What could be better than to hear from direct practitioners in this industry! Thanks much for checking and commenting.
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To add to your points of how complex it can be to turn web activity into forecasts I wanted to also mention something that I learned. Namely, a consultant for Mazda in Europe was sharing following observation. Yes, prospects use the product configurator before making a purchase decision. But it is often the case that they use it SOME EIGHT MONTHS before they make the decision. Then, nothing happens for 8 months and all of a sudden they may stand in the dealership.
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A good question would be to verify whether it is true that nothing happens, or as you say, they may be back on the web site but anonymously so that the activity is lost.
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Which brings us to your main concern, if I understand correctly, namely how about all the masses of anonymous visitors on the site.

* How can the site turn them into online or offline leads?
* How can the online team get credit for that bigger segment?
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Very good point. No magic bullets here unfortunately. Companies can work on incentives for these folks to register. But if they don’t then there are only a handful of techniques for measuring the offline lift that is achieved by the web site. There is a list of these in the book. One such technique is to use a panel. Another is to tri-angulate as much as possible with geo data.
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Thanks much again.
Akin

Interesting post. As Jonny, I am working for a major automotive manufacturer (but another one) in Europe. The Web has become an important channel. With the current economic situation but also high competitive context, all are looking into way to drive more “qualified leads” from the web.

But I agree with Jonny that online leads (like test drive request or documentation requests) are only the tip of the iceberg. Final goal of the website is to drive “leads” to a dealership. So you have all online requesters but what about the rest – all those who decided to leave the online world to ring or go to a dealership? This part of the picture is still missing in many cases.

But it is true that lot of efforts are made to increase online “quality” leads. Solutions exist like Netmining (http://www.netmining.com/) that identify potential “hot leads” based on behavior on the site and allow to push information, forms or actions to these.

And many efforts will be devoted to tie the two worlds – online & offline. That is where lie the future. Great challenges in perspective.

Cheers,

Michael

Interesting post. I work with a major automotive manufacturer in Europe, who has similar problems.

However, I believe there is something much more fundamentally problematic about the way automotive companies deal with their on-line leads.

Most manufacturers are the same in that they see their websites as funnels; i.e the ultimate goal is to get people to book a test-drive on-line. Websites generally have calls-to-action around this that throw people into some kind of data collection form. But, there are several big problems with this as follows:

> This is not the way most people would think about buying a car; i.e. surely its just a lot easier to ring the dealer given that you have to go in there anyway?
> Very few people actually do it. CapGemini stats that about 85% of car buyers researched their cars on-line, but then when you look at the sales only a tiny proportion can actually be attributed to ‘leads’
> How do you know, just because someone became a ‘lead’, that this makes them more likely to buy a car than someone who just went into the dealership? It’s possible that they are less likely because you are pestering them!

So, the point is this: automotive manufacturers try to force people down this so called ‘funnel’ as though it were an on-line shopping cart for buying a DVD, but in most cases this will simply confuse and disorientate the consumer, and works to the detriment of the overall on-line experience.