In the late 1990s and mid-2000s, I remember my auto sector client telling me that the job of advertising was to get customers into the dealer showroom and generate test drives of the advertised (new) vehicle. The industry’s rule of thumb then was two test drives will convert into one sale. But the number 2:1 did change by the time we hit the early 2010s; it became more like 3:1 or 4:1. Auto companies doubled up on test drive generation and encouraged (even incentivised) dealers to give more and more test drives. In the case of one brand, the number
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