• by Tameka Kee , April 2, 2008

The Cobalt Group has deepened its relationship with Marchex, utilizing the local online advertising company for both phone-based lead generation and call tracking. The deal adds VoiceStar's (a subsidiary of Marchex) technology to the roster of call-based marketing tools that Cobalt provides for local auto dealers across North America.

Seattle-based Cobalt provides on- and offline marketing services (including Web site design and management, search and direct mail) to more than 40% of the auto dealerships in the U.S. As such, the firm had to ensure that launching a comprehensive partnership with Marchex was in the best interests of its dealer population.

"We have multiple suppliers of this particular kind of service for our dealers, and as our business expanded, it made sense for us to engage with a new partner," said Mark Bathum, executive director of business development at The Cobalt Group. "We'd been in a 'courtship' relationship with VoiceStar for almost two years, so we did our due diligence and took the time to build a strong relationship that we were comfortable expanding."

For the call tracking, Marchex generates thousands of unique phone numbers for Cobalt's dealerships to use in their print, TV and online ads. The VoiceStar tech then traces consumer calls back to the ad or Web sites they originated from, tracks and reports details like time of day and geographic location of the caller, and records the conversation so that dealerships can use the info for sales and customer service training purposes.

And for Web-based phone leads, Cobalt will leverage Marchex's technology to automatically place the local dealership's pay-per-call ads across multiple search engines and Web sites.