My entire dealer group just canceled Cars.com. More lead providers to come!

[Alex.Lemoing]

Alex, curious to what you consider to be "Crap"?

-

By "crap", I mean that too often, the lead coming from a 3rd party site are customers located in the High funnel on the sale process + the leads are being sent to many many dealers at the same time.
Trying to get a hold of a customer like that is a hard task and I don't know if paying $25 a pop is necessary.
The ROI is usually not enough to keep paying for 3rd party leads.
It may work for markets such as Los Angeles and Chicago, but for us here in Idaho falls, it was just a waste of money.

All I know for sure is that since we started investing 3rd party lead money into PPC and SEo and SEM, we have seem a huge increase of traffic + an increase of quality leads such as E-price etc... Especially on our GM website that wasn't doing very well.

 

[ddavis]

I don't doubt that Cars.com and AutoTrader work better in major markets. I wouldn't have never considered dropping either, because they worked for me. I still haven't seen third party leads that close at over 3 to 6 percent. Leads from AutoTrader, Cars.com and my website performed at 20%. That was going through the same cradle to grave ISMs and not a BDC.

I was looking at some AutoTrader ads, in the metroplex, a few day ago. Honestly, most of those dealerships shouldn't expect any return. They either don't know what they are doing or are unwilling to put in the effort to be successful. For those, they should cancel.

The top position, in paid search, gets only 6% of the clicks on the page. Wonder why your bounce rate skyrockets when you start spending money in paid search? It's a damn ad and everyone knows it. That is like clicking on a banner ad. Does anyone do that more than once?

Once again another link to the Dataium Cars.com study: Link I don't expect anyone to comment (as before).

If you have spent the time to make your website sticky, SEO will work wonders. Website are only templates. If you haven't invested the time and effort, nothing will work for you.

I am retired and just purchased a new fishing boat and a truck to pull it. Last year, Social Security only went up about a percent. It is time that you working people start paying more. Gas and beer isn't getting any cheaper.

 

[lightnup]

From the view of someone whose paycheck is dependent on getting more phone calls and emails into their department (which I suspect is most dealer people on this forum), I can understand the BDC/Internet Director's euphoria over increasing "leads" as a result of throwing more money at promoting their own website. I get that. After all, there's no need for an Internet or BDC Director position if there are no prospects calling or emailing, right?

But from the DP or GM view, is making the decision to not have a presence on either of the largest automotive classified sites in order to boost the activity of a single department the best thing for the dealership as a whole? Not talking about buying 3rd-party leads here, talking about advertising your inventory on classified sites that don't force visitors to fill out a form in order to shop.

It is generally agreed that a huge majority of car shoppers use the Internet and that the majority of car buyers do not call or email before coming to the dealership (despite a certain "expert's" howling that he doesn't believe it). Ever bought a big screen TV? You go to the Best Buy or H.H.Gregg website, check out the TVs and get in your car to go see them, touch them, hear them and see what else might be a better deal when you get there. You don't call, you don't email. Why would you?

With the explosive increase in mobile becoming the preferred channel for car shopping, isn't it even more likely that the typical shopper will just drive to the dealership since they are already - wait for it - mobile? So, is your dealership jeopardizing a much larger potential buying pool in order to help the BDC make inroads into a much smaller number of people who will call or email? Just asking.

An analogy; you can immediately increase your calls and emails by removing the selling prices from your website. Sure, you'll get more calls and emails. You'll win that battle for the Internet Department. So why don't you do it? Because you'll lose the war for the dealership by turning off a much larger pool of potential buyers who ignore listings without prices. It's harder to measure those people but you know they are there, as are the large number of local shoppers on the major classified sites who go there to narrow their choice of car and dealer.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Lightnup - love it when you pop in out of nowhere. We miss you!


Glad you brought up mobile...

Of shoppers who used a smartphone to do research at a dealership in the study, 56% visited a major third-party marketplace site, far surpassing the use of manufacturer and dealership sites while on the lot. A trend that will likely only grow with the rapid consumer adoption of smartphones, dealers can use this new mobile behavior as an opportunity to build trust with potential customers by encouraging open access to information, being transparent throughout the sales process and, in turn ,reinforcing the dealership's value. - Cars.com

 

[joe.pistell]

... The top position, in paid search, gets only 6% of the clicks on the page. Wonder why your bounce rate skyrockets when you start spending money in paid search? It's a damn ad and everyone knows it. That is like clicking on a banner ad. Does anyone do that more than once?...snip... If you have spent the time to make your website sticky, SEO will work wonders. Website are only templates. If you haven't invested the time and effort, nothing will work for you...

Doug,

I totally disagree with your conclusions.
My disclaimer is below*

#1) you've described the output of a sh*tty PPC manager.
#2) you don't understand user context.
#3) if you ever have "SEO working wonders" and PPC is not, see #1 above.


My $0.02
--User context.
A car dealer banner ad on weather.com is just noise to the weather user. A google user that types: "best price on a used Cadillac CTS near Mesa AZ" is a damn car shopper, he's not looking for sports scores, movies times, or the weather. He's looking to buy a car. Comparing Banner to PPC is illogical.

SEO vs PPC
Google has put ALL car dealers in long tail SEO jail, see for yourself.

SEO TEST:
#1). best price on a used Cadillac CTS near Mesa AZ
go down that list, one at a time... FIND THE DEALER (about #8 for me).

#2). best price on a used Cadillac CTS near portland OR
go down that list, one at a time... FIND THE DEALER (about #9 for me).

Google has hard coded the auto dealers out of many SEO results. This is not new, I've tracked this for years, Google allowed one dealer in the top5 and they're always in position 3 or 4 or 5. It was just a few months ago Google pushed dealers down to below 5. Dealers need new SEO tactics (like Manny's video SEO) to counter this horsesh*t.

--Bounce rate.
Any PPC manager worth their pay knows how to adjust the PPC campaign to eliminate wasteful spending (i.e. ads with high bounce rates). Any automated PPC system will do this automatically too.

--With PPC, you Pay Per Click. So a 6% CTR is not a relevant KPI.

Lastly, I TOTALLY AGREE with your conclusion "Website are only templates. If you haven't invested the time and effort, nothing will work for you". Game. Set. Match.


*I am on the record all over DR, based on my decade at stores and from post sale interviews that I am in favor of AutoTrader/Cars, so this reply isn't an anti-classified, pro-PPC fluff piece.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Joe,

"Google has hard coded the auto dealers out of many SEO results."

With this potentially being the case, then would you possibly agree that 3rd Party new car leads could also have their value?

 

[joe.pistell]

Joe,

"Google has hard coded the auto dealers out of many SEO results."

With this potentially being the case, then would you possibly agree that 3rd Party new car leads could also have their value?

It's simple. Put on your shoppers hat and visit the site. If the site ads value to the shoppers needs , then submitting a lead has value to the shopper.

In other words, if the site has no important benefit to the shopper, then, neither do the leads that come from it. For example, big a** classified sites are a marketplace where a shopper can see everything in their market. That's a valuable shopper UX.

Yes, shoppers here can be high up the funnel and they don't answer the emails back, but, depending on your business profile, this maybe the only time they'll ever see your name.

p.s. "Car shoppers are a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is understanding shopper's needs."

 

[dvMail]

Very interesting conversation. As someone who doesn't directly work in day to day lead generation, I am surprised by some of the points you guys are making.


Here are my 5 worthless cents(hopefully on topic still):

1)
As a consumer, I use cars/autotrader as distance based inventory search tool. I don't have the time, or want to spend the time going to every dealers individual sites to find the cars I am looking for w/ the options I want. I'm a busy man trying to buy a car! "Ain't nobody got time for that"

2)
I could google search "manual 2014 ford focus st with no navigation in Chicago" and my results are gonna be less then helpful (outside those 3rd party listing sites).

•The SEM links will, 99% of the time, send me to a dealers homepage. I will then have to navigate my way to your inventory search to find what I am looking for. Hopefully you have it or it was a wasted click.

•If I don't click on the SEM ads, directly below them, 99% of the time, will be autotrader, cars and other 3rd party sites showing listings for cars I am actually looking for.

•After those sites, my p1 results might have a youtube video from a local dealer.

3)
I have said this before, but I feel like repeating it. When using cars/autotrader, I rarely submit leads. I rather show up at the dealer then get calls when I don't want them. I might be looking at cars while on my lunch break. I don't really want some salesman calling my cell phone an hour later while I am supposed to be "working". I'll handle my business when I want to handle my business. The times I have submitted leads and wrote in the comments "no call email only" or "call after 6", those requests are rarely respected.

4)
On occasion I will be searching and come across a dealer I have never seen on tv, heard on the radio or read in the newspaper.

5)
Sometimes I am searching cars/autotrader, found something I like or close to it. Rather then submit a lead, I will make a new tab, google the dealer and see what else they have. Now just looking at the analytics, it was google.com that delivered me to their site, but was it really? No.

 

[joe.pistell]

Yup, Neal nailed it.

Marketing decision makers must know 90% of automobile shoppers are invisible. If you cancel Autotrader/Cars.com because you can't see the traffic and the cost is too high (read: Poor ROI)...ask yourself, is the problem AutoTrader/Cars, or, you (the decision maker)?

I am not for-or-against Autotrader/Cars.com, I am against wild-ass gut calls based on a decision makers need-to-see-a-lead to prove value.

This is why the survey at delivery that I've been talking about all over the forums is so critical.


p.s. would you list a house with a realtor that told you they pulled out of Trulia and Zillow? Hell no.

p.p.s. If your realtor ran mega TV ads and was all over the net and had the best website with in your market, then, you wouldn't care about Zillow and Trulia (as much).

p.p.p.s. If your in a whore's market with dealers "racing to the bottom" and your store is not built for that game, then GTFO.

 

[ddavis]

Joe,

Normally, we agree most of the time. In truth, I worked for corporate stores and the PPC manager was not held accountable and was another profit center for the corporation. There was no option to DIY.
I believe that most consumers know about paid search and that is the reason why the top position captures only 6% of the clicks on the page. In organic, the first position gets 38%, 2nd gets 13%, 3rd gets 10%, forth gets 8% and the 5th position gets the same as the number one position in paid search.

A friend does the SEO for a Mazda in the Dallas area. This sits between Dallas and Ft. Worth in the Mid Cities. I don't know anything about Mazdas and have never worked for a Mazda dealership.

Concerning the being "boxed out" of organic, lets look a some common search phrases and positions in organic search:

Search phrase .........................Positions in organic search

New Mazda Fort Worth .............2nd, 5th, 6th and 8th
Mazda6 Fort Worth ..................2nd and 8th
New Mazda Arlington, TX ..........1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th and 8th
Mazda6 Arlington, TX ...............1st and 4th
New Mazda DFW .....................1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th

I didn't pick and chose the search phrases. Those were the first few I though of, not knowing the product. He goes after 10 adjacent markets. I was told (actually copied on a email) sent from the E commerce Director that their phone calls and lead submissions increased 400% in 30 days. For the first time that store was the Mazda leader in the Metroplex. I met the Internet Director, at that store, and he is sharp, dedicated with good processes. I didn't see the bill but I understand this was accomplished for about what they spend on AutoTrader. She has 6 rooftops and understand that all will soon be on the program.

Just about nine months into retirement. Got to get cleaned up it is free pool and cheap beer at my favorite watering hole.