Big Data Can Assist in Identifying these Key Signals from the Past

Where do you start looking for these signals? The following are key insights into your systems through Big Data that can illuminate these signals:

• Your top performing CTAs on your website
• Sales processes to improve, remove and exploit
• Most effective follow-up subject for lost leads
• The top converting lead sources for my website
• Online lead sources that are on the rise and which are on the decline
• What do my best Finance managers do differently on their deals that my worst managers don’t do
• What marketing campaigns are the best
• What marketing campaigns are the worst
• What activities do my best sales staff do that my worst sales staff do not

These signals are best identified via historical transactional reports.   Meaning they are a snapshot in time of a specific type of transaction that has occurred in your dealership ecosystem via online, CRM, call tracking provider(s), marketing agency(s), inventory or other systems.  They simply report the past which is valuable but not if you want to know what the future holds and we ALL want to know what the future holds for us. But through analysis and power to combine them with other related transactional data you can find these conversion signals and link them from anonymous visitor to loyal customer.

Big Data Can Predict these Signals about the Future

By capturing and processing these transactional data points you will be able to identify the conversion signals and develop a predictive model. In short, a set of “What If” scenarios that are based on signals identified in the past that can help predict future results. Here are a few of those “What If’s” you may ask yourself:

• How much revenue you will make from your next campaign?
• What is the most effective call to action on our website for New vehicle lead generation?  What’s the most effective for Pre-owned lead generation?
• If I remove a lead source for online traffic generation and put it into another bucket how much more traffic, leads and revenue will I generate?
• If I change processes to emulate my top sales staff, how many more sales will be generated from the process?
• What level of inventory is needed to meet our current demand; if we increase more advertising, how many more vehicles for our used lot will we need to maximize the increase in marketing dollars?  Do I need more or less inventory?

Big Data Preparedness Checklist

These signals and many, many more can be predicted more easily if you and your vendors work together to provide a true warehouse of data from your vendors’ transactional data they collect on your behalf.  So a quick checklist should be the following:

• Identify each transactional report for all your systems related to sales and service.
• Identify how far back your reporting goes for each report – can it go back to Day 1 you came online on that system?
• Determine if you can receive the report in data format (CSV, XML, JSON, API) instead of a report format.

When you are ready to move forward this is a key list you or any vendor you select will immediately ask for. This is your Data Source List. You can only identify the key conversion signals and make prediction on the data you have - no more no less – so make sure you know where it all is located.
 You should go through the exercise of identifying the data that is available to you across your dealership’s ecosystem. This is very valuable homework that will allow you to know what you have and don’t have.

How MotoFuze Leverages Big Data

At MotoFuze we understand the power of what predictive conversion signals provide to those who embrace it. We also recognize what it takes to identify these conversion signals and how to apply them for your dealership’s benefit. It’s not just a set of reports to view once a month. It’s actionable tools that have the ability to leverage this data and make real-time adjustments to ensure the signals are followed through to conversion.