You may have all of the latest vehicles stocked at your dealership, but what do you do when they aren’t selling? Selling cars isn’t just about good marketing campaigns and friendly customer service. It is possible that you aren’t stocking the right vehicles for your dealership. If you don’t have the cars your customers want, then they will go somewhere else to find it.
Most people aren’t willing to drive far to purchase a car, so they end up choosing to purchase their vehicle at a local dealership. However, every city and location is made up of a unique set of people with different tastes in cars. Given how expensive a car is, many customers already have vehicles in mind that they want to buy and aren’t willing to make a lot of negotiations. It is in your best interest to stock your vehicles based on the demographics of your location. But how can you figure out the demographics of your customers so that you stock the right cars?
Google Analytics is a free and useful tool that you can use to help determine the best vehicles for your dealership. Google Analytics offers a demographics and interests tool that, once enabled, allows you to see detailed information about the customers that visit your website. You can even create advanced segments to get more specific information on the users who visit your dealer site. While Google Analytics has many different tools and features, today we’ll focus on the Audience and Behavior sections.
Implementing Google Analytics for Your Website
If you don’t already have Google Analytics set up for your website, you’ll want to do that first. It’s free and easy to set up an account and get started:
- Create or sign in to your account and establish your website(s) under that account.
- Set up a reporting view for your website(s).
- Add the analytics tracking code to your website(s). you’ll want to put this right after the opening head tag on each page.
For more detailed instructions, click here.
Using the Audience Section of Google Analytics
Who are the people in your area who are looking to purchase a car? The Audience section can help you collect information on the people who are looking to buy a car from your dealership. There is a feature that you will want to enable called Demographics & Interests, which collects information on the people who visit your website, including age and gender.
You can also gather information in categories such as affinity categories, in-market segments, and other categories. Once you figure out which the gender and age groups of people who look at your website, you can
Using the Behavior Section of Google Analytics
If you are showcasing your vehicles on your website, which you should definitely be doing if you want to sell more cars, then you can look at the information collected by Google Analytics for each Vehicle Detail Page (VDP). Pay attention to the number of page views, average time spent on each page, and the bounce rates. A bounce rate is the percentage of users that visit a page and exit without interacting with the page. In general, this is what the data can tell you:
- A higher number of page views may indicate that more people are interested in those vehicles.
- More time spent on a VDP may indicate that users are more likely to purchase that car.
- Higher bounce rates may indicate that there is something wrong with the page or that the page is missing important information.
Additional Research on Demographics
You can do more research if you want more accurate results by using the information that you know, such as the age groups and gender of your typical customers, as well as what cars are getting more hits on your site. Research the automotive market trends and car buying trends for shoppers with those demographics, and look into why certain cars might be more popular in your area. This information is usually not available for free, but it can be a valuable investment with long-term results.
AutoJini.com is a Premier Google Partner, which establishes us as experts in Google tools, including Google Analytics and Google Ads. We can help you set up your account and get started, monitor your analytics, give you regular updates of your data, and more!