to talk a little bit about website page views and how they actually correlate to shopper engagement and then end with focusing on those actionable conversions that actually drive revenue. So let’s talk a little bit about the difference between online engagements and conversions because I think that’s really where it needs to start is really we all need to be talking the same language here. And so what I did was I went to the dictionary. I mean, let’s go to the definition and actually see exactly what is the difference between engagements and conversions. So engagements, by definition, is when a service customer actually clicks on a specific button on the dealership’s websites to take further action. In comparison, a conversion occurs when a service visitor on your website actually completes a desired goal, such as maybe booking an appointment or calling the dealership. So typically, while they’re relatively different, engagements typically lead to conversions, and I’ll get more into that as we get going. So when we look at kind of the primary online engagements that our company really strives to help our dealerships and really looks at as really the value engagements, there’s really four of them that stand out. Schedule service, click to call, save the phone and then learn more.
00:02:18
Ted Ings: And by the way, there’s a big difference between engagement and conversion, as we all know.
00:02:24
Owen Moon: Yeah, absolutely. And some other online engagements that we’ve seen out there. And I’ll get and I’ll touch on these a little bit as request more info. Obviously, the old print coupon, texting or emailing a coupon, and then even that old send a friend right, send something to a friend, which I’ve seen on websites as we do our audits and that type of thing. So let’s just kind of break these down a little bit, right? If you look at our primary online engagements, obviously schedule service, we all know what that means. It’s giving online service customers who are on the website the ability to schedule an appointment. But here’s the big thing. Utilizing your service scheduler software, as an industry, we are in the time schedule or the CDCR schedule, all these different schedulers. We’re in there every day utilizing that to help us manage our business. So why would we not use that same infrastructure to help those online customers schedule, schedule service? The next thing is click to call. Right now, this is obviously only for those mobile customers, but our goal with the click to call engagement is to connect those customers directly, either with your service, BDC or with your appointment coordinators. I’ve seen both of them really be successful. The third thing is save the phone. Now this is really a secondary conversion from where we want to have customers take action, but it’s also a way for customers to save the service offers to a device like their smartphone or there, or there may be a tablet that they’re used to saving already, right? So Apple Wallet, Android Pass, people are using this. I mean, we were just talking about the NFL, right? I don’t load all my NFL tickets to my phone before I get to the stadium. MoviePass has concert tickets. All of these are ways that we take and allow customers to download information. So utilizing that same two phone functionality as we found to be very popular amongst online service customers. Learn more now, learn more is kind of unique to us, and it’s something that we’ve really taken pride in, that we’re creating an opportunity to inform, educate and recommend services to those customers that are looking for that. They want to know what it’s going to take to keep their vehicle running in great condition throughout their vehicle ownership. And so to provide them with content and information on your website, that does a good job of explaining this. Creating those recommendations, we feel, is a very valuable tool. And there’s other reasons why that’s valuable that I’ll get into in a little bit later in this presentation. Now let’s talk about some of those secondary conversions, right? Request more info. I’ve seen this on coupons, on the website, or on the service specials page. Typically, this is one of the website providers, and it’s primarily a variable conversion rate. It’s what people use to get more information about a specific vehicle. All the website companies have done is sort of taking that same CTA or that call to action and moved it over as a button for your service customers. So it doesn’t really apply like it does on the sales side. Oh, the dreaded print coupon, right? We have had print coupons on our coupons or on the offers as a dealership community or as an industry for years, right? But the problem is they were designed for the desktop user. Now we ran some numbers recently and about 70 percent of all of our dealerships that we work with. Service focused website traffic is actually mobile, so that print coupon is really no longer a relevant digital metric. And if anybody tells you that it is, then obviously they don’t have the same kind of data that we have access to, you know, with our dealer base. I don’t see anybody printing from their smartphones. It’s really hard to really, especially if you’re out and about and you’re on your phone, nobody’s printing those coupons. So let’s eliminate it. I mean, unless you’re in a rural market where you’re still getting quite a bit of printing going on. I see that once in a while. But if you’re talking overall or big picture, that print coupon is definitely not a relevant CTA in today’s online service marketing environment. Texting or emailing a coupon now, really, these are best utilized for customer retention or loyalty strategies. And since most online service marketing focuses on like conquest shoppers, right, we feel like texts and emails should be avoided. There’s some rules and laws obviously that go into, you know, spam laws and double options and things like that. So you have to be careful on that. So you put your dealership at risk if you’re using some out-of-the-box text and email coupons scenarios. But more importantly, it’s just not a good engagement opportunity for, you know, those online service customers that might not have a relationship with your cost with your dealership. And then that last one that I wanted to touch on is just to send a friend, you know, I’ve made jokes about this for years that, you know, you might have that one friend out there. That’s pretty cheap, but you’re probably not going to email him a 1990 or 1995 oil change coupon for his car. It’s just not. It’s just not a relevant CTA. So let’s just get it out of there. The more stickers that we have, the worse your opportunity or the less the opportunity to actually get the deal or the customer to take the action that we want. So keep it up to those primary engagements that I mentioned before are always your best bet that we’ve seen, you know, through our dealership partners. So what happens is that you can start to track it right? You can track how many people are engaging with the schedule service button, how many people are engaging with the Learn More button. All of these, you know, really tell the story and help us use data intelligence when we’re making those decisions down the road on what price do we want to have that offer at what, you know, what offers do we want to highlight that type of thing? So kind of sum this up, engagement should be should lead the online service shopper towards an actual actionable conversion. The print coupon is not a relevant digital engagement or conversion metric today. And finally, email and text are just not conversions, not good conversions, because there’s no guarantee that that shopper will ever take additional action. So if you’re a customer and you send an email, say they email me this offer, they might think they’re done now. They’ve forgotten about you and they’ve moved on. They might never get back to that email to be able to look at it and take some talk, some action. So. So that’s kind of the first thing, right? The next thing I want to talk about is website page views. Means shopper engagement. So let’s talk a little bit about the website, page views, and kind of in the past, how they’ve gotten maybe a bad stigma in digital marketing. The reason why is that page views in the past were a sign of people not really knowing what they were getting, what they were looking for, or knowing where they were going on the website. Obviously, that’s changed. And I’ll show you guys some examples of how we’re doing that. So what we’re doing is actually creating that online service shopping funnel. So in this case, page views actually lead your online service customers toward the appointment. And then the last thing is just sort of that flow right service menu page or the specials page to an overview or detail page. And then finally to an appointment if there’s a strategy if there’s an infrastructure on your website that that moves that customer down the line. And the way we look at our fixed ups only traffic coming into your Google Analytics page, views are definitely a steal and engagement metrics that we use in our strategy. So here’s some of the engagements that we focus on, right? Organic service focus on website visitors. Now, this is the traffic that’s earned from ranking on Google and other search engines. We also look at service focused website sessions. This is how many online service shoppers actually visited those specific service focused pages. Another big metric that we look at is the same thing service focus, but in this case, those page views, right? How many total pages did an online shopper visit that was, you know, from your service focused pages? And then the last thing is actually getting into very specific pages, right? So online service shopper goes to your tier content or goes to your accessories content. We want to know which service is actually getting the most engagements. So that’s another engagement metrics that we look at. So here’s an example, right? This is a dealership that’s been with us for quite a few years, actually, and we started in August of 2018. And so what we did is we looked at kind of a two-year window. We said, Hey, from 2017 to 2019, let’s compare that to the same month timeframe of 2020 and 2021. As you can see, the orange bar was the old baseline and the blue bar is now the new baseline. So ultimately, when you build this content on your website and you create this infrastructure that the search engines can find and actually start to drive in more sessions and more service focused website traffic, you can see over those two year situations where we’re we’re drastically increasing the amount of visibility that we’re giving your dealership and then bringing more of those people into the website at some point, you know, that may level off a little bit over time. But then what we can look at as we can look at entrances, right entrances are big because if you have that one to one click, if I’m looking for information on a Honda Accord transmission service and I click right into a transmission page, there’s going to be fewer page views, but it’s going to be a better one to one relationship in that customer is going to find what he’s looking for. So let’s talk about the last key point I want to make, and that’s focusing on actionable conversions that actually drive revenue. Now, really that comes down to you, especially when you’re talking with your online service shoppers click to call, right? Since most online service shoppers don’t have a relationship with your dealership. This is a great opportunity for you to build value or build trust and build authority, you know, with that potential customer. And then obviously, the scheduled service, right, work directly inside your service schedule software to ensure that your service team knows when that customer is scheduling their appointment. No reason to send them to an email or, you know, try to use some other scenario. Let’s drive them right into what we are all used to using. And that’s your x time, your CD. All these different schedulers that are out there. So it kind of looks like this, right? And this is where our clothes service focused website traffics. Excuse me, website page views. Lead to increased website engagements, which leads to more actionable conversions. They’re going to drive revenue, you know, and again, this is all from an online source perspective. We do a great job of talking to our past customers. We have customer loyalty, customer retention strategies that we use every day. But you know what? That’s only going to get us so much business because it’s a finite market. What we want to do is help you expand, and get out to the masses. Let’s talk to maybe some of those off brand customers. People that live in your area that maybe didn’t know that you serviced their off brand vehicle. You might be a Honda store, but you want that Toyota business, you want that chubby business. And so ultimately, when you bring in more website page views, you’re going to increase those website engagements and that’s going to lead to more appointments and more bottom line revenue. So that 10, I’m going to pass it back to you. See if you had any questions for me. Otherwise, I appreciate the time today.
00:14:41
Ted Ings: Everyone, you know how to reach out and more. And this information is up here on the screen at the bottom of the ticker, his phone number, and his email address as well. Fixed UP’s digital I wrote this down on driving actionable conversions that drive revenue at your dealership. So if that’s what you want everybody and it is Owens the man to reach out to on Moon traffic stops digital here today, the fixed up’s roundtable. And oh, and happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.
00:15:09
Owen Moon: You as well, sir. Thank you.
