Case study: 6.5% increase in conversion rate for Lexus and Toyota dealer

Car dealers face a tough challenge in standing out from the competition, especially when brands have strict guidelines for their websites, creatives, and car ads. However, City Plaza has cracked the code for effective promotion. A key part of their strategy is Ringostat call tracking, a tool they’ve been using since 2017 to optimize ads and generate more calls from potential buyers.

About the car dealer and the reason for connecting Ringostat

City Plaza, or Summit Motors Ukraine LLC, is one of Ukraine’s largest authorized Toyota dealers. The company was founded in December 2008 by representatives of Sumitomo Corporation. Summit Motors Ukraine has two official dealerships in Kyiv — Toyota City Plaza and Lexus City Plaza. 

The company employs more than 150 people, providing a full range of services: 

• sale of new and used cars of both brands; 
• car service and maintenance; 
• sale of spare parts, accessories and additional equipment; 
• trade-in programs; 
• insurance, lending, etc.

Thanks to the reputation of both brands, Ukrainians have always been actively interested in buying cars. And recently, the number of calls has even increased. Speaking of Toyota, in about 70% of cases, customers call rather than write or come to the showroom. Among Lexus buyers, calls account for 85%. 

There can be up to 50 calls from one person within one sale. For example, a customer can call whenever they need to:

• find out the terms of purchase;
• sign up for a test drive;
• say that you are ready to make a purchase;
• agree on the conclusion of a contract;
• order additional equipment;
• agree on the payment process, etc.

But how does City Plaza know which ad led to the first call to the company? This is especially important if numerous campaigns have been launched, as the car dealer uses all promotion channels except Telegram and TikTok. Seven years ago, the car dealer connected Ringostat call tracking to find out which ads generate calls and choose conversion advertising tools. Below, we will tell you how City Plaza works with its data and what results it gets.

How call tracking is configured for City Plaza

The Toyota and Lexus websites have a special code that replaces the company’s phone number in the header and footer. Instead, different visitors see different phone numbers. Ringostat can track which ad led to a specific call when someone calls such a spoof number. Toyota and Lexus use different numbers and have separate projects in Ringostat. Therefore, marketers can easily distinguish which brand was inquired about in which case.

Data on call sources is collected in the platform’s reports, where City Plaza can see the source of each call:

• date of the call;
• the customer’s phone number and the company number that was called;
• how long the conversation lasted;
• source of the call — for example, Google;
• channel — for example, cpc (cost per click), which means contextual ads;
• the name of the campaign;
• the keyword that led to the call;
• link to the audio recording of the call, etc.

The company also uses call tracking for external sources where numbers cannot be automatically replaced. For example, on the Lexus Facebook page or in the “Phone Number” extension in Google Ads for Toyota. These sources have separate phone numbers that are not used anywhere else. When a customer calls such a number, Ringostat records that the call came from Facebook or the Google ad where the phone number is posted. 

The car dealer also uses Ringostat’s callback form, which is customized to match the website’s color scheme. The color and design can be easily changed in our platform’s account. Ringostat also collects statistics on the sources that bring in callback orders. This lets City Plaza understand which ads attract the most motivated customers who want to talk to a car dealer representative.

Ringostat data is an important component of City Plaza’s analytics

Information about calls is transferred to Google Analytics 4, thanks to the ready-made integration with this system. They are also pulled into the company’s dashboards built in Looker Studio.

“I check our dashboards every day. I mostly look at the call data, as this is our main lead generation channel. Thanks to transferring Ringostat data to our statistics, we will clearly understand whether we achieve our goals for specific channels or campaigns.”

Andriy DrigaCMO of City Plaza

This is where the management and marketing director of City Plaza can see:

• all conversions for all Toyota or Lexus models — including the conversion from an ad click to a call;
• plan/actual for each type of campaign and various indicators: clicks, cost per click (CPC), conversion rate (CR), cost per action (CPA), number of all conversions and their cost, etc.;
• visualized comparison of plan/actual for each indicator makes it easy to see whether the plan is being met this month or whether additional actions should be taken.

Without call tracking data, the statistics would be completely incomplete. After all, given the number of calls, a car dealer would simply not see 70-85% of conversions — that is, calls. Google Analytics could only track test drive requests and other online conversions. Because of this, it would seem that City Plaza is overpaying for advertising and getting very little return on it. This could lead to false conclusions and misallocation of the budget.

With the help of the call tracking data, the car dealer not only gets a complete picture of the effectiveness and payback of advertising. He also knows how to influence them to earn more profit. 

How a car dealer uses call tracking data to improve advertising efficiency

The car dealer carefully monitors which campaigns and keywords generate the most calls. The same principle is used to launch new contextual ads or optimize existing ones. This way, City Plaza can scale the most successful approaches and get more leads.

However, Performance Max campaigns have proven to be the most effective tool. This type of advertising can be placed simultaneously on all possible Google advertising platforms. At the same time, the advertiser allocates one general budget for all this, which is distributed among different channels automatically — with the help of smart algorithms that constantly monitor performance.

City Plaza trains its algorithms, in particular, on call data. Google pays attention to which formats and platforms bring the most conversions. Based on this, it chooses the way of displaying in order to get even more targeted actions from customers, including calls, as the algorithm also takes into account data on conversion to calls. Simply put, Google knows which ads make people call City Plaza and adapts other ads in a similar way, selecting the place of display for them. 

In turn, call tracking allows us to evaluate the effectiveness of Performance Max campaigns by showing whether they generate calls. Thanks to Ringostat’s data, City Plaza can use this type of campaign more widely and invest more budget in them. 

Another important component of Performance Max campaigns is the number of conversions. If there are very few conversions (less than 15-30 in the last 30 days), it will be difficult for the algorithm to learn, and the campaign may work unstably or not work effectively at all. Thanks to call data, City Plaza significantly increases the number of conversions. Therefore, the algorithm learns faster and more efficiently.

Learn more about this useful tool in the article “Performance Max campaign: features, settings, and optimization.”

Here’s a clear example of how calls are a sign of advertising effectiveness. In December 2022, the Toyota RAV4 model sold well at all car dealers. However, City Plaza noticed that the number of calls for this car was too low. It became clear that the advertising budgets were insufficient, as they did not cover the increased demand and activity of competitors. The car dealer raised the budget, and the situation improved.

Results of cooperation with Ringostat: customer feedback

“Thanks to call tracking and campaign optimization, the conversion rate from advertising has increased by 6.5% over the past year. At the same time, the budgets were approximately the same.

We are a very consistent company. Our main owner is a large trading house Sumitomo, which has strict requirements and conditions for any contractors. We have been working with Ringostat for seven years, which means we are quite satisfied. 

We can say that the use of call tracking is our competitive advantage. As far as I know, most of our competitors have not adopted it.”

Andriy DrigaCMO of City Plaza