Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is here, and Universal Analytics (UA) is a thing of the past. So, what is the big difference between GA4 and UA, and what does it mean for dealerships and their automotive call monitoring solutions?
Universal Analytics (UA) operated on three parameters: category, action, and label. GA4 uses an “event” for every consumer interaction with your website. And a phone call is also considered an event. Each event has up to 25 parameters, allowing dealers to drill down into each interaction for deep insights.
If a paid search campaign directs car shoppers to one of your vehicle display pages (VDPs), it’s not just the volume of page views that matters. Who cares if you have 3,000 page views? What holds value is understanding the nature of the engagements: Did users view the photos or videos? Did they click on the lead button, and how did that translate into actual leads submitted? The reason for all this data is so you can experiment with A/B testing, such as changing or moving a photo or video on the page.
This granularity allows dealers to identify bottlenecks and opportunities in their marketing strategies and website design. For example, if 150 people view a lead form but only three submit leads, you know the problem isn’t with the marketing source but the lead form itself. For example, the lead form may ask the consumer for too much information.
Untapped Potential of Post-Call Analysis
GA4 is an incredible tool that allows dealerships to track the journey of every visitor on their website in great detail. GA4, paired with the right call monitoring solution, creates a far more valuable solution that ties together the digital marketing campaigns that bring visitors to the website with subsequent phone call events. This means that dealers can still easily determine which campaigns bring visitors to the site who actually communicate with someone at the dealership and set an appointment – for Sales or Service.
Phone calls remain the dominant conversion channel for dealerships, converting at rates seven times higher than any other lead source. Therefore, it is paramount that dealers understand which digital marketing campaigns are resulting in phone calls and which are not. Dealers should not spend money on campaigns that don’t produce results. Shockingly, we estimate that only one out of 10 dealerships are currently set up with the right solution to ensure money is not wasted on ineffective marketing campaigns.
GA4 alone cannot deliver here; it requires an intelligent call monitoring solution that has deep GA4 integration along with the smarts to do all the calculations identifying which campaigns are successful and which should be terminated to protect the marketing budget.
Transform Your Dealership’s Call Monitoring with GA4 Insights
Can your automotive call monitoring solutions partner integrate with GA4 and provide you with click-to-outcome information? When you have the right combined solution, you’ll be able to see, at a glance, which phone calls are coming in through which channels, such as email, display, paid search, direct, or paid social. You will know the number of sessions, users, calls, leads, and chats. Most importantly, you will know the sales appointment and service appointment set percentage from each source.
Knowing your pure cost per conversion and which campaigns deliver the best ROI allows you to spend more on what works and less on what doesn’t.
By leveraging GA4’s robust event tracking and reporting, auto dealerships can usher in an era of smarter, more effective marketing campaigns that resonate with customers and drive more conversions.