Dealerships make more sales when they have more leads, which is the endgame for any marketing team. Maximizing those leads requires a strategy for converting website visitors to business opportunities. 

However, implementing a sound strategy requires knowing how to track website leads accurately. This exercise provides dealers with better insight into customer behavior and pinpoints where leads begin to drop off or convert in the sales funnel. 

How to Track Website Leads: 5 Strategies
 

Dealerships should track website leads via the following five strategies: 

1. Establish Goals and Conversions 

Setting up goals and conversions is crucial in tracking website leads because it allows dealers to determine which activities result in potential sales.  

Goals often fall into the following four categories:
 

• Duration: Dealers can construct measurable lead counts using duration benchmarks as a goal. For example, historical data might reveal that visitors who spend more than four minutes on the dealership website are more likely to become customers. That duration becomes the trigger for classifying visitors as leads. 

• Event: Dealers can track which visitor activities (events) move them through the sales funnel. These activities can include button clicks, form submissions, video views, and browsing a specific site URL. Dealers can establish goals based on which of these actions they want to track. 

• Pages per session. Another potential metric is the number of pages a user visits during a particular session. Like duration, dealers can review data to determine a minimum page number to determine leads. 

• Destination (URL): Completing online forms directs visitors to specific pages, such as a thank you or confirmation page, that indicate the visitor converted into a lead. As such, dealers should create a seamless navigation path to those forms. 
  
  

2. Identify a Strategy 

Before selecting a lead tracking solution, dealers should consider several factors, including allocated staff time to perform manual inputs, the software’s learning curve, and the marketing budget.  

Two effective options are: 

• Email marketing campaigns. If email is an essential element of a dealership’s lead nurturing process, an email campaign tool can help with tracking leads. This software often includes mass email capabilities, contact databases, and the tracking of email open and click-through rates. 

• Lead-tracking CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. Several CRM solutions provide lead tracking and deal management functions through the sales pipeline. These solutions should all include managing converted leads, client lifecycle management, maximizing cross-selling, and developing customer loyalty. 
  
  

3. A “How Did You Hear About Us” Form 

The most straightforward technique for tracking marketing leads is a web form that asks visitors how they heard about the dealership. This strategy requires minimal technology and workforce hours. 

However, these forms are often unspecific, incorrect, or ignored, and their value depends on how seriously the visitor takes them. 

It is common, for example, for a user to claim they found the dealership on Google, but, in reality, they clicked a PPC ad, and the return on ad spend (ROAS) might suffer due to the lack of attribution. 

4. Create Custom Events 

Website traffic is valuable, but that metric alone means little without those visitors acting. Dealers should track custom events such as link clicks, video views, form submissions, and downloads to determine how visitors interact with the website’s content. 

With this information, dealers can differentiate between leads and qualified leads, including which parts of the website are most effective in moving potential customers through the sales funnel. 

5. Use Promo Codes 

While promo codes are a terrific method for attracting new consumers, users can also leverage them to track sales. Dealers can apply a quick filter to all purchases by utilizing a promo code to determine which transactions were influenced by the marketing campaign. 

Tracking Leads Requires the Right Tracking Solutions 

Understanding how to track website leads is crucial to your dealership’s bottom line. However, you might struggle to identify the strategies that consistently bring in high-quality traffic if you do not know how to gauge the quality of your leads. 

If that is the case, and you require help implementing an effective lead tracking strategy, you might consider partnering with an experienced lead management software provider. 

Contact us today and discover how Affinitiv’s DealerLens can help you track website leads and convert those visitors to active customers.