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Is anyone else having this issue with Cars.Com and Autotrader?

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#11
DrewAment said:
The first thing I would do is compare your dealership to others in your market that are of similar size and inventory, and who you think is your competition.

Ask your ATC or Cars rep to provide you with the "Appeared in Search Results" or SRP, and the "Clicked for details page" or VDP. Since each dealership is different, divide the VDP by the SRP to get a click through rate. While not an exact science, it will start you with a good baseline for comparison to your store.

If one store had a drastically higher click rate then your, find out what that store is doing different.

You will also be able to see if the whole market is down (it is) or just your perception. Tough market now. The dealers that make themselves different through custom and unique comments, photos, and video will come out ahead - and you might even see this in the resutls your reps provide.

--Drew
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Every time I sit down to review the numbers with Cars.com and AutoTrader.com, this is exactly what we do- glad you brought this up. My total vehicle searches in my market has decreased over the last 90 days for both AT & Cars, yet my trackable traffic has only decreased a total of 3 leads in November and increased in December 25 per advertising source...
 
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#12
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#13
Drew is right. The only true measurement has to come from the providers analytics directly. The advantage of sites like Alexa are they're typically uniformly inaccurate-- so are best used to measure the difference between website's influence than actual numbers.

Cars.com, AutoTrader.com, CarSoup.com etc., all can provide site or market wide analytics if you ask them. That's the best place to start. It never hurts to ask what they're doing for you-- for example how they're improving their sites to ensure that the number of leads per traffic they're generating goes to you and increases over time.

A couple notes on that...

Cars.com has extensive consulting and experts that guide their analysis and improvements of the site. They're a great dealer resource and very, very digitally savvy (my personal favorite). They're very consumer focused with dealers in mind.

AutoTrader.com has an automated tool that allows their site to "learn" from user behavior to serve the best performing content on their site which in theory increases the amounts of leads "passively" for dealers. However, they're very business focused, with consumers in mind.

CarSoup.com is dealer and market focused, with business in mind.
 
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#14
I have found traffic and conversion to be down on cars.com as well. My Rep just like some of the rest of you came to me with well you have a different 800# in your custom comments, maybe its confusing your customers. Yes ladies and gentlemen that was the response I got.
What I will admit is our turn around time is 10 days for recon, inspection and then Pictures so there is some lag time however that is not going to scew the numbers enough that is noticable to me as an ISM. I do not have the referrals like I do with other sites nor do I have the success with Chat as they presented I would.
I am with Dan are they advertising enough to pull traffic? And why can't the new car leads be more specific, as much as I want to be a mind reader, its impossible and the response rate is terrible.
I question those dealers still have great sucess with cars.com to share some secrets, what are you doing that maybe I am not???
 
#17
Cars.com and Autotrader have been effective because they've convinced dealers that they have to be on the service because their competitors are. They also try to show how great they are by talking about all the "impressions" they get for you.

Truth is the impressions are a nearly worthless stat, and these sites by far have the highest cost per lead. My store finally dropped Autotrader a year or so ago, and our Internet business has not suffered. It has actually increased quite a bit. I do not recommend these services.
 
#18
i know this won't be a popular post but i believe in a well rounded marketing campaign and 3rd party providers are part of it. If I was back at a dealer I would run my own analytics, SEO, SEM, and pay the guys I know to generate leads for the market I can't reach. Will I compete in some arena's, yes but I will also gain. Yeah, I agree selling impressions sucks and I don't care if it doesn't change my bottom line I don't want it. Keep in mind sites like cars.com and AT.com are driven by price, placement, inventory, and pictures. If I was a dealer I would love for you to cancel it in my area because I knew how to work them.

Take this for example.....
I was a new car internet guy. One year i met a really savvy used car manager that bought a lot of really nice clean cars right off lease. He was use AT.com and Cars.com to price his cars. He showed me a lot but the process sold me cars. I sold 20+ used cars a month from calls and emails from at.com and cars.com. Keep in mind this is a store that only kept 40 to 50 used cars on the lot. Atlanta is a competitive market but this guy knew the science.

My suggestion, learn what the science is in your market. Make it work! If you have a good rep ask him/her what you can do to improve the leads. Why would someone click your ad over the others? Thats what you have to ask. I think we all know that form leads are on the decline and thats why these guys are adding chat. I have dealers getting 500+ chats a month from 1 provider. You can't tell me they don't feel they are getting their money's worth. That doesn't even include calls and emails.

Another thing I don't understand is why don't some dealers count calls from 3rd parties as leads? they only judge based on email leads. On the same note....are you entering all the calls in the CRM?

There are so many working parts that it is easy to blame someone else but if your machine isn't working properly their won't (for you). I have been on the dealer side and on this side. I find myself standing up for dealers a lot but one thing I have noticed is if something isn't working maybe it isn't the source. It could be a broken process. We are so willing to do A/B testing on our sites but not on our vendors. try new things....test it.

When it comes down to it you will never get as much traffic to your site as cars.com and AT.com.

Thats my two cents....I love you but its the truth.
 
#19
If you had a lead source that sent you 2 leads a month at $300.00 a lead and you sold 1 of them each time and the average gross on that sale was $2,000, would you continue with that lead provider?

I'll pick one of my dealers here. They're heavy into AutoTrader. They slack for one month on photos, pricing, comments and spotlights - the calls and walk in traffic drop. They get back on their game, and guess what? Calls and some floor traffic picks up.

How many form leads do they get? Almost none!

When we are merchandising and working the system as we should, the ROI makes sense.

My point is, I look past the email lead count we get from AT and Cars.com and look at phone and floor traffic as well.
 
#20
We would get a cars.com lead and never knew which vehicle the customer was considering. Cars.com would not identify trim level or color. Recently they made a change that identifies the trim level the customer was considering. So we are able to send quotes on the vehicle they want, which in turn will help.

Last month we had 26 leads and sold 8 used cars.

in May we had 36 leads and 4 used car sales.

So far this month 19 lead, six shows and 4 used car sales.
 
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