There is growing discussions within the auto parts retail community about decreasing Return On Investment (ROI) of digital marketing channels.
Not all online marketing campaigns are inefficient. But many are unprofitable, depending on how campaigns are managed.
Every marketing channel have it’s unique level of reach, performance, measurements, and tactics.
Believe it or not, many channels are extremely unprofitable for online retailers. But that’s not to say they are ineffective in secondary functions to build brand awareness and engagement.
Every channel serves a purpose in eCommerce — the trick is to figure out which channel does what for your business.
How far down the rabbit hole does it go?
It depends on how efficient your eCommerce business is being run, how are campaigns managed, and how data is collected and analyzed.
We’ll dive into the details in this article.
The appetite to spend more across digital marketing channels is increasing.
Many automotive retailers are allocating and increasing ad spend on Google Ads, Display, Facebook, etc.
After all, customers are spending more time researching, reviewing, and buying parts online — and it’s not slowing down.
However, they are working tirelessly to figure out the proper marketing channel mix.
The simple answer is to spend in channels that are generating the highest ROI. Right?
Not exactly. “But Derek, that’s common sense.” Is it?
Let’s say your Google Ads generates the highest ROI in your marketing channel dashboard.
Are you sure that the ad wasn’t the second or third touch point your customer clicked on before buying? Or maybe it was.
It’s not the clear anymore, is it?
My friends, that is the recipe that every automotive auto parts retailer must figure out.
As a result, each “ingredient,” or marketing channel must be evaluated and audited so you can create the ideal dish!
Overspending without proper attribution
A big mistake is averaging the averages.
Remember what I said earlier? Not all marketing channels are created equal.
Setting up your analytics (Google Analytics or other tools) is critical.
The key to creating an effective automotive online marketing strategy is precise data collection and analysis of website data.
Therefore, how you set up your tracking pixel to collect visitor sources, page interactions, customer engagement touch points, forms, and paid marketing channels.
Setting up tracking pixels correctly to capture all the necessary data you need takes time. But that’s no excuse to doing it right.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Once you set up your website analytics, you’ll begin to get clarity on your channel performance.
As a result, you can allocate advertising dollars strategically to maximize your ROI.
Wrapping it up
I estimate that over 85% of the automotive eCommerce sites in the United States do not have GA properly configured. Large retailers are not excluded from this estimate.
As a result, many automotive auto part etailers are wasting up to 40% of their marketing budgets.
They don’t have the data to inspect the outcomes of their marketing investments.
However, by setting up your analytics to measure traffic to sale accurately, your marketing spend will be supercharged and your campaigns will be turbocharged!
