Automotive Alchemy
Welcome to 'Automotive Alchemy', a podcast that dwells in the cavernous depths of data, unearthing precious gems of wisdom to illuminate your path to digital marketing success. As alchemists, we understand that each nugget of information is a vital ingredient in our elixir of knowledge. So ready yourselves as we embark on an enlightening journey through the arcane world of data-driven automotive marketing.
Automotive Alchemy
Avoid The Vanity Trap: Essential Metrics For Boosting Dealership Performance
Are vanity metrics misleading your dealership's marketing efforts? Shean Kirin joins us to reveal how focusing on superficial metrics like website visitors and social media likes can hinder true performance in automotive marketing. In this episode, you'll learn how to shift your focus to actionable metrics that directly impact your bottom line, such as lot visits and phone calls. We share real-world examples, including a Toyota dealership's misallocated advertising budget, to illustrate how meaningful metrics can lead to better decision-making and improved vendor relationships.
Unlock the secrets of evaluating advertising metrics in the automotive industry. We discuss why understanding the quality of leads is far more important than just their cost and how superficial metrics can be misleading. By comparing traditional advertising methods with the complexities of the digital age, we highlight the necessity for dealerships to scrutinize their metrics and focus on actionable insights. Through humorous analogies and real-world case studies, we emphasize the importance of quality over quantity in lead generation, ultimately enhancing sales efficiency and closing ratios.
Discover how Google's advancements are reshaping customer interaction insights and the significance of regularly reassessing vendor partnerships. We delve into the evolving role of metrics in automotive marketing and the benefits of transparent, formulaic approaches to vendor evaluation. As we highlight resources like Dealer Alchemist's complimentary e-books and digital marketing audits, our goal is to educate and empower dealers to optimize their return on investment. Tune in to transform automotive challenges into opportunities and gain valuable insights to drive sales effectively.
Welcome back to Automotive Alchemy, as almost always joined by the premier dealer, alchemist, san Kieran. How are you, sean?
Shean Kirin:Doing excellent thanks. How are you today, san?
Shaun Raines:I'm good, thank you for asking Audience listening and or watching. Today we're jumping into a topic that not enough people talk about actually vanity metrics. They're all over in digital marketing and if you compare that to actionable metrics metrics that actually matter they're attached to results. That's where dealers need a lot more education so that you can actually make really smart decisions, have great relationships with your vendors, and that's what we're jumping in today. So instead of listening to me monologue more and more and more, let's just into this. Kieran, why don't you start by helping the audience maybe understand well what are vanity metrics? Why are they often considered to be really misleading in the context of automotive marketing?
Shean Kirin:When we think about the metrics that we are paying attention to on a regular basis, the vanity metrics are the metrics that are simply there to look good on the scoreboard and when you get to the final outcome, the vanity metrics didn't necessarily add to that final outcome. I'll give you an example. A great example is website visitors. Does it matter? Yes, but all website visitors are not created equal, and so there are a number of companies out there that plant all these junk visitors on your website that aren't engaged and aren't doing anything on your website. Interestingly enough, because of the way that Google search algorithms work, they actually cause you to do worse from an SEO value than better, because quantity of visitors are not better Better visitors are better right.
Shean Kirin:More is not better, Better is better.
Shaun Raines:That's the focus I would say for today.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, I think that's well put.
Shaun Raines:This industry has been one where I know that you relate to this well because of all of the years in retail, but technology has grown and continues to grow so fast that it's very difficult for the people who are in the center of that industry in this case, car dealers selling cars, servicing cars it's almost impossible for them to keep up with the speed and the acceleration, the trajectory of all these things technically. And so digital marketing is fantastic. There's so many of these great attributes about digital marketing that we've never seen in our lifetimes. It's like amazing platforms but if you don't know or you don't have partnerships with people, that will help protect you from something that's pure, just vanity metric like it's inflated for the sake of inflation, but it's actually inflated for the sake of deceiving people, to making them believe something that isn't actually true and it takes your eye off the ball. Still baseball season of what really matters, and that's what you're saying is like you need to know the difference of things that are there to make you feel good versus perform good.
Shaun Raines:That's right, yeah. So let me ask you and you gave a couple examples there on some of those vanity metrics let's talk a little bit about at the website level, or social media likes, some of those areas where some of the metrics that happen there, where those are misleading.
Shean Kirin:Sure. So if we talk about the website, we'll look at people that come to the websites. We'll look at the number of people that interact with the digital retailing tool, then we'll look at the number of people that submit a lead and, of course, there's a drop-off point, so that that way I can force them to give me information before they're able to get a payment on the lease on my vehicle. Or is the cost of doing that that I just become an untrustworthy place to do business and do I sell less cars? And interestingly enough, we don't have that data yet. Different areas are different data yet Different areas are different. So I'll tell you, when we look at the final outcome of what happens with a lead, a customer visits us one of three different ways. They visit us on the lot, they visit us over the phone or they submit an internet lead. Ultimately, it's going to be one of those three, right, and you could group chat or text in with phone and internet, right, and so which of those is most important? That's the next question. I would say that the lot up is the most important, because when they came there and they made the trip, they didn't come to play games. The second most important is the phone, because you're actually in the middle of a conversation with them. And then the least important of those three is the lead, and so I'll tell you a quick story. We're working with a dealer in a market and we saw that there was this major drop off in leads, and we're scratching our heads as we look at the advertising and, quite frankly, we're thinking we don't suck that bad. What's wrong? And so we're diving through all of our setups, all of our settings, looking at everything, and we finally realized that their phone conversion went up and that all of those leads became phone calls. Interestingly enough, they became a higher quality form of lead and, more important than that, the dealership picked up market share, and if you look at their zone report, they're selling more in their zone report. They're rated high in their zone report than they ever have been before. Well, that's because we were focused on the most important things, the most important things being driving, lot, phone, internet, and then looking at a combination of metrics to come to the right answer. And so the thing about a vanity metric versus a actionable item that I want to pay attention to is that vanity metrics are designed to pacify you as the dealer so that you get to say, oh, you're doing fine, and the dealer has an excuse to charge you more money for advertising.
Shean Kirin:We took over a Toyota store in Florida. They were spending $700 a car with one of the providers. The provider continued to tell them how incredible of a job they were doing. Once we dove into their metrics, we found that almost 50% of their budget was spent on brand terms, on the dealership's name. Another 20% was spent on regional and there was very little left over. And so, by the time we looked at it, what they really did is they took organic business. They converted it into paid business in order to look good on the scoreboard. No one's selling any cars. The dealership's not happy, the general manager's not happy, the manufacturer's not happy, because this is a great store with great people that are working hard. And what does the advertiser say? It's not me, it's you right.
Shaun Raines:That's what the advertiser says Yep.
Shean Kirin:However, better leads are better and that's the difference. Interestingly enough, they do get less leads since they switched to us, but they also sell 15% more vehicles. So I would argue which one's more important looking good on the scoreboard or looking good on your financial statement? I'm going to say looking good on the financial statement. I didn't mean to dodge the question on social media, but social media likes. That's another example. We were taught that metric 15 years ago. What's that metric mean now? Absolutely nothing.
Shaun Raines:Yeah.
Shean Kirin:Nothing. It doesn't matter, right. What really matters is if I've got something on social media, how many people interacted with it. What was my real interaction rate? That's what really matters.
Shaun Raines:Yeah.
Shean Kirin:And then you've got to have an entire social strategy there sitting there if someone's truly interacting with it and if not, the right answer is to drive that business back to the website and to gauge the interaction on the website, because real customers look at pictures, they scroll photos, they look at multiple vehicles. That's what real humans do. What do bots do? They show up for one second or two seconds and then they go to the next site and they hit three pages in that one second that they're there in order to fool the system and make it look like they're engaged. So I think the summary of all that is it's all about real humans and real interaction on the website, and the new setups in Google Analytics simply give us the ability to see that.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, some great points there, Kieran. Yeah, some great points there, kieran. And even those kind of final thoughts you were sharing on social media. You guys are doing a really good job, actually, of posting even your organic content in social, where almost exactly what you were talking about, the performance of how many people gave it a thumbs up, like or hearted it or found it insightful Although those can be meaningful, but usually with the addition of some other metrics that you're also looking at, but they're never more important.
Shaun Raines:It doesn't matter if it's we support it, we love it, we like it, it's insightful. That's never more important than when somebody jumps into the comments and they tag a friend and it's literally linked to another person, or they repost something um, you know the content that you're you're putting out, even personally, and when you go into the, you know the details of hey, here's how to keep your, your vendor, honest. We, we found a thirty thousand dollar. Uh, mistake, wink, wink, where it was just a bad provider doing things. But then you give them a couple of tips of. This is how you can inspect this for yourself. And somebody goes in and tags a dealer friend of theirs or reposts it.
Shaun Raines:Those are actionable metrics and they're much more valuable because it's not just somebody saying look at how many likes you got. It kind of goes back to I think we've said it on this podcast before where impressions it's not that impressions are bad. You need them, but they're not achievements and, depending on who your provider is, impressions alone can be used as a massive vanity metric. Look at what we did and you were actually just giving the example of a car dealer could be told by their vendor look at all these huge results and you're paying us a massive wad of cash for all of these results. But the dealer can easily say, okay, those are your pretty metrics that look good in the mirror as you hold it up. But uh, now when we look at, the really important metric was did we sell our service more? Was our profitability higher because of something you guys did?
Shaun Raines:Any of those more meaningful metrics have to also move, because that's kind of the point, right? Vanity metrics are just that. You need, the ones that actually prove to you that there was a payoff, that the result is actually in line with your business needs and your bottom line, like where we're trying to be with a revenue perspective. So very interesting topic Do you have thoughts on, maybe, how actionable metrics differ? I mean, we're talking about some of them right now, so we may have just covered a few of them but any additional thoughts on some of those differences between the two?
Shean Kirin:differences between the two. Yeah, so I would say that when we communicate back and forth with our vendors, our dealers, we have to understand what comprises that metric. Let me give you another great example cost per lead. It is so easy to kink that metric and look easy on the scoreboard and be able to tell the dealer congratulations, you're paying $20 per lead on your advertising. However, you didn't get any real incremental business added on top of what was already going to be there. How do you do that? You shift that money from a vehicle advertising type system to a brand and a regional advertising type system and in doing so, you start to look good on the scoreboard, but you don't sell any more cars. So the challenge becomes if I'm looking at an actionable metric, I have to understand why is that metric where it is? Because, on the surface, what's better? A $20 cost per lead or $100 cost per lead?
Shaun Raines:Right, yeah, $20 is great.
Shean Kirin:It sounds like $20, but let me ask you another question what happens if that $20 cost per lead is 70% service and of that 70% service it was going to find you organically anyways. And what if that $100 cost per lead happens to be a real customer on a vehicle and converted three times to four times higher than your $20 cost per lead by the time you total those two out, you're getting a multiple of return on that $100 cost per lead because it's a better quality lead on the exact thing that you're looking to advertise. Yeah, this is why we have to be careful about these things and understand the difference. It's probably the most important time period in history for a dealer to need to understand these metrics and have someone on their team that's inspecting them, because it's smoke and mirrors right. Yeah, and it's smoke and mirrors right.
Shaun Raines:Yeah.
Shean Kirin:And it's smoke and mirrors everywhere. It never used to be like this. You know what's great about TV? Back in the old days the TV commercial ran and people showed up on your lot and you counted your lot ups. You know what's great about a radio commercial? They called in and you checked the number of phone calls. The ROI was easy.
Shaun Raines:Yeah.
Shean Kirin:But now, in the digital age, I've got two campaigns that look like they're the same. I've got two vendors that told me the same thing but magically and mysteriously, for some reason, I'm struggling with sales efficiency and all they're telling me is how many leads I'm getting, whereas vendor B says, hey, send me your pump in, pump out report, let me see where you're at in your zone rankings. Let's look at all this data together so we can form the game plan up with the best way to make sure that you maximize car sales. Let's make sure that we spoke to your BDC to make sure that they understand that these website leads are on a vehicle. These aren't the website lead that's coming in and saying, hey, I'm looking for a Nissan Altima or a Chevy Tahoe, and they're looking for the unicorn that doesn't exist.
Shean Kirin:The good ones are on a stock number that's right inside of your dealership already. Which one of those is more powerful? The more powerful one is the one that's on the vehicle that you have. And so when we look at actionable metrics, actionable in the long run means I have a higher closing ratio and I am selling more cars. Does it sell cars? The old disc principle that many of us learned. The first time we got into an advertising conversation, however many years ago, right For me, it was wow, 27, 28 years ago that the person that I worked for said hey, does it sell cars? You need to know this, and if it doesn't, you fire them. That was the answer.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, that's kind of a good segue. And the next thing I wanted to ask you is why do you think companies gravitate towards vanity metrics? And you know well, I think we're already kind of talking about some of the risks, but feel free to share some of what the risks would be, but why do you think they gravitate towards it? I have some thoughts, but I have a feeling that you probably have some that are maybe even a little spicier.
Shean Kirin:I'm going to give you the clean version.
Shaun Raines:And I'll give you the skeptic version.
Shean Kirin:The clean version is everybody's trying to do the best job and they're trying to put actionable metrics with their limited understanding of the data. And so they look at it and they say, hey, in our Google Ads account you've got so many phone calls and so many leads. That means this is a high performing account and to a lot of people that represent, whichever company they work for, it sounds like they're doing a good job and they don't realize that they're not, because that is the depth of their knowledge. At the same time, better is better. More is not better. Better is better. Would we rather have a $20 lead that is not focused on a vehicle that's hard to get a hold of, that filled out the lead gate form in order to shut up my system so they could get a price? Or would I rather have the $100 lead that's closing three to four times higher percentage, probably even more than that and is on a specific vehicle and doesn't have any other service lease put inside of it? The answer is B. The skeptics version is because it makes their conversation easy with the dealer. They don't want to work that hard, they want to be able to throw it back on you and it's easier to track something.
Shean Kirin:I did have a conversation with a person that I'm not going to name, and what he said was that we have to have a way to measure all vendors equally. And in that way of measuring all vendors equally, there has to be a scorecard. That scorecard is not perfect, but a scorecard is better than no scorecard, and so what vendors have learned to do is they've learned to advertise to beat the scorecard Right. I'll give you a terrible example. Did you see mass testing? Testing at the school system, right? A lot of the schools that our children go to nowadays I'm not going to let this turn into a politics conversation, right, but what they do is they've learned that they have to teach the kids towards these tests. So, instead of the test being a barometer of how are they really doing which, objectively, if they were learning the right things, it would be exactly that. Instead, they've been coaching them toward a test, and the coaching towards a test doesn't provide real life value. This is the exact same thing. If we, as a vendor, are only trying to pass the test and we're not trying to focus on does it sell cars, then the person left holding the bag is the dealer. So, whether you think of it from a skeptical point of view or a naive point of view, I don't think either one of those is real. I think the only real answer is ask questions of your vendor and find out how educated they are. And if the only answer is your cost per lead is $20 and you're killing it because your cost per lead is so low and they don't want to tell you where those leads are coming from, you might have a problem. I'll give you a great example Well done.
Shean Kirin:Social ads are super difficult for accountability, and the reason why is that when you run automotive inventory ads correctly, you get a huge amount of engagement on the website. They click to the website, they scroll through more photos on the website and look at more vehicles than most other forms of advertising, if not all other forms of advertising, if not all other forms of advertising. However, that social customer is the least likely to convert and send a lead on the first visit, so that social advertising is almost always the first entry point into the website, which later becomes direct, organic business and later converted. And so the argument becomes is that money better spent on Google for my immediate ROI, or is it better spent on social, where I'm bringing them back again and again. Well, the data shows that the combination of those two is how you sell more cars.
Shean Kirin:So, ultimately, if we want to help our vendor the most, we give them access to all the data. We let them see our pump in, pump out reports. We let them see our zone rankings every single month. We let them know when it was a good month and we let them know when it was a bad month, because if you tell them it was a bad month when it was actually a good month, they might change something and just break your actual advertising. Gone are the days where you want to kick their teeth in repeatedly every single time to make yourself feel good, because most vendors do want to just serve right. Most of the time. I think people are trying the best that they can with what they have and if you don't tell them the truth, you're going to get bad results.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, it does make it a little bit easier. I won't say it's easy for all dealers, because it's it's it's a it can be tough to navigate, but it it does make it a bit easier to spot the vendors who really are kind of obsessed with, and maybe it's about all they have to offer our campaigns that generate more of these vanity metrics. And for me, one of the tells of those types of companies is almost all the things that they try to impress the dealers with before the dealer even maybe had ever heard the term vanity metrics. It's always volume or quantity based. Right, because they know the dealers. We've talked about this before on previous episodes, where guys like us are the ones who are actually even teaching dealers what to think like, what they need to know about a particular thing, which, if not done ethically, becomes straight up manipulation. That's right. Teaching you what I think you need to know about a certain thing because I know you don't know anything about it, and with vanity metrics, vendors that are just all that's pretty much their whole thing. They're typically really good at that and they make you feel like you're like best friends. It's all great, but all that they love to boast about is volume-based metrics. Look at how much More, more, more, more, more. And you just said it More isn't better, better is better, and so it's not. We got you more impressions, we got you. You know all of this. It's just growth, and they never really talk about what's really tied to actionable metrics and results, which is about what's really tied to actionable metrics and results, which is quality. You have to have a quality conversation when it starts to talk about metrics, because website providers can do this.
Shaun Raines:They can, of course, inflate all types of traffic and maybe not even talk about the segmented versions of traffic that hit your website. Where did it come from? Most dealers probably don't realize that a lot of times, wherever their referral traffic is coming from, it likely actually has better conversion rates than stuff that comes organic, direct and certainly through paid. But a lot of dealers while these lopsided well, most of our traffic we're paying for.
Shaun Raines:We're paying paid search campaigns to flood the zone of our website vanity metrics, but the downstream actionable and results were like and I'm not saying that dealers shouldn't be doing paid search that drives traffic to the website, they should. But what do those campaigns say? What's in those ads? And if it's all pretty much run from a machine that's kind of lazy. Then you're going to have a vendor who's talking about all these things that are volume and quantity based to try to allure or manipulate you into thinking that it's valuable, and I think that's really that's really important. So anyway, next thing I wanted to kind of swing into would be a good setup for what we're already talking about, which is how can focusing too much on these volume-based or any type of vanity metric affect the dealership from an unfortunately poor perspective in their decision-making, maybe missed opportunities when they're too fixated or following these kind of fool's gold vanity metrics.
Shean Kirin:So let me give you an example. We worked with a dealer. The dealer terminated us. The dealer terminated us because they were told that they weren't getting enough leads. And so this new provider comes in. They send me over their first report. As I'm looking at the PDF, it says they've got like 1,200 leads and I thought to myself and I asked the dealer. I said so, let me ask you a question Does that mean you've got 1,200 leads in your CRM? He goes no, I've got about 150. I said well, I'm really confused. How come you say you've got 150 leads but they say they've got 1,200? Why don't you send me that report? So as I'm looking at this report, I see directions, visits are leads in the report, map views, our leads in the report. And I asked the dealer when's the last time you sold a car to a map view? I'm just curious. And of course the dealer starts laughing. I said well, let's look at it over the course of 90 days. 35 days in, they canceled.
Shean Kirin:The other vendor came back to us and said I'm not going to get caught in that trap again, Because in the long run, do you want more leads or do you want to sell more cars? Well, there was only one answer for that. The answer is yes. Yes, I do. I want both At the same time. While we want both, we have to understand the relationship between them, and so if we're so focused on leads period that come off the paid ads period, we forget to look at the relationship between that entire spend and look at what's happening inside of our store, Because when all the dust settles, most stores are fairly consistent from a management personnel perspective, and so when you make changes in the advertising setup, you do feel a difference in the store based upon what's happening with those people, and so the answer is to dive deeper. 100% of the time, they want to tell you how many leads you have.
Shean Kirin:Great, Tell me where those leads came from. Which campaigns did those leads come from? Which which campaigns did those leads come from? Which types of advertising did those leads come from? Let's dive deeper in that and understand that together, so that we can know what's happening with our spend. That's the right way to look at that. Instead of just focusing on I, care about quantity, quantity, quantity, and when all we care about is quantity, we risk quality, and you want a good example there If all we cared about was quantity. In order to succeed, Hugo would probably still be in business in the US. It was a super cheap car. You can buy that car for nothing. Sure, it might have fallen apart coming off the truck Right, but quality matters. It is the truck Right, but quality matters, it is the quality. They were so little. It's always the quality. They were so little and cute.
Shean Kirin:Yeah.
Shaun Raines:I guess that's the only way we know what that actually is.
Shean Kirin:Oh yeah, there's probably some younger people out there saying you're a dinosaur thinking about a car like that.
Shaun Raines:Look it up, kids Y-U-G-O the Yugo. You're a dinosaur thinking about a car like that. Look it up, kids, y u g o the yugo. And then after that go look up the lay car. There were.
Shean Kirin:They were already death traps before we saw people driving the uh, you know uh smart cars oh yeah, I used to know a guy whose first job was a part-time quality control technician for Yugo Like that was his real job title. Oh, wow, he said the worst part of his job was that when they pulled off the truck, parts would fall off of them and he would have to chase the various parts to put them back on after they came off driving off the truck.
Shaun Raines:What a horrible job. Or imagine even putting them back on and but then sending somebody out like, oh my goodness, you're driving one of those, that's right. Well, I actually had a friend in high school that drove a Yugo. So did I.
Shean Kirin:We used to roll around in that beautiful piece of machinery. It was awesome.
Shaun Raines:I hated riding in my buddy's Yugo. It scared the living crap out of me. I thought it was going to spontaneously combust hated riding in my buddy's Yugo. I just it scared the living crap out of me. I, I just I thought it was going to spontaneously come out combust. It was not a enjoyable experience. Anytime we had to take the Yugo, I preferred to be in my 1979 Chevy love. That's what you get all a Suzu motor.
Shaun Raines:Well, so let's talk a little bit about some, because one of the things that we're I mean we're right on the nerve of something that I think is very helpful to dealers, and that is you know, all of the vanity metrics. They do come from like every source, like there are vanity metrics within your website metrics, your third party lead providers, your website metrics, your third-party lead providers, of course, your digital marketing campaigns within the Google environment or their ad platform within Meta Facebook. All of them and as we were sitting here talking through it, I thought somebody needs to do the math on the number of the Federal Reserve or all kinds of authoritative institutions would tell us that there are never more than two to three percent of the US population that are actively shopping to buy a car Like it's always. It's a small percentage Now, two percent of 380 million people or whatever it is. We are now in the U US is still a lot of cars to be sold, but I would tell dealers I'm curious to know your thoughts on this. I'm just riffing. This isn't one of the specifically choice questions that I wanted to ask. I'm just thinking out loud verbal processing. I want your thoughts Based on that and that is a true number, like 2% to 3% at any one time.
Shaun Raines:But the number of leads boasted by I won't name any other names because I don't want them to think that I have a baked opinion about any of them but all of the popular lead providers boast big numbers of how many leads they're generating for dealers every single month or every bi-annually or every year, and I don't know that if somebody did the research on that number of leads washing with the number of people who are actually ever going to buy a car.
Shaun Raines:There are shenanigans, it's gamesmanship across every single thing in our lives and it's typically what ruins everything. And vanity metrics. If you get drunk on them or you get carried away with it. It ruins things, especially for a business that doesn't understand how to identify them and separate them from. You know if, if, and sometimes there is some value in being able to understand what's going on in vanity metrics as it translates down to the stuff that matters. But do you think that that's an example of someplace where we're probably way off? There's probably massively inflated vanity-related metrics even in something like third-party lead providers say, we're getting so many millions of leads every single year, but it doesn't probably really wash with the number of vehicles that are getting sold from those leads generated.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, yeah Craziness. So thoughts on some actionable metrics that car dealers should be prioritizing so that they would feel comfortable that their marketing efforts are actually driving meaningful results.
Shean Kirin:Yeah. So here's a good way to think about things. Think about things like a funnel. At the bottom of the funnel is the outcome. That outcome is we sold a car.
Shean Kirin:The next leading indicator to where we're going to sell a car is the number of leads. We should track it. I'm not saying that we shouldn't, I'm saying we should inspect what we track there. So that's going to come into three areas phone, internet and lot up, which means I'm tracking my internet leads. Great job, probably, tracking our lot ups. We'll probably have a little bit of inflated number, because we all know that the CRM is not perfect and you had some appointments that showed up and became lot ups. Right, the phones, though there's a disconnect in most stores because most stores don't track the proper quantity of real sales calls that come out, and so what you find is that a large number of sales calls go to one, two or three people that blew up the phone, that blew up the customer and didn't translate it into an opportunity to do business. That's the most likely leak in there. That's the most likely leak in there.
Shean Kirin:So the next step of that funnel is I separate out the three sources of leads phone, internet and lot up. And then with phone and internet, I look at my Google Analytics. I look to tie in my Google Analytics for internet leads and phone ups and get those two to reconcile. And now I go in there. I look to see what created those. Where did that traffic come from that created those leads?
Shean Kirin:In every one of my sources were there VDP views? Were there SRP views? Were there people interacting with the photos on that site? After the engagement rate then what was my quantity of visitors that come in? And so, if you think of this as that funnel of a website visitor comes in, they interact with a search results page, they interact with the vehicle details page. They may do this three, four, five, six times. They finally submit a lead or make a phone call or become dark, and then they show up in the dealership, either by lot up, by phone up or by internet lead. And then I can track that throughput In that system. If I'm asking all those questions along the way, what I've really done is I've taken out all the static on the screen so that I'm only concerned with the most important things that lead me to that sale. And if we measured all of our vendors that exact same way you'd find you would eliminate some costs, mm-hmm.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, I like that. That should be turned into a little bit of a formula.
Shean Kirin:That's maybe a good idea for a piece of Turns out, the Alchemist Company has a formula attached to the way they do business. Who knew? Aha, I knew it.
Shaun Raines:I knew it, I knew you were taking us someplace good, I think that's extremely important Because, also, what happens in that, when you figure it out right and you have a formula, you have a technical process to ensure that the right things are happening, so many dealers want simplicity. They want, like, there's so much within just trying to market ourselves and what type of advertising channels should we be using, that it gets so complicated for dealers so fast and I used to be one of the people. It's like, okay, great, well, we can take advantage of you know, they don't kind of know as much, not really being unethical, but you don't have to fight with people as much. When you feel like, hey, I've got this, you know, proposition, that sounds like the best thing ever, mostly because somebody doesn't understand it. And the reality is, when you have providers like you, guys that have are already thinking about that on behalf of the dealer, it kind of changes the conversation. So it's like, yeah, you got to make a decision between these different providers, but it makes your why us really powerful, because you're bringing this simplicity that is built around. Well, if we were you, this is exactly what we would build for ourselves. We're just offering the same thing we'd want if we were, you know, the dealer themselves.
Shaun Raines:That's powerful because so many other people, like I said, more of what they're doing is more gamesmanship. Like, how do we use all these things to manipulate people with, you know, kind of bs vanity style metrics? Um, yeah, okay, we'll keep rolling through this. So how can dealers transition from tracking vanity metrics to focusing on more of the actionable without maybe feeling overwhelmed? Because, as I say, like dealers feel really overwhelmed and maybe you just let the cat out of the bag, maybe it's and if they don't choose you guys, but maybe it's, that's one of the things they look for the type of process formula that you already have that does make it easy and doesn't overwhelm the dealer. What are your thoughts there?
Shean Kirin:So if I wanted to transition from tracking vanity metrics to focusing on actionable metrics, I would probably begin with one question. Every time they gave me a metric, I would say tell me where that metric comes from, how did we arrive at that number? Okay, that simple question is going to get someone to backpedal and it's going to get them to give you an answer. And as car dealers we know we can feel when someone's trying to put us together. So when you ask that question, all of a sudden it becomes a really simple understanding, because they're either going to backpedal or they're not. And if their answer is well, I got all these off of your Google ads.
Shean Kirin:The next question becomes great what percentage of my ads were brand and regional, what percentage of them were inventory and what percentage of them were vehicle listing ads? I'd like to know what that breakdown is and where those leads came from. If you kind of follow those two sets of instructions first, the simple question and then second, the getting them to elaborate on the source of those leads you're going to find that pretty quickly. You get to an answer and you're either going to have more questions or you don't. After that, if you have more questions, call us. We'll answer your questions for free.
Shaun Raines:The devil's always in the details it is always in the details it is always in this case it could be, you know, for the dealer it's like well, you might not find a devil, so probably a lot of times you'll find a devil in the details, but that's also where you find the metrics that matter. That's where you find, like, just like you're saying, it's sometimes as simple as asking the right question, like where did you come up with that? Where does that come from? What's the origin of these fuzzy math numbers that you're sharing with us? And, honestly, I think this is just me.
Shaun Raines:I won't, I won't pretend that I'm speaking for you, but as the host of automotive alchemy, I'll just say this I think if you are a dealer and you're asking questions like that of a service provider and they get, um, maybe apprehensive to answer, or they don't want to answer, or they're like it just doesn't.
Shaun Raines:It feels like hmm, like you just said, if you feel like these guys are trying to take me, like this is uh, run, don't walk away Away, just run away and just know that that's one of your best defenses is to ask questions that your vendor or service provider should want you to ask so that you can become more educated as their customer. That's how people feel, like well, I have a partner, not just a vendor. It's like that the facilitation of that. We want you to be smart. We want you to know that we're not taking advantage of you when we do amazing things for you. We want you to understand what's behind it so that you applaud it and you feel even better that you've made these decisions on these providers. That's like the whole thing. So good stuff, okay. So what role would you say ROI plays in distinguishing between vanity and actionable metrics?
Shean Kirin:So and I'll go back to putting on my hat from analyzing a financial statement for a second Okay, the very first thing that's going to matter is your advertising cost for vehicle retail period.
Shaun Raines:Right.
Shean Kirin:I don't know what NADA is right now six something, five something probably. It tends to hover in that range. I should probably know that metric, but I'm trying to beat it all the time, so I'm not trying to live at it. I don't use it as a justification for why they should spend more money. So, number one metric what's my advertising cost per vehicle retail? That tells me my exact ROI. Compare that with where I am in my zone and where I am from.
Shean Kirin:A market share Is my penetration in my market well over 100%, 110%. I've got dealers where their market penetration is 246%. When you're in your market and you're 200% sales efficient, congratulations, that is doing a great job. Yeah Right, admittedly, that dealer is doing everything right, but it's nice to know that that's actually possible. So if I go back to number one my advertising costs per vehicle retail. Number two, my sales efficiency rate. Number three my zone report then after that I start looking at a cost per lead and a total number of leads and one of my favorite dealers does a great job taking all of their leads and what they do is they measure their lot ups, they measure their phone ups, they measure their internet ups and they call them all first party leads, so phone ups off the website and various sources from the website leads that come off the website, plus lot ups, and they compare that and they use that total number. By tracking that total number, they're able to see if there's any sort of thing that is changing that on a regular basis.
Shean Kirin:And so, let's say, the manufacturer is struggling because some manufacturers are not doing as well right now as we would like. It shows right there If you're doing better than your competitors, right. If the market is down, you want to be down less. If the market's up, you want to be up more. If the market's up, you want to be up more. That's what the metric is.
Shean Kirin:So when we look at ROI, those are the best ways to track that. It's by combining offline data with online data. Always You've got to be willing to combine them both. There's too many things that affect the outcome of your advertising your pricing, your pricing, your selection, your inventory, the conversion buttons, your sales process, your BDC, the person answering the phones, your sales manager. Did your sales manager get off their butt today to go shake hands with the customer or did they sit there and become a desk jockey? Because if they're a desk jockey. I'm sorry, probably not working Right. The best managers talk to customers, that's what they do. So all that combined in many ways is the ROI. That's how you get there.
Shaun Raines:Those are all really good points. On ROI, I don't think, well, even you were sharing about the average cost per vehicle uh sold or what it costs nadas. You know 630, 40, 50 somewhere around. It's been around there for years, but that's the average and what you're just sharing. There is like um, there are so many different things that uh are part of that math equation. That comes back to what was your return on all of this investment. And if you just take that average cost per vehicle sold from NADA, let's just say that it's around that $650 number, if it still is.
Shaun Raines:I don't know what it is today or currently, over the last year either, but I do know that it's an average and so I know that it lumps in a whole lot of things, a whole lot of things that when you separate them out and line item and say, okay, now let's really inspect what's going on, and you start to peel back well, here's a bunch of stuff that's more vanity metrics.
Shaun Raines:Here the stuff that's more qualitative, here's the stuff that really matters. You also then begin to see where there's probably a whole lot of dealers that don't do that exercise to pick out the things that are killing your return right or improving the return on investment, because you stay invested in things that you have been deceived, perhaps on purpose, sometimes maybe not on purpose, but I think that's really fascinating that dealers would think about making sure to break all that stuff down in detail, because it can actually help them from a profitability standpoint as well, as you know, eliminating costs on things that are just maybe have never worked for them. So it's very interesting. How do you think dealers can use actionable metrics to improve, like just acquiring customers and maybe even retention strategies?
Shean Kirin:So here's what happens is, once we start focusing on the metrics that make a difference, we start to ask more questions. And as we start to ask more questions, you end up with more of the right customers coming to your lot via phone, internet and lot up. Right? So more is not better, better is better, but eventually, once you get rid of you know it's like panning for gold Eventually you get to the nuggets that matter. And then, once you get to the nuggets that matter, you want more of the nuggets that matter. Right, because more gold is more gold and more gold is better gold. That's all there is to it, right, yeah? And so by diving into actionable metrics and then honing those in, then you get to a spot where your increases net you a better result period.
Shean Kirin:It is like, hey, we're doing a great job, we have this much inventory available, we'd like to pick up this much market share. It is like, hey, we're doing a great job, we have this much inventory available, we'd like to pick up this much market share. What is it going to cost us? You spend an extra X number of thousands of dollars Maybe it's $2,000. Maybe it's $10,000. Every store is different but then you're able to validate the return on investment because you've kept things consistent, you've monitored them consistently and you're looking at your zone reports every month and saying, hey, I'm in fifth place in my zone. I used to be in eighth place in my zone, I'd like to get to fourth. This is what it looks like for me to get there. Now we can form a real plan with a measurable outcome. So these things become possible once you dive into actionable metrics versus vanity metrics.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, that makes sense, helps dealers get to a point where they realize that all the stuff that's kind of inflated for the sake of impressing them, maybe, perhaps misleading them, oftentimes on purpose that you said it a few minutes ago, asking those questions, are going to also help you get to the qualitative metrics, the actionable metrics, and then you might realize oh well, the actionable metric here was tied to the fact that the copy on this campaign was wrong or we targeted it wrong, and we have a much better result in actual vehicle sales. We actually captured the customer and sold them a vehicle and started a lifetime relationship with them and, as you've mentioned on the episode, maybe that lead cost was 80 bucks or 100 bucks and maybe there are some leads that are getting generated that are 20 bucks, but they're all from a campaign that literally never, ever turns them into an acquired customer. So, yeah, this is really good stuff. I'm loving this episode. I'm a fan and I'm hosting with you. It's got to be good.
Shaun Raines:I don't know if you want to get into any success stories. Sometimes I like to ask those. There's one on the top of your head, great. Otherwise, I kind of want to get to. So I won't tell you not to share a success story. If you've got one, you want to share on this topic.
Shean Kirin:If not, you can move on, I've got a fantastic one you do Okay.
Shaun Raines:Well then I'll pause on the next question Go ahead here.
Shean Kirin:The next question Go ahead? Here's a great success story. So you may or may not know it, but we do the advertising for three of the top 10 Toyota dealers in the United States, which for a small dealer like our, a small vendor like us, is a really big deal because we only have 300 clients, so 30% of the top 10 Toyota dealerships advertising is a really big deal.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, it is.
Shean Kirin:Well, interestingly enough, one of those owners controlled two stores and referred us to the other owner. So figure that one out right. And so we go over to that other store. We start in there. They tell us about this system that they've had.
Shean Kirin:Of course, this chief marketing officer for that group is spectacular and she says you know, we just want to do a better job. And your friends at dealer A said hey, if you do this, you'll get a better communication, better ROI and the communication's priceless. And, frankly, I'm looking for better service. We frankly think that service is the most important part of any relationship. And so what we told her was that, well, you seem to have a lot of inventory. You're a Toyota store in California. I'm surprised you have this much inventory. We should be able to fix that.
Shean Kirin:Well, all of a sudden, now they have an inventory problem. Their inventory problem is that they don't have any. They've got two types of vehicles on the lot. They've got Tacomas and they've got Tundras. They've got nothing else. That's what success looks like. Success looks like selling what you can sell. Right, we all know that Toyota's got more Tundras and more Tacomas available right now, and we have to sell those too. We have to sell everything, but that's the key we have to sell everything. That's what success looks like. So I love that story because we went from having excess inventory to having none and, quite frankly, that's what it should look like Forming a plan to get off the inventory that you need to get off of, actioning all that together and then, when you look at it together, saying, hey, great, now what's the next challenge and how do we do this as a team?
Shaun Raines:When you have dealers that compete with each other same brand, like brand, same market, but still recommend you to each other. I mean gosh.
Shean Kirin:I think that says something.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, that's like that should be a newsworthy, that's a noteworthy, I think, tip. It's like don't bury the lead, as they say, for people that are watching and listening and consuming the podcast Dealers who, I mean, that's our primary audience for this podcast Dealers don't make those recommendations unsolicited unless things are going right, unless you're doing the right things. That's. I mean, that's in this political environment that we all live in now. Now, I won't make this a political thing either, but endorsements are huge. Endorsements make. I mean, we just went through the last week of some pretty huge shifts within the political spectrum of those endorsements. And when you think about this in the context of business, not politics, it's very similar when some endorsements have so much more weight to them than others.
Shaun Raines:So, anyway, I have the privilege of knowing what you just shared with us. So I but every time I hear you say it I'm still like that's, that's really impressive. Because I can't actually can't think of a single and I've been in this game for a minute. I can't think of another time where somebody said, yeah, that an equivalent referral story like that that most people would shy away from, even if they like their fellow competitors, but we're in the same market or we're same brand. Those are huge things to get past in recommending one of your vendors to your competitors. Anyway, I'm curious to know if, uh, you have tools or software. Maybe it's a ga4 thing, maybe it's more than ga4. I know you guys have a lot of reporting stuff in your technology stack as well, but are there recommendations that you would make to dealers that are wanting to make sure that they have visibility into more of the actionable metrics versus just the vanity stuff?
Shean Kirin:I would tell every dealer that there is only one acceptable source of data, and that one acceptable source of data is GA4. Outside of Google Analytics, you can manipulate data in any way you want in order to make it look as good as you want. Ga4 is the only place where it is clear, it is non-kinkable and it is simply transparent. And so use us as an example. We use a reporting platform. We built the reporting platform for our own employees to be able to inspect multiple accounts faster, because it allowed them to swap between accounts quicker and get to exactly what they needed to check. Even in our world, where we've got this one-to-one API between Google and our dashboard setup, we take all of our dealers through Google Analytics because Google Analytics is king, and so if you are a dealer and you are not looking, if your vendor is not taking you through Google Analytics, that's a problem.
Shean Kirin:Plain and simple.
Shaun Raines:And they probably have to watch out. For, you know, some people may be making recommendations of how they would set things up in ga4. I've heard and seen a lot of this lately, where, um, maybe people are taking advantage of the fact that dealers didn't do a great job of transitioning out of universal analytics into ga4, and so somebody comes through and say, hey, we're going to do all this stuff for you, but then pretty much lost the dealer.
Shean Kirin:We caught a vendor double tagging events in order to make their website metrics look good.
Shaun Raines:There's the vanity.
Shean Kirin:Yeah, they didn't want to give anybody access to the data. Getting them to give us access to their analytics data was almost impossible, and now we know why. It's because it was kinky. They were created multiple events to make it look like they were doing more than they were really doing. You know, I mean it is a problem out there right now.
Shaun Raines:Yeah.
Shean Kirin:And the answer is not just I'm looking at my um, whatever they call the, the vendor accountability set of metrics. That is kind of the the standard out there automotive standards council. It's not just that because, frankly, for a lot of vendors, most of that stuff is broken it is not getting a paralysis by analysis, by looking at too many things. It's simplifying the things that look at and understanding what matters. That's the most important part.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, yeah, I think there's a place for education within the dealership around this topic and, curious to know your thoughts, I'm trying to think of the best way to kind of frame the question that I'm wanting to ask you.
Shean Kirin:You know, here's a great way to say education, right? So if I think about educating dealers and personnel on this exact subject, I would say the first source of that is their vendor themselves, because a good vendor is teaching the dealer on a regular basis and every time there's a little bit of a lesson inside of there, and it doesn't matter who the vendor is, it always looks the same. The second place to look at that is going to be the Google classes that come into NADA and Digital Dealer. There are a couple of consultants that are out there that put on spectacular classes, the one Gary May puts on when he gives information. It's wonderful. George Nene gives wonderful information as much as Brian Pash may be a tough pill to swallow for some people, depending on whether you agree or disagree, but the bottom line is some of the content that he puts out is really well made.
Shean Kirin:Yeah, absolutely, I mean there's some things that have come out lately that talk about CDP data versus regular data and merging those two. That are wonderful and, quite frankly, whether you want to pay the guy or not, some of his classes are just really well done. Yeah, and I don't care about what the history is, I care about whether it works right now, you know. Yeah yeah.
Shean Kirin:I mean not to throw stones. I'm trying to do this without throwing stones, but that's the best way to say it is look for the classes that you catch through an NADA or a digital dealer. Go to the conference, look at those accountability classes and get into one of those that teaches you how this stuff works. And then ask your vendor every single time, because there should be a marketing person, a general manager, an internet director or a general sales manager probably one of those four who understands how this works, and it kind of starts from the bottom and kind of works up through the food chain, depending on how the dealership or the dealership group is set up.
Shaun Raines:Yeah, yeah, all of those folks that you just mentioned. I can vouch for all of them. I think they all are doing great content and Brian's one who's been doing it for a long time. I think sometimes people want to find reasons to get upset or get their nose been out of shape, but the reality is even some of the things we were talking about on this subject. It's just well ask the questions what's the source, where are they coming from? What's the point of all of this? And you find that with Gary, with George I was just at a little small event where George was talking about GA4 and some GBP stuff. He's become a subject matter expert in these areas. He can speak to what's happening within the Standards Council. There always needs to be a runway to get people in a direction Standards Council. There's always kind of needs to be a runway to get people in a direction. Brian has been part of that in a lot of different initiatives and if people don't like that, that's fine. Like okay, don't like it. But it's hard to say that he hasn't like you were just saying, hey, it hasn't put together and continues to put together content first before other people are really talking about some of these things and I think it's important. There has to be more education and I honestly think that you could take learnings from Brian or from events that they do, from George Nitti, from countless people, gary, others, from you guys. You guys do a lot of education in your approach to starting relationships with potential clients and then your existing clients and, I think, a lot of that type of information.
Shaun Raines:This is one of the things I've said for a long time. I don't think that in in the context of business in automotive, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I think it's literally spending money to go to almost said it to NADA, to digital dealer, to whatever the event is, to a Pash event, to any of these, a DC20. There's so many events to get smarter at now, but there are so many dealers that invest the time right, so there's opportunity cost and then there's just airfare and hotels and all that stuff.
Shaun Raines:You go maybe you take some notes Hopefully you do. You take some things. Did you go in with the plan? We need to learn more about this vanity metrics, quality metrics, all this kind of stuff and then did you come back and actually apply any of what you learned. It's the knowing versus doing. I think that's insanity. I know all this stuff. There are dealers today. There are dealers that will watch and listen to this episode, that know more just based on seeing some of the content that we make for Dealer Alchemist, and yet they're still not doing anything with it.
Shaun Raines:That's insane, crazy, and I honestly think the more that you learn about topics like this, it makes it easier. It should make it easier for the conversations that I mean you were in way more of them than I was, because I only sold retail for a couple of years, but I was in plenty of sales meetings that were just I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a spoon because they were like, oh, it's just horrible. You know Saturday morning sales meeting, rah, rah. You know who draws the shortest straw is going to make fresh balloons to go hang them on. You know cars and all that kind of stuff. Imagine being in those meetings when you need somebody. Please, somebody, bring something to this meeting. That's really helpful.
Shaun Raines:And somebody stands up and says, hey, I just want to give you guys a quick tip on when we're looking at all these metrics and you're thinking, why do we have so many website visitors, or why do we have so many leads but not very many sales? Well, that's the difference between all these fluffy vanity metrics and the things that we're really tracking. And the more you know about that, the more we coalesce as a team and we're like, hmm, we're on the same page. And then some of you will stop fighting to keep vendors in this dealership, that all the only reason why you want them here is because they bring us pizza or donuts or somebody looks cute or whatever.
Shaun Raines:I just you know, I could go on and on. I could do these podcasts, literally talking with you. We could riff on stuff all day long, but we do have to bring it to a close. And I got a couple more things I want to ask you, actually, most importantly, in fact, I'll just go to my last question. As you look at the future, looking ahead, how do you see this role of metrics evolving for us in automotive marketing? Is there something you think dealers should prepare for just to be keeping in mind, because it changes fast?
Shean Kirin:Yeah, there, absolutely is. I think Google is going to do a better job as time goes on of allowing us to see that visitor journey. And you know, one of the reasons that the CDP conversation matters is because the visitor journey does matter. Understanding how many times they interacted with your advertising, your website does matter when you go to set that appointment. And so when we look at the future of metrics and how they apply towards sales, we are entering a place where there is more and more accountability on an ongoing basis, and as that accountability continues to increase, it is important that we continue to re-inspect as if we're looking at it brand new on a regular basis.
Shean Kirin:Like if it was me, I probably will look every once, every three to six months, at my entire vendor base and just attack it from zero. Tell me what's working, tell me what's not, help me get educated. What would you do differently If I was to start with you today? What would you do differently in order to drive a better result? Because people do get comfortable, vendors do get comfortable, and that's the enemy. We're not in a comfortable spot in the car business right now. I've got some people that tell me that every month is one of their best months ever. I've got other people that tell me that they're struggling and that they're looking to make a change because they're struggling and they're tired of struggling. And so I would tell you, if you're a dealer and you're struggling, you don't have to be.
Shean Kirin:That's a set of problems. Maybe you need to look in the mirror and look at some of your process. Most problems, maybe you need to look in the mirror and look at some of your process. Most likely it's advertising and process, because those two go hand in hand. It's not one or the other, it's kind of both. It isn't which came first, the chicken or the egg. It's just attack them both and see what happens.
Shean Kirin:So, just looking ahead, knowing that this stuff is changing so quickly, my advice is going to continue to be once every quarter, once every six months, do a deep dive into those partnerships and ask yourself am I really getting as much out of this as I think I am? And, quite frankly, your metric how do you know my advertising cost per vehicle, retail, my market penetration, my sales efficiency? Where am I at in my zone? All of those things are your telltale sign Our best dealers. They're not spending $700 a car, they're spending much less.
Shean Kirin:There are some pockets, though, where they've got to spend that because that pocket is incredibly expensive. There are some spots in Florida where you got to spend money to make money. It is just really, really expensive. There's some pockets of California where you would, frankly, you, just underspend. The population is so dense that you just don't have to.
Shean Kirin:I've got a dealer that I love out there who says you know, sean, before you I didn't spend any money on digital marketing. I said I'm sorry, how much money. He said that would be zero, and all I said was that's incredible. Right Now, obviously, his process was on point, so I hope that that's what that helps people out there dealers out there to look at it and say what is the best way that I can make the most of my advertising dollar today and adjust as the market adjusts and adjust as advertising adjusts, because Google changes every six months, social changes every six months. Technically, it's changing all the time, but you get this six months serious rollout cycle where there's a pretty big change, and being on the forefront of those changes is how we succeed.
Shaun Raines:So well said. I will thank the audience once again for hanging for another episode. We have just filled up the car with a lot of gas and we've even cranked it, so this thing is running. You need to continue to dig in audience. Uh, vanity metrics and quality metrics, actionable metrics and really results are something that you can go deeper, even than this episode, so that you feel not just educated but equipped to have the right conversations and be looking at the right things, and hopefully we got your interest peaked and that you'll go in that direction.
Shaun Raines:We do appreciate you tuning in for the episodes. If you want to go deeper, you can certainly just go right on over to dealeralchemistcom and you can learn all kinds of things about what's going on with the company. There are some things that you can take advantage of that I always highly recommend to the audience, one of which is there are a handful of complimentary e-books you can download easily. That will be helpful to you, give you more information on from SEO to digital marketing and many other topics. And if you're not really comfortable with your vendor and you think maybe they you know what maybe they are pulling the wool over your eyes with a lot of vanity metrics. Well, ask Dealer Alchemist to provide a complimentary digital marketing audit, and guess what Might turn the lights on in some of those dark places.
Shaun Raines:So again, hit up dealeralchemistcom, get in touch there, any questions that you might have. We want you to have a journey that you can just educate yourself, learn a lot about the company, and when you need us we'll be right there to answer questions for you. So, of course, don't miss the next episode. We make this content to hopefully help educate and elevate your abilities, and we'll be right back here before you know it with another episode turning automotive challenges into gold, right here on automotive autonomy. Thanks for joining us, thank you.