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CarGurus or CarsDirect

benstewart

Full Sticker
May 18, 2014
14
10
First Name
Ben
Alright ladies and gentlemen,

I have some budget freed up and have signed on to LotLinx currently and I am actively debating, mostly in my head about paying around $1500 per month for paid accounts on either CarsDirect.com or CarGurus.com - unless you wish to suggest another alternative.

Some information about our dealership. Located in the upper Midwest with new Chevrolet and Buick (400 combined) and 175 used cars. An average of 60 of our vehicles are certified pre owned.

While I'm sure most of you are familiar with both of these sites, here is what I see...

We had a pretty decent (2.5%) percent of VDP to SRP on CarGurus with a free account. My problem with CarGurus? With our number of certified vehicles being pretty large - the second largest in our metro, I fear we are going to be regularly seen as a "fair" or "poor" deal due to the CPO investment.
Otherwise, something is bringing us a decent conversion rate on CarGugus, since we get 18 leads per month and sell one or two.

CarsDirect is fairly straight forward. Costs about the same. More of our competitors are on CarsDirect while not many of our local competition has a paid account through CarGurus. They claim to have strong SEO value but I see CarGurus as the superior SEO site

Am I missing any angles?
 
How many extra sales are you going to pick up going free vs paid? Right now, it's 100% profit but will the extra business you get from being a paid member offset the cost? If yes, then sounds like a smart idea. Spend money on what is working.
 
Cargurus has done well for 2 of our stores. When I upgraded from the free account our responses went up quite a bit as you actually receive contact info rather than the encrypted response method.

They are month to month also which is nice if you see no value added after a 2 or so month trial.

I do have the same issue as you with our Certified Mercedes-Benz, we are automatically put in the fair to poor price index. But clicks to site and leads have still come in at relatively decent numbers.

They also have just done a internal shift with management and that has caused a little bit of a headache on billing. Not sure what that ads to the convo but it may be a worthy earmark.
 
Ben, I'm with WIlliam W. Cargurus is low risk because it's month 2 month.

I'd call CarGuru's directly. Your thoughtful CPO challenge is worded perfectly. I'd hit them directly with it and make your problem their problem. I'd challenge them to create a special way to make your CPOs stand out (again, this is not your problem, it's a nationwide problem)

HTH
Joe

p.s. CarGuru's CEO Langley Steinert would be interested in this thoughtful CPO challenge. He's a DealerRefresh'er too.
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/langley-steinert/35/113/898
 
CarGurus hands down. Signed up with them 2 months ago. Real customers that want to buy cars. Have noticed a lot of very bad credit with some of the leads, but all and all I am very happy with their services.

Customer engagement rate is @ 83%. That's insane.