When dealers evaluate the purchase of goods and services, they do as any intelligent business would do and consider the ROI. With online retail today in the automotive marketplace, ROI is typically measured on a cost-per basis, e.g. cost-per-lead, cost-per-click, cost-per-sale, etc. While these certainly are useful ways to measure ROI, I have become skeptical of how this information is assessed and leveraged by dealers.

For many years dealers have been able to know their per-vehicle cost-per-sale. But with today's Internet technologies, there are other cost-per ratios that can be measured. Search engine marketing itself has introduced tremendous new methods for dealers to track and measure where specific portions of their marketing dollars go. But search engine marketing is a complex practice that I think benefits the search engine companies more than anything.

Take a moment to read this entire entry on my blog so we can explore the topic together.