Avoid Messy GA4 Reports with Call Tracking Events for Auto Dealers

If you’re reading this, you already know auto dealer marketing can get messy, and fast. It’s a single business, but plenty of stakeholders have significant influence. Who is involved? Agencies to manage your website. A separate agency to manage your Google Ads. Auto manufacturers with their mandates. And there’s rarely only one Google Analytics account to measure it all. Don’t let call tracking add to the noise. 

Messy Automotive Call Tracking

Phone calls matter to auto dealers. Even through the rise of online shopping, car buyers are still picking up the phone to book test drives and service appointments. Call tracking gives dealerships a chance to measure those calls as leads. Why might it get messy? 

Multiple vendors trying to implement dynamic number insertion (DNI) 

Too many cooks in the kitchen can lead to a mess. Your website vendor adds code for DNI, then your paid media vendor adds theirs, and then maybe you sign up for a call tracking service on your own. Which code wins? To clean up the mess you have a couple of options: 

• Have all your vendors coordinate closely to limit their code to only trigger for their specific use case.
• Choose one call tracking vendor to measure performance on behalf of all vendors. Maybe one with no cost to add unlimited users so everyone can still have full visibility.

Multiple departments to track

Not all calls are the same. If you’re stuck with an automotive call tracking solution that doesn’t offer the ability to send multiple events to multiple GA4 properties, your analytics are going to suffer. 

You don’t need to know your website drove 100 calls this week. You need to know your site produced 40 service department calls, 50 sales team calls, and 10 spam calls. 

Measuring clicks to call versus call outcomes

The last piece of messy call tracking for auto dealers is trying to get by measuring clicks-to call as a website conversion. That is to say, every time someone clicks on your phone number, a conversion is triggered in GA4. Even if you solve for tracking performance by department, there are some flaws with only tracking clicks: 

• Not all clicks lead to a conversation, and it’s a bigger gap than you would think.
• Not all callers click. As an example, desktop users will likely dial your number while looking at your vehicle description page. 

An Auto Dealer’s GA4 Events Matter

You could be wondering if taking the time to define multiple, specific call events to send to GA4 is worth it. It does take time to consider what events truly matter to your operations and set them up. 

Here’s why it’s absolutely worth the upfront time investment: 

Your Google Ads are likely using Google Analytics key events as conversions. And machine learning is using those conversions to decide when to bid and how much. If you feed it bad data, (like clicks that didn’t lead to a conversation, or all the conversations that don’t earn you money), you’re throwing money away. No marketer has excess budget to waste, and certainly not dealership marketers. 

GA4 Call Events for Dealer Marketing

Call events are important, but they can also be messy. When you’re looking to set up effective events there are some things to think through. You might have an agency to help, and you’ll want to push them to implement thorough call tracking. 

Some things to consider: 

• How many call events do you need for your auto dealership?
  • A good place to start is one per department. 
• How are the call events defined?
  • You want to avoid sending low-quality events, like spam calls or wrong numbers, to platforms that will be used to optimize Ads. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was somewhere to look to guide how you implement your dealership’s phone call conversions in Google Analytics? 

Take a look at the Automotive Standards Council (ASC)

The Automotive Standards Council for GA4 was established to get dealerships, manufacturers, agencies, and other vendors on the same page about Google Analytics events. It goes beyond call events to standardize how to send everything from form submissions to CTA interactions into your Google Analytics.

CallTrackingMetrics is a founding member of the Automotive Standards Council. We’re a part of the council for two big reasons: 

1. We want to hear how auto dealers are using call tracking and GA4, so we can build better tools for your industry. 
2. Advocate for call tracking as a core element of automotive marketing measurement. 

The Automotive Standards Council has been an incredible opportunity for us to get a closer look at an industry that makes up a significant portion of our customer base. And, of course, a great opportunity to avoid messy GA4 reports.