Case Study: Leading Automotive Digital Marketing Providing Company achieves 12.5% dealership sales lift and strong ROI with Applied Predictive Technologies' Test & Learn®

Leading Automotive Digital Marketing Providing Company - Customer Case Study

A leading digital marketing provider in the automotive space faced a common industry challenge: most car buyers research online, but because vehicles aren’t typically purchased online it’s hard to attribute sales to digital advertising and prove return on investment to dealers and manufacturers. The company needed a rigorous way to isolate cause-and-effect between its online listing services and dealership sales to guide allocation and retention decisions.

Using APT’s Test & Learn® software, the provider matched dealerships that added or cancelled services to closely comparable control dealers to quantify incremental sales. Adding the service drove a 12.5% uplift in total units (about 5 more cars/month), with franchise dealers up 9.4% (10.8% new, 5.4% used) and independents up 30% (≈3.4 cars/month), producing ROIs of 415% ($217k net benefit) and 985% ($116k net benefit), respectively. Cancelling services produced a 5.8% decline overall (≈$60k net loss), larger losses for independents (10.6%, 1.5 fewer cars/month) and for premium products, enabling the company to better demonstrate value, drive renewals and optimize marketing strategies.