Background
Silverback Advertising, a leading automotive marketing partner, faced an industry-wide challenge: helping dealerships transition to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) while adopting the Automotive Standards Council (ASC) event structure. The ASC’s data model, designed to capture the nuances of automotive shopper behavior, introduced events like asc_retail process starts (e.g., financing, leasing, trade-ins) and asc_form_submission to track high-value customer interactions.
While these innovations provided powerful insights, the complexity of GA4 and the ASC event framework left many dealerships overwhelmed. Silverback’s clients—focused on selling cars—needed a solution to make sense of their data without navigating the steep learning curve of GA4.
The Challenge
Dealerships were grappling with three primary challenges:
Mastering Google Analytics 4
- GA4’s flexibility and advanced features also make it notoriously difficult for non-experts to use effectively. Dealerships struggled to interpret its data and translate it into actionable strategies.
Navigating ASC Standards
- While the ASC event structure elegantly tracks automotive shopper behaviors, implementing and leveraging these events (e.g., asc_retail process flows for financing and trade-ins) required technical knowledge many dealerships lacked.
Time Constraints
- Dealerships needed to focus on their core mission: selling cars. Spending time on analytics, especially with the complexity of GA4 and ASC events, diverted valuable resources from sales efforts.
Silverback initially considered hiring an in-house analytics team but recognized the need for a more scalable, cost-effective solution.
Solution
Silverback partnered with Clickvoyant, leveraging its expertise in GA4 automation and ASC standards integration to deliver actionable insights. Together, they developed tailored analytics dashboards for dealerships, simplifying data interpretation and enhancing decision-making.
Simplifying GA4
- Built user-friendly dashboards that visualized key metrics like asc_click_to_call, asc_form_submission, and asc_retail process outcomes, enabling dealerships to identify trends and optimize shopper engagement.
- Automated complex GA4 reporting, removing the need for dealerships to log into GA4 directly.
Harnessing ASC Standards
- Incorporated the ASC’s event structure into analytics seamlessly, making it easy for dealerships to track and act on events like financing starts, trade-in inquiries, and lease engagements.
- Provided insights on drop-offs in retail processes, helping dealerships refine their online and in-store sales journeys.
Cost-Effective Scalability
- Delivered insights faster and more affordably than a full-time analytics hire, allowing Silverback to support multiple dealerships simultaneously.
Results
Streamlined GA4 and ASC Analytics
- Dealerships like Massey Hyundai, Car Pros Auto Group, and Haselwood Auto Group gained clear visibility into key shopper interactions without navigating GA4 or deciphering ASC events.
Improved Shopper Engagement
- By analyzing ASC events, dealerships identified bottlenecks in processes like trade-ins and financing, leading to smoother customer experiences and increased conversions.
Significant Cost Savings
- Silverback saved thousands by replacing the need for in-house analytics hires with Clickvoyant’s automated dashboards.
Optimized Marketing Strategies
- Insights into high-performing traffic sources (e.g., Organic Search, Paid Search) enabled dealerships to reallocate marketing spend for maximum ROI.
