Dealers have been reminded not to lose track of telephone leads because of increased focus on online.

For every web lead, dealers on average receive five telephone leads, reports automotive web service provider Autotorq.

Whilst it is traditionally easier to track the origin of web leads, dealers often do not know where their telephone leads come from – and therefore which marketing channels are providing the best returns.

However combining trackable telephone numbers with web marketing enables dealers to monitor which marketing generates the most enquiries, and therefore is most cost effective.

Stewart Niblock, CEO at Autotorq said: “Given the increasing importance of the web in driving new and used car sales, dealers are spending more of their marketing budgets online.

"It is therefore vital that dealers can identify whether this expenditure is providing them with a good return on investment.”

Motor retail marketing solutions provider Marketing Delivery responded that its dealer clients find most of their customer phone enquiries stem from online activity.

Its snapshot of dealers using its SmartCall monitoring system found 69% of calls were from online sources, while the remainder were offline enquiries stemming from newspapers, direct mail and directories.

Jeremy Evans, Marketing Delivery director, said: "Customer behaviour is to research online, but enquire offline, i.e. by telephone.

"Customers don't appear to like filling in enquiry or booking forms online but will reply to emails where the dealer uses them."