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ed.brooks · Aug 10, 2010

Yet another extraordinarily insightful post. You always give a great analysis. CarGurus could be a game-changer and certainly represents another step in the evolution of online car selling.

They do face some challenges: While they optimize really well on market-specific long tail searches (Used Acura MDX near Boston), that's not how most customers enter AutoTrader.com or, I presume, Cars.com. Both of these giants have spent years and hundreds of millions building huge name recognition. During my time at ATC, I was privy to the data. A tremendous number of used car shoppers simply type AutoTrader.com directly into their browser. And then, for those customers that use Google, another huge number simply do a Google search for "AutoTrader.com". We have to assume that same goes for Cars.com. One problem for CarGurus is ATC and Cars have established themselves as THE pre-owned search engines.

All the research says retail customers love 3rd party sites. In large part, because of the ability to compare, side by side, cars from competing dealers. I fully respect that fact the you do a phenomenal job attracting shoppers away from the "Big 2" to look at your inventory without the competition right next to your cars. I also respect the fact you recognize that ATC and Cars will attract a (significant) number of shoppers and embrace those sites as well.

CarGurus needs two things: eyeballs and inventory. You can't get or keep one without the other. I searched "used Acura MDX near boston". ATC was #1 & Cars.com was #2 (organic). CarGurus was #8. The ATC link took me to 251 used MDXs near Boston, the CarGurus link to 94 MDXs near Boston and the Car.s com link to a generic national landing page. The number #3 organic result was FirstAcura.com with a great site from optimization wizards CapitiveLead.com.

If nothing else, CarGurus drives home the point that car shoppers love to compare. And they make it even easier than it was before. Having the right cars, bought right and priced right is more important now than ever!

Aug 10, 2010

You nailed another one Carol!

"Do you think the consumers are as confused as the dealers when they receive a welcome letter from cars.com after submitting an inquiry on CarsGurus.com?? "

Great observation.

In Cars.com's defense, it's paying CarGurus.com for leads and NOT passing along the cost. Dealix re-sells them.

Aug 10, 2010

Great article, Joe. I just read thru your Used Cars – CarGurus.com – vAuto and the Travel Industry forum and you are right on! The way I see it is cars.com has some vested interest in CarsGurus.com and cars.com is just trying to get more of the pie with yet another 3rd party website. Do you think the consumers are as confused as the dealers when they receive a welcome letter from cars.com after submitting an inquiry on CarsGurus.com?? So much for sourcing.

Aug 10, 2010

I wanted to do some research before commenting and in my opinion I think we are missing the elephant in the room.

The inventory hosted on Carguru.com is being supplied by several different agencies. These are companies that we the dealer are paying to display our inventory on their sites. Sites like Car.com, Vehix, Usedcars.com (Dealix) are just a few.

From what I have gathered Carguru.com is paying some of these companies for our inventory feed. Why else would a company like Cars.com or Dealix supply a competitor with an inventory feed, if that competitor had designs on beating the stuffing out of them? There must be some kind of symbiotic relationship between them that goes beyond what we the dealer sees on the surface.

In addition to that, the same companies that we are paying to host our inventory are spreading it all over the web to countless car sites. The end result is that not only are we guilty as dealers of allowing our inventory management companies to shot gun our cars to all the Vast’s and Oodles of the parasitic car shopping world, but we are also paying companies to sell our feed to the Cargurus of the world, and then having them sell it back to us. Not to mention the dilution of SERP’s, and a battle for organic search results in your own back yard for the very vehicles that you have purchased and placed up for sale in the hopes of making a profit.

Is this the third party lead providers game plan to counteract the organic SEO efforts that dealers are using for GPOM? We cannot assume that these companies are completely ignoring what Brian Pasch has been saying for a very long time regarding the third party and free inventory sites. They have to fight back to regain their market share of the SERP or they will cease to exist.

DennisGalbraith · Aug 10, 2010

Fantastic analysis Joe!

For now, dealers need to put the name of their store on the lead photo (thumbnail photo) of every vehicle. Just the store name, big enough to be legible in the thumbnail. Magic City Ford in Roanoke, VA has the right idea. About 1/3 of the traffic coming from used vehicle listings never phones, emails, or chats. Give your customers a chance to know your good name is behind the vehicle and where they can walk in to see it.

As good as this site is on SEO, it is equally bad on sales integration. The demonstration is poor. The seller’s notes appear to cut off at 778 characters (926 with spaces). Cars.com allows up to 2000 characters, plus another 2000 in the batch tag line. The shopper will never see most of it. The pictures cut off at eight. Cars.com provides up to 32. If CarGuru provides video, I have not found a single example of it.

These things are fixable, but the site is not going to generate a lot of consumer loyalty and advocacy with a lead generation model, no chat, no map, no directions, no address, and trickle poor demonstration of the vehicle. My guess is that over 80% of the shoppers visiting this site leave and visit Cars.com and/or AutoTrader.com. SEO gets shoppers looking, but you still need to get the shopper excited about the vehicle and let them contact the store any way they want to.

My new book, Sales Integration, will be out later this month. Unless these Ivy Leaguers read what this old boy has to say, they ain’t never gonna catch Cars.com and AutoTrader.

Aug 10, 2010

If you're trying to reach me, Please don't call my stores (I work from Home

!!

Try: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-pistell/14/726/41...

or my gmail accnt: joepistell[at]gmail.com

Aug 10, 2010

Marvin writes: "...Would you advertise in a paper if the publisher insisted on prominently placing their opinion of your pricing in your ads?"

Batten down your doors Marvin... Internet Technology is knockin'.

Maybe you should have a chat with your GM and let him/her know how pissed you are. Be sure to call on your new 4G iPhone so you can have a live video conference with your GM on his iPhone so he understands how pissed you are. Your GM will check CarGurus.com on his iPad that's hooked to your stores wireless LAN that gets to the Internet via FIOS. (Sorry Marvin, I can't help myself sometimes... I'm a sucker for sarcasm)

Marvin, This is just the 1st shot over the bough. More will come. vAuto paved the way, demonstrated that it's possible and elected to sell the data to dealers.

GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).
CarGuru's missing trim/package data keeps the comparison results from being 100% true (you can thank lazy dealers for that... but thats a whole 'nother subject

.

I am ready for battle, but the carguru.com leads come to us BLIND and the shopper thinks we know what he knows... NOT A SNOWBALLS CHANCE IN H***.

Shopper has his CarGuru.com printout (we're $1700 high), we give him a trade-in offer, shopper drops the "Guru Bomb" on the deal and a fire fight erupts.

All the Dealer knows is the leads came from ______(insert 3rd party lead seller's name).

Not Smart.

I am 100% aok with it all until the lead hits us without the "Guru Shopper" warning. Heck, we could be $1700 under and we accidentally give away the house when we didn't need to.

CarGuru is all about transparency, let's finish the job, transparency all the way to the end!!

CarGuru Execs take note!!

"Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds You!"

Aug 10, 2010

I can imagine the howls of indignation if cars or autotrader placed an indicator in dealer's listings saying "this is a fair deal" or "this is a bad deal" like cargurus is doing. As happened when CARFAX started posting its opinion about how much vehicle history adds to or decreases a car's market value, there would be much ballyhooing about killing dealer grosses, not sticking to a core business and trying to get between the dealer and the customer.

Would you advertise in a paper if the publisher insisted on prominently placing their opinion of your pricing in your ads?

Aug 10, 2010

Good point Joe but in my experience with AutoTrader I have not seen big gains which is why I said they focus on quantity and not quality.

I think my big beef with AutoTrader is that if you dont have premium listings you will NEVER show up first no matter how you price your vehicles or what you do. The premium always shows first.

Like when a consumer searches for a Nissan Altima and I have a featured listing and my competitor has a premium, mine is priced less and is better equipped with less miles and they are both the same year...I lose no matter what bc when the consumer organizes the cars from cheapest to most expensive, they are first though they are more expensive. When the consumer is looking for less miles and organizes the data low to high miles mine is not first even though it does have the cheapest price or it does have the least miles.

This is deceptive and some consumers may not realize that their requested data filter is not ALL vehicles. I can see where AutoTrader benefits bc they can sell these outrageously priced packages and they make out like bandits from it LOL. I however feel differently about my ROI from that $5k per month.

Aug 10, 2010

If you're hell-bent on REPLACING Autotrader.com's ads with other lead generating opportunities, put together an aggressive Google/Yahoo Pay Per Click campaign, run it for 6 months and see what your lead counts from these PPC ads are like.

My PPC budget is equal to all 3rd party $'s and PPC wins hands down. I know it's not a fair fight. Classified ad shoppers want to remain anonymous AND PPC shoppers are on my site where I can see them. A PPC shopper is on my site, comparing prices to no-one else. That last fact alone has enormous value.

That being said, car shoppers are everywhere! I remain committed to AT and Cars.com because they have a valid business model and it fits our inventory profile.

Aug 10, 2010

Dawn,

In the internet classifieds biz, The winner is NOT the long tail site, it's the short tail site. Autotrader smacks the ball over the fence with "Used Cars" vs and gives up "Used Toyota Tundra near Flatness Kansas".

Google has one job. To give the searcher a great experience (so you'll come back again). Google defends the top honors to those national sites that offer a great shopper experience. My research tells me that CarGurus.com has what it takes to be a nationwide "Short Tail" car shopping site of authority (aka blessed by Google to be ranked well).

Before you throw AutoTrader under the bus, take a look at how they stack up: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/autotrader.com+c...

Last Month:

autotrader.com 6,917,716

cars.com 2,971,532

cargurus.com 760,390

AT is 2:1 > cars.com and AT is 10:1 greater than cargurus.com... but, thats not the story's theme. CarGurus.com 760k shoppers are all LONG TAILERS and it's well documented (and logical) that Long Tailers are far more committed to a purchase than is a short tailer.

This may explain why Cars.com has 50% less shoppers, but the lead count in my market out-performs AT.

Aug 10, 2010

You know from what I see here it looks like AutoTrader is not the hottest thing since sliced bread like they claim to be. I dont personally use them but I do know many dealers paying 3-6k per month on it and it appears that they use the more is better instead of quality is better.

Aug 9, 2010

Killer post Joe!

I'm hoping we have a well-rounded comment session with input from some of the third-parties mentioned.

Aug 9, 2010

TY Edward Shaffer. Glad you liked my work. I'm not a writer, I blew the draft out fast, but boiling it down and making it shorter... takes forever! It's nice to be recognized by the Park Place team.

thnx again,
Joe

Aug 9, 2010

Amazing insight from Dealer Refresh again! This type of real time, actionable information is why I will always rely on Dealer Refresh as my NUMBER ONE source ideas and conversation DIRECTLY RELATED to our business!

Bravo, Joe! Thanks for education and enlightenment...again!

Brian Pasch · Aug 9, 2010

@Joe

This site has been on my radar screen for months and I commend their SEO and website architectural team on their accomplishments.

As you pointed out, they have a very good core architecture. As you know, I have had my hands busy creating the page design and architecture for the AAN.

If I am not mistaken, I saw an AutoUsa advertisement that lists CarGurus.com as one of the websites that feeds them leads.

I have done some deep dives on this site and will be including them in my fall conference seminars at DD9 and Driving Sales Executive Summit.

Aug 9, 2010

Toiling in the trenches, way under the radar, a feisty little automotive internet startup is making all the right moves with its cross-hairs fixed on you, on me and all of us in our industry… the automotive internet/retail industry.

First, a little background...

I am constantly tinkering and improving our site, trying to improve our Google Search Results. 2-3 times a month, I'll do long tail keyword analysis on Google for phrases like "used Ford Taurus near Syracuse NY". I keep seeing this lil-start-up site popping up on Google everywhere and I mean everywhere! “So what!” I murmured to myself… “I see car classified-site wannabes scraping and puking out millions of pages of junk all the time. They appear... then disappear a week later.

But this lil' start-up looked different. This Classified ad site was amazingly thorough in its search results and its pages had depth and effort. Curious, I looked into it's About-Us Page where I found an eye-popping list of 21st century Internet Kingdom builders including the founders of eBay Motors and TripAdvisor! Woa! To say I was impressed was an understatement. From the Board of Directors on down, its pedigree drips with MBA’s and Computer Science engineers from Harvard, MIT, and on.

Then I looked in cities all over the USA and I saw their master plan...

What we have percolating under our feet, is the architecture of the most SEO friendly, robust automotive classified ads site that I’ve ever seen, run by experienced world class Internet entrepreneurs (not newspaper companies). It's time you get to know... www.CarGurus.com.

Let’s look deeper. Way off everyone’s radar, CarGurus.com is working hard to rank for phrases like:

used Acura MDX near [city] [state]
used Buick Lucerne near [city] [state]
used Chevrolet Equinox near [city] [state]
used Ford F-150 near [city] [state]

For my market, I ran 100 phrases & here is the Average Position SUMMARY:

1. Cars.com..........6.2
2. CarGurus.com......7.4
3. AutoTrader.com...86.0
4. UsedCars.com.....89.7

WOW! See for yourself, the 100 Google search results I ran are here.

Is CarGurus.com strong in your City? Simply add your city & state with your major market and see for yourself. In AutoTrader’s defense, they rank very well in major markets, but, CarGurus.com is still top 10 in these markets too.

CarGurus.com super dominates local search. Google sees what’s going on. But the "big prize" for CarGurus.com is ranking for a top 3 position for Google's HOT HI-VOLUME short tail terms like:

cars used
used cars
cars for sale
cars sale
used car
used cars sale
used cars for sale
used vehicles
buy cars

On the national stage, CarGurus.com is way off the radar:

1. Cars.com……........13.4
2. AutoTrader.com...15.4
3. UsedCars.com.....23.3
4. CarGurus.com.....91.8

My report for this is here.

Our business is automotive retail... its LOCAL retail and Google knows it. CarGurus.com is hitting on all cylinders and IMO, IT WON'T BE LONG before Google's quality team manually flags CarGurus.com as an "automotive shopping site of authority". If and when that happens, they'll catapult onto the national stage. If & when that happens, you best have your lead volume caps in place as CarGurus.com will hit critical mass and 3rd party lead counts will blow a hole in your bank account!

Can it happen? Absolutely.

No one knows what goes on behind closed doors at Google, but, in my exhaustive studies, Google's army of quality control people do oversee and manually override search results. You can bet that Google’s quality control executives personally know all about the stellar work of CEO Langley Steinert and the board members like Simon Rothman, Steve Kaufer and others. IMO, it's only logical for Google to flag CarGurus.com to rank higher for nation-wide terms like “Used Cars”, and when that happens, the shopper counts will go into the stratosphere over night. CarGurus.com is an all-star in the AAA minor leagues… looking to step up to the bigs. One stroke of a Google Keyboard is all it'll take.

It doesn’t end here...Retailers BEWARE! CarGurus.com leads are DANGEROUS.

Visit this CarGurus.com thread in our forum -- Used Cars - CarGurus.com - vAuto and the Travel Industry. It details the CarGurus.com “marketing hook” where the shopper knows if your price is high or low and by how much. 3rd party resellers HIDE the lead source, so, your lead is a set up for a fire fight on the sales floor. You'll also see an open letter that I sent to Renee Porter, from the partnership division of Cars.com. I am trying to warn Cars.com that leads from CarGurus.com (a cars.com partner) need to be clearly identified as a cargurus.com shopper. A very in-depth and interesting thread FYI.

Additionally, the CarGurus.com platform needs help with its price comparison tool. Our industry produces very poor used car details and this is the reason why no-one has been able to produce a true blue VIN to VIN shopping tool (GIGO: Garbage IN, Garbage Out).

So, from my seat, CarGurus.com has some internal marketing hooks to perfect, but, its site architecture has no equal. Top rankings on Google are a zero sum game. Look out AutoTrader.com, Cars.com. The Guru is building its empire, one city at a time and if they go national, your iron grip on our marketplace will diminish. CarGuru’s model forces shoppers into producing a lead, its “Marketing hook” helps reinforce the confidence needed to submit a lead. Your dealers will notice a “butt-load” of leads from CarGurus.com partners and comparatively little from you. To maintain share, you'll need to spend more on TV and tinker with new lead generating tools and wrestle with more dealer unrest as the new comer’s pay for performance model and its leads are eating into your dealer’s budgets.

2011 is going to be very interesting indeed.

Aug 9, 2010

"loyality" "ect" "give-aways"

Spellcheck is our friend.

Aug 9, 2010

Love this idea, Thanks Erin.

Aug 6, 2010

Nice article Erin. I would suggest to any dealer considering one of these to hire a professional to plan and moderate the event.

I take it that is where you would come in Erin?

Aug 4, 2010

A Great Way to Build Customer Retention and Loyalty

Dealer Advisory Boards are a regular tool used by Automotive Vendors to maintain relationships with their top clients and to keep them engaged in the service they provide. Autotrader.com, for instance, has a great Dealer Advisory forum that they use to gauge customer satisfaction and product effectiveness. It is also a launching point for new ideas and services. Generally if their top clients don’t like it, neither will the masses. Autotrader.com not only gains valuable feedback from the dealer perspective through these meetings, but also strengthens the relationship they have with their major client base; which builds loyalty and retention.

So why not extend this idea to your best dealership customers as well?

A Dealership Advisory Board is a “soft value” add-on that is beneficial to both your excellent clients and to you. Unlike giving away free oil changes (which we all know is no guarantee of future customer pay labor) this added value creates and strengthens the relationship you have with your most important commodity, your Regular Customers.

These meetings, held up to twice a year allow your customers to impact “their” dealership, especially when they enjoy the changes their feedback initiates. The “partnership” between the DAB and the Dealership becomes long lasting and you will be surprised at the level of ownership your customers will take of the dealership after participating.

The DAB is a win-win because not only do you gain valuable feedback to help you improve your process for all your customers, but you also gain the best advertising anywhere- REFERRALS!

The best customers to choose for your first DAB should be your most loyal ones. Avoid the negative customer at first; those can be folded into the mix later. Try to find customers who have prominent positions in the community if possible. One dealer advisory board I managed had the head of the Pilots Union on it. That one person had the potential to reach literally thousands of other pilots, flight attendants, luggage handlers, ect.

Be sure to create an environment that is enjoyable and make your best customers feel appreciated. Gift bags are a great way to end the meeting. You can fill them with coupons, branded give-aways and a special gift like an i-pod or planner. Remember this is only 2x per year- so make it impressive.

Always remember to keep it positive and accept the criticism well. Most importantly, act on the feedback you receive. All your customers will be thankful for it!

Have you ever considered having a Dealer to Customer Advisory Board at your dealership?

bpulseadmin · Aug 4, 2010

PCG Digital Marketing announced today the list of 45 companies that will be included in their research reports on automotive website technology.

The website platforms of all companies in this year's study will be put through a series of tests and the results compiled and published in a whitepaper for the automotive industry.

The automotive website platforms that excel in various categories will be recognized in the report as well as select companies being chosen to received the coveted ASMA award of excellence.

In 2009 35 website companies were reviewed and only 9 were selected to receive an ASMA award. Three of the nine companies had the distinction of being a dual award winner. Last year's dual award winners were Dealer.com, TKCarsites.com, and DealerTrend.com.

The 2010 ASMA awards ceremony will be held On Wednesday October 13, 2010 at the 9th Digital Dealer Convention & Exposition. PCG is sponsoring the conference cocktail reception where the awards will be presented to an audience of over 1,000 automotive professionals. The Digital Dealer Conference is the largest automotive conference and exhibition specifically focused on digital marketing and technology.

List of Companies in the 2010 ASMA Study

The companies that will be included in this year's ASMA whitepaper , in alphabetical order, are:

All Auto Network
Dealer Peak
Nexteppe

Auto Fusion
Dealer Serve
Onten Design

Auto Jini
Dealer Skins
Oren USA

Auto Lot Manager
Dealer Trend
Portratz Partners

Auto Revo
Dealer.com
Promaxonline

Automotive Website Solutions
Dealeron
Pure Dealer

BZ Results
eBizAutos
Reynolds and Reynolds

Click Motive
eCarlist
Search Optics

Cobalt
eCarlist
SEO Sport

Dealer Connection
FZ Automotive
Smart Web Concepts

Dealer e-Process
Higher Turnover
TK Carsites

Dealer Fire
IZMO Cars
Vin Solutions

Dealer HD
Liquid Motors
Wilson Software Corp

Dealer Impact
MJMI
World Dealer

My Dealer Biz
XI Group

Xspond.com

For additional information on the 2010 ASMA visit: www.asmaawards.org or call Carrie Hemphill, ASMA Coordinator, at 732.450.8200.

gpavlyak1 · Aug 25, 2010

One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that marketing, especially in service, is the vehicle that gets customers in the door and, handled properly, keeps them returning for service. It's critical that the goal of those return visits is establishing a relationship between the customer and a specific service advisor. Once the relationship is established, it's far easier to transition the customer into a vehicle purchase when the time is right.

If we look at it from the customer's perspective, who are we more likely to listen to and trust, the advisor that has made recommendations over time and gained our trust, or the advisor we don't really know?

An important part of this process is making sure that online appointments provide a method to select a preferred service advisor by name and by picture. This assures the highest likelihood that repeat visits with the same advisor occur, promoting an ongoing relationship.

Aug 23, 2010

Your 'ol Uncle Joe, Senior Analyst for DR, wants you to know the Edmunds PR below is 3 weeks late...

See above, You heard it here 1st!
http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/press/164946/ar...

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — August 20, 2010 — Edmunds.com, the premier online resource for automotive information, estimated today that the average price paid in the U.S. for a used three- year-old vehicle in July 2010 was $19,248, up $1,800, or 10.3 percent, from July 2009.

"Consumers are generally paying considerably more for used cars this year compared to 2009," stated Joe Spina, a Senior Analyst for Edmunds.com. "A lack of confidence in the economy is driving more people to used cars, putting upward pricing pressure on a limited supply of vehicles."

Maybe Joe Spina, a Senior Analyst for Edmunds.com is a regular here

Glad to be of service,
Your Uncle Joe
-Senior Analyst
DealerRefresh.com
We're #2 and we try harder.

Eric Miltsch · Aug 4, 2010

@Joe -

Great post Joe; excellent analysis & explanation of the searches & pricing.

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