The first six months: what do the portals deliver?

The past six months — actually seven — have flown by once again! This means we can take stock at the Experience Store Doesburg: what have the marketing investments, and in this case specifically the portals, delivered? Especially now that we enthusiastically started with AutoScout24 as of September. We can include the results from that portal next time.

Three and soon four portals

We advertise on Marktplaats, viaBOVAG.nl and Autotrack/Gaspedaal AutoTrack. All three are relevant for us, valuable, and the ROI is positive. Each has its own characteristics, advantages and unique proposition. While ViaBOVAG delivers an enriched lead with the entire customer journey — which I therefore never look at — Gaspedaal surprisingly delivers many visitors who call via our own website. Marktplaats, of course, is strong in quantity.

What do we measure?

We measure every lead with Walcu, and it does not matter whether that lead calls (telephone lead), emails (form lead) or walks into the showroom. For every lead, we know how their customer journey unfolded and how they came to us. This can therefore be via email, telephone or as a showroom visitor. If someone walks in without having had contact beforehand, and Gaspedaal was the source through which they found us, the reporting looks like this:

• Source: Experience Store Doesburg
• Medium: Visit
• Campaign: Gaspedaal

A lead that made a phone call via ViaBOVAG enters Walcu like this:

• Source: ViaBOVAG
• Medium: Telephone
• Campaign: ViaBOVAG listings

A lead that enters via the Experience Store Doesburg through the URL click-out on Marktplaats can be tracked in Walcu via sourcebuster.js as:

• Source: Experience Store Doesburg
• Medium: Online (lead)
• Campaign: Marktplaats listings

For us, the campaign is therefore of the greatest importance in order to determine the ROI. After all, someone who simply walks in after having visited a portal is not a walk-in customer, but a customer of portal X, Y or Z.

The first eight months look as follows:

What do we see?

At the Experience Store Doesburg, we only sell used cars and no microcars. Only Marktplaats is actually effective for microcars, so to make a fair comparison, we only look at the Experience Store Doesburg, where used cars are sold.

You can see that ViaBOVAG has the highest conversion: just over 40%. This means that we sell a car with almost every two leads. At Autotrack/Gaspedaal, the ratio is 1 in 3, and at Marktplaats it is 1 in 5. At Marktplaats, the conversion is lower — still more than 20% — because a popular car generates many leads and you can only sell the car once.

When it comes to lead quality, you therefore see a difference. But what about the volumes?

• At Marktplaats, the conversion is 20.1%, resulting in 49 sales
• At Autotrack/Gaspedaal, the conversion is 33.3%, resulting in 10 sales
• At ViaBOVAG, the conversion is 40.9%, resulting in 9 sales

This shows that the percentage in itself says nothing about the final numbers you achieve. With the profit from the sales, I can pay my costs — not necessarily with the conversion percentage.

In the list above, you see an overview of a number of sales via Marktplaats. You see the medium through which the lead came in, the first contact moment, the source and the campaign. Here you therefore see, for example, two physical visits via Marktplaats.

At Autotrack/Gaspedaal, it looks as follows:

The facts show that the Autotrack/Gaspedaal buyer often calls, enters via our own website and then converts into an order. I fear that many companies do not see this and classify this lead under ‘own traffic’?

At ViaBOVAG, you see a mixed picture. No one walks in spontaneously — at least no buyers. Everyone calls or emails beforehand, which of course is favorable for reporting for ViaBOVAG. Gaspedaal in particular has a much harder time there.

Conclusion

• All in all, I am happy with all three portals. Yes, per month I pay the most for Marktplaats, but the number of sales more than makes up for this.
• At Gaspedaal/Autotrack, I pay a substantial CPC of €0.31, but this ultimately does result in sales.
• At ViaBOVAG, I am still in a Cost-per-Sale construction, which I like very much. They generate few leads, so I don’t pay much, but what they deliver is of high quality.

As a universal car dealership, we use Walcu, Calldrip and Sourcebuster.js for reporting and for the in-store process, to ensure that we know where our opportunities come from. I hear from many universal car dealerships that they struggle with this. Walcu, as a Lead Management System, is very well suited for reports like these, especially for the universal car dealership. Want more insights? Let us know via: https://www.dcdw.nl/walcu/