it will become something more like social network with this connection.

We have launched something similar over in Ireland where every used car on the website comes with warranty info and car history checks so the user has the peace of mind when buying from the dealers on the site.

That would be awesome, I would apreciate that very much.

Mitch - want to move to email or a phone call?

Alex - Thanks for the info, it makes tons of sense and I agree it doesn't make much sense to compare traffic in a highly populated area like yours with the ad budget and focus you guys put on checkered flag to our dealership. We live in Saskatchewan, not only is it the easiest of the Canadian provinces to draw but it only has 1,000,000 in total... and its an area very comparable to Texas. We use our CRM very actively, utilize email marketing and a few blasts and we try to be pro-active with every thing we do.

What I was looking for was a footnote to include in some presentations I do within our dealerships, allowing a conversation to go - "With an organized presence and a good market these guys drive X # of eyes to their site!" Given the managers I work with these types of examples always get them fired up and allow me to hook them for whatever I need.

While I'm asking I should try and drum up some ideas on what a smaller city of 200,000 folks, one of the better looking and functioning sites in the area, a relatively "OK" presence within our advertising, PPC campaign, dealer.com SEO could expect to see for #'s as far as visits and unique visitors. Currently we only run between 6500 and 8000 visits a mo, consistently w/ a little under half as unique eyeballs.

Alex, Brilliant! Keep up the great work!

The finance dept is going to be gone within 3 years.If you look at the current market with subprime lenders charging higher discounts than ever.The Regional banks not paying points anymore.The warrantys are selling more on the internet.The dealers like VT,Autonation,and others like Sonic.They will be paying 3000/mo salary for paper spinners.The current market is gloom and doom.The owners are getting smart and pricing their cars with pack only.Paying the salespeople and, mgt higher minis.The reality is dealership employee's need a union.So many of us will be let go in 09.Years of building small fortunes for our owners and, then we leave with a box.If you saved for the rainy days smart move.It's time for the salespeople to unite.Look at the guys building cars we have all sold them one.Look at their income and retirement.

Brad - We're using iMagicLab CRM.

Hi Alex, I'm curious what crm tool you guys are using that you seem to like so much.

Great Article and great Job Alex.

Great article - nice job Alex. I really appreciated the tip of putting a bus stop in front of the dealership to attract more lot traffic - great idea!

Yeah Jeff - you suck! lol

Mitch - the traffic number has definitely changed since October of 2008. It has dropped, but as a percentage, it has not dropped as much as our floor traffic has.

We have seen roughly a 12% drop in site traffic since October. The difference in the drop percentage tells me there are still a good amount of people who want to buy a car, but are holding off for their own reasons.

To some reading this, 12% is a very high number (I agree), but in looking at sales data across the nation it seems the coasts are taking the hardest hits. We are so close to the ocean, we could almost build a pier. As a market, the Hampton Roads area is taking an economic smacking compared to what I'm hearing in other markets.

I know that doesn't answer your question Mitch, and I won't answer it because it is irrelevant without other pieces of data:

-population in your market place
-SEM spending and cost per click
-advertising spend and CPM in those medias
-age of URL

Plus a plethora of other things about your dealership and Checkered Flag. We would have to compare the differences and then figure out what a comparable visitation number would be based on those differences.

Hope that makes sense.

Great article, thanks for sharing. I don't know if it's a proper question but how many visits and visitors do you get to checkerdflag.com? We're a smaller market in Canada and I'm tracking and battling drive the number of visitors and am very curious what some of the big hitters attract.

Congratulations Dealer.com!

Burlington, Vermont is proud of our homegrown digital marketing business.

@Kool-Aid

Ummm... hate to tell ya whatcha already know but ain't tellin': a scraping project has been underway for a few years now at ATC; the scraping comes from within.

Great setup Ia-Mc, if u have too waste ur time on boards like this tho ~ trying to prop up atc??

Send me ur resume, maybe i can do something for ya.

-Sayre

The simple answer to your question is yes. If you look at the numbers, our ROI on our $'s invested in Autotrader.com has never been better. Our account management is at its highest level in the history of our relationship and we just met with them to discuss some enhanced reporting.

So, I guess I am still drinking the kool aid. It's a lot easier to afford the kool aid when you are selling a bunch of used cars and growing market share.

What a conversation! If nothing else ATC brings out the passion from both sides. As a former CAT employee for almost 8 years I have heard the stories from both sides, the dealer and CAT. On a side note I'm trying to figure out the identity of Trader Hokie since I was the Desert DM for AutoExtra.com.

Back to the comments, the arguments over ATC and Cars are getting old and dated. Dealers, you need both of them no question. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. As for those that like to claim print is dead or dying, you really need to look at the whole picture. While newspapers are on the ropes targeted publications still do very well and under the current conditions can be very cost effective.

The Internet is no different than other advertising mediums in the basics which are target demo, reach, frequency and most important the message (call to action). Yes the Internet does give the benefit of more content for less money. But just as your used lot doesn't contain all one make or one model, your advertising mix should not be all one or two choices. As much I as love the Automotive Internet Business (now working on building another auto site in the Phoenix market), we love to throw stats around more than politicians love polling numbers. Are effective? Do we offer great ROI? Can we target better than other mediums? Yes to all. One caveat......ROI is subjective.

Can the Internet deliver buyers to the Internet Dept. of course. But what about the "soft" results that are always talked about. Clicks to the website? I can't tell you how many dealers I've dealt with in 3 states that tell me those are not legit. But when pressed they are spending a couple of thousand with Reach Local or some other SEM/SEO campaign and count the clicks. Why not with an automotive site? What about the walk in traffic? From the last ATC/Northwood Univ study, I believe it 54% of customers generated by online never email or call? As Sellmorecars just noted, these set up the "driveby" scenario on the sales floor to avoid the split. Been there, done that, not proud of it.

I've had more dealers tell me they always look at the results from any site I was with, take the hard leads and add 25% for the soft leads they couldn't track. They got it when it came to understanding what the internet and auto sites were about. Not lead providers, just plain advertising with better accountability to a degree.

Fight all you want. ATC is the big dog on the street. While I don't drink the "Kool-Aid", I hope the changes they are putting in place will be successful. They don't want to admit it but there is competition out there, even from the small regional and local sites like me. What dealers need to realize and it shows in the comments, they are in the newspaper syndrome with ATC and Cars to a certain level. I need to be there because my competition is there and they spend $200 million to advertise. Just as Trader Magazine was once the source for cars and has faded, the auto listing sites will do the same but will not go away. They will just be another source.

While the big guys fight it out for the listings win, us little guys will take the next step and use listings, .mobi, texting, Behavorial, video and traditional media to deliver the right message, at the right time to the shopper and buyer all from one source. To the former CAT people that will sound familiar.

There's room for all of us in the market. The current conditions will not last forever and the ones left standing will have a wide open field to compete on. Someone said 5 years behind is an enternity in the Internet. When you look at it, the auto listings and CPL models are already dated. One can only do so much to spruce up an old technology. ATC lost a great resource when it let CAT (which ATC was part of) fall. They lost the ability to go cross channel and reach every potential buyer. Someone earlier said that 78% (another one of those polling #'s) of people looking for cars use the Internet, what about the other 22% are they not worthy of seeing what is available? Are they not worth our time and attention? Are the 78% that go online really in the market at that time?

I’m all for the Internet and what it can do for the dealership. With that said I can also make the argument it should be low priced. Another subjective term. I firmly believe we on the Internet vendor side of the table tend to invent and introduce more products that offer little in value as far as functionality and ROI but sell the sizzle to get the revenue. Capitalism at it’s best and I’ve been guilty of it. But for the dealers out there, ask yourself, I spend all this money on location, location, location for the drive by traffic and eyeballs. Does it really give me the ROI? If you say yes, then why do you need to advertise? Paying more for Internet listings is the same thing, most of the traffic any of our sites generate are “drive by”. If I looked at the mix, could I reallocate some of those funds for other products that would enhance what I already have?

Good luck to ATC. Thanks for letting me ramble.

Trader Hokie you will never get feedback from these guys regarding traditional media because they don't make decisions for that. They still have "internet budgets". The key is to find a website that owners blog and have that discussion. I still can't believe some of these dealers still have a separate budget for online when it is majority of their business. I always tell owners when you have an "internet department" you set your sales staff up to lie to you about sourcing. My favorite is when we hear about phone calls and emails. If they really knew about online, they would know majority of the traffic on sites like Autotrader and Cars don't do either. They just show up. Oh well, dealers always know more though. Maybe in 5 years they will figure this out.

How about we settle this once and for all... "Mr. Dealer... Yes, the economy is currently soft...ok, yes, it's bad. But unless you're going to close your doors tomorrow, you need to sell cars. And how are you going to do that? By reaching as many IN-MARKET car shoppers possible. Now of course, you can't advertise everywhere. The money just isn't there. You have a budget and you need to make every advertising dollar count. So where can you spend your money, that reaches the most car buyers possible? ON THE INTERNET. And when it comes to the Internet, there are TWO great websites that can reach the majority of car buyers--AutoTrader.com and Cars.com. AutoTrader partners with sites like Univision, MSN, KBB, NADA. Cars.com partners with Yahoo, Freebo, ConsumerGuide, and over 150 newspaper and TV outlets. We don't need to talk unique visitors on either site, who's the biggest or the baddest. These are the TWO front-running sites, with less than 25% overlap in unique visitors. If you only advertise on one, you're missing a large portion of the other site's audience. You could spend around $2000 for the Featured Plus product on ATC, around $2000 for the OAP on Cars.com, get an ROI from both that's OUTSTANDING, reach more in-market car buyers than any other combined media spend, and STILL pay less than what you're paying for ONE WEEK in the newspaper. Let's get reps together from both sides and create an INCREDIBLE campaign to help you move some metal."

I mean really guys, STOP THE BICKERING. I've worked for both Cox Enterprises and Classified Ventures. Both are great sites, both will work for the dealers, and you should spend more time fighting the wasted ad spend on TV and in the newspaper (and even on the radio of all places). Do you know in a C-Market like Charleston SC, one page, for one day in the newspaper, is like $1900--MORE if you ad color. A radio schedule in an A/B market like Norfolk VA, to reach a decent frequency, is AT LEAST $2500-$3000 a week or more. And TV? Forget it! The Internet is THE place to shop as a consumer to really know what you can get for your money. And you BOTH have the BEST sites for them. No one else even comes close. I bet if you actually worked TOGETHER against traditional media... You could get even more than just $2000 each per month. Stop talking traffic and start talking EXPOSURE and RESULTS.

By each side putting up a wall, and taking a competitive stance against the other site, you're actually demeaning your own product and your own reputation, in front of the dealer. Jeffrey Gitomer, one of the leading sales guru's of our time, practically uses the statement "people buy from people they trust" as his mantra. If you actually SUGGEST both sides work together in the best interest of the dealer...WOW...THAT will build trust. And then he'll actually COME TO YOU for ad decisions, and will be even willing to buy more if you can show him something is going to work.

Just my 2 cents...

I'm still waiting for you to answer the question you keep dodging...Where did you come up with 3X the traffic?