A lot goes into picking out the best automotive marketing solutions for your business, between determining your strategy, figuring out your budget, and putting everything into effect. Whether you focus the majority of your efforts online or are spreading your efforts across digital and traditional platforms, you’ll need to be able to monitor trends in your data and see how effective your marketing efforts are. Luckily, there are a number of tools available to track your data and, specifically, how your customers are finding and interacting with your website. Not sure how to get started? No problem! Today, we’ll be discussing some key tools and how you can use them to monitor your success.
GA4 and Google Search Console
Google provides several tools to monitor the data within your website and in search results. Two of the most versatile and powerful tools you’ll encounter are GA4 and Google Search Console. Both are free to use and can collect up to sixteen months of data.
GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics, a service that tracks traffic as well as events, demographics, and behavioral patterns across your website. Are you unsure of where your potential customers are coming from? You can break down your users by acquisition, giving you a clearer picture of whether your customers know your brand when they first come to your site or if your organic efforts are paying off. Conversions are another critical measurement of online success, and in the latest version of Google Analytics, you’ll have multiple ways to look at them. GA4 is built around collecting information about interactions on a website. Take some time to check out the Events dashboard, where you can see counts of specific actions taken, as well as the Conversions report, which provides a further breakdown of the data based on what specifically you need to see.
Google Search Console focuses on how your website is being read, indexed, and represented by search engines. In addition to being able to see which URLs are being indexed, your Search Console dashboard will show which queries are generating the highest levels of impressions and clicks, if your content is featured in product or review snippets, and how your website is faring in terms of Core Web Vitals, a set of ranking factors based on your site’s overall user experience. Your Google Search Console account can be connected to your Analytics account in order to have a link between the data, which can be further broken down when you look at organic search traffic.
Social Media + Social Analytics
Social media is one of the most effective ways to connect with your target audience and customer base as a dealership. Whether you are utilizing Facebook and Instagram or beginning to post regularly on TikTok, getting started with the built-in analytics tools in each social media platform is easy and can provide immediate feedback on the effectiveness of your campaigns.
While different platforms may offer different lookback windows, you’ll get at least one month of data as well as engagement metrics, follower count, and data about who your followers are by demographic. With this, you can better understand and gauge performance and alter your strategy accordingly. Do photos or videos perform better? Are you getting more engagement when you post in the morning or just in time for the end of the workday? After gathering enough data, you can start to develop a posting schedule and content strategy that delivers the most results.
Email Marketing + Analytics
Do you send out periodic emails to your customer list in order to promote current specials or new arrivals in your dealership? Most email marketing platforms, such as Constant Contact, Hubspot, and MailChimp, include built-in analytics allowing senders to view opens, bounces, and unsubscribes per email sent. Many will also be able to provide marketing teams with averages for their specific industry as well as convenient templates and tips to help create more effective campaigns with higher engagement rates. Are you linking to your website from your newsletters or promotional emails? By looking at your analytics, you’ll get a better idea of where to place links to make it more likely for readers to click through.
Keyword Tracking (SEMRush)
The cornerstone of any organic marketing strategy is determining which keywords best fit your business needs and, therefore, which to focus on targeting. While you can start by adding content built around these keywords and incorporating certain phrases throughout your website, you’ll still need a way to see how your rankings are affected. By using a keyword tracking tool, you’ll be able to determine the starting point for your website’s search appearance as you watch the progress newer content makes as it is published, indexed, and ranked.
SEMRush is one of the most common tools used for this purpose, and it has a multitude of functions. Whether you are looking to see where your competition is landing, need help with further keyword research, or want to look for patterns and trends in your data, you’ll have exactly what you need to monitor progress and success.
Automotive Marketing with Wikimotive
Figuring out what methods to use for your automotive marketing strategy and which tools to utilize can be an overwhelming and time-consuming process. If you are unsure where to begin with your online marketing efforts, get in touch with Wikimotive today! Our team will perform an initial audit to determine where your website is currently succeeding in your SEO efforts and which areas can use improvement. If you choose to work with us, we will be able to provide you with easily-digestible, high-level data each month.