- Dec 30, 2009
- 1,883
- 480
- First Name
- Yago
I'm going to disagree with @Blake Arbogast for one reason;
Paying for more 3rd party sites is not just about increasing your overall budget but about being able to move more funds from traditional to digital as 3rd party sites attack niche markets.
One of the hardest to answer questions I get is: "What else can I do to advertise myself in digital?"
If you add all the "normal stuff" a dealer should have for advertising:
ATC "normal" package $3,000, Cars.com $2,000, TrueCar $5,000, PPC $8,000, CarGurus $1,000, Content, blog, etc $1,000, CraigsList $1,000.
And even adding things that I don;t consider advertising:
If you add website $899, chat $399, trade in tool $399, soft pull app $399...
You are in the $25,000/month range to be on everything including SEM, SEO, and a few tools. What happens with the dealers that want to spend $50,000-$70,000-$90,000/month and dominate some competitor's DMAs?
What happens is that the money goes wastefully to Social Media or to much higher PPC Google campaigns. I say wastefully because there are few guys out there that know how to spend large budgets on Social Media and because large Google budgets end up being mismanaged by automated software systems.
The growth of alternative digital venues that increase customer interaction with other social sectors that don't live in the main stream culture will help dealers diversify their reach, specially in an extremely cultural disseminated new generations of buyers, this is positive for our business.
Here is the simple task for the dealer if you think there are too many advertisers:
Stop arguing with vendors for $800/month so they do things for you for $500/month and they have to forget they signed you because they make no money in your account. Instead get a 3 month trial contract; use-it-and-learn-it; no free stuff (every time I gave free stuff dealers didn't check it, period). Then decide if it has a good ROI for you or not.
Not all tools work for every dealer and vendors don't know if each one will work for you. Most vendors with good systems and sales will not help (and Can't) you if you continue the grinding process, they have to earn a living. Pay for it and work with someone that will help you make things work.
Grinding for $200 is destroying this business.
Explore more, learn more, set more processes with more systems = expand dealer reach, decrease dealer dependency in too few systems.
Paying for more 3rd party sites is not just about increasing your overall budget but about being able to move more funds from traditional to digital as 3rd party sites attack niche markets.
One of the hardest to answer questions I get is: "What else can I do to advertise myself in digital?"
If you add all the "normal stuff" a dealer should have for advertising:
ATC "normal" package $3,000, Cars.com $2,000, TrueCar $5,000, PPC $8,000, CarGurus $1,000, Content, blog, etc $1,000, CraigsList $1,000.
And even adding things that I don;t consider advertising:
If you add website $899, chat $399, trade in tool $399, soft pull app $399...
You are in the $25,000/month range to be on everything including SEM, SEO, and a few tools. What happens with the dealers that want to spend $50,000-$70,000-$90,000/month and dominate some competitor's DMAs?
What happens is that the money goes wastefully to Social Media or to much higher PPC Google campaigns. I say wastefully because there are few guys out there that know how to spend large budgets on Social Media and because large Google budgets end up being mismanaged by automated software systems.
The growth of alternative digital venues that increase customer interaction with other social sectors that don't live in the main stream culture will help dealers diversify their reach, specially in an extremely cultural disseminated new generations of buyers, this is positive for our business.
Here is the simple task for the dealer if you think there are too many advertisers:
Stop arguing with vendors for $800/month so they do things for you for $500/month and they have to forget they signed you because they make no money in your account. Instead get a 3 month trial contract; use-it-and-learn-it; no free stuff (every time I gave free stuff dealers didn't check it, period). Then decide if it has a good ROI for you or not.
Not all tools work for every dealer and vendors don't know if each one will work for you. Most vendors with good systems and sales will not help (and Can't) you if you continue the grinding process, they have to earn a living. Pay for it and work with someone that will help you make things work.
Grinding for $200 is destroying this business.
Explore more, learn more, set more processes with more systems = expand dealer reach, decrease dealer dependency in too few systems.
