I'll add to Eric's comment.

SCM, it's also the message in the ads.
--Is the web URL the cornerstone of the TV/Print message?
--Is the URL EASY to remember (and easy to spell).
--Are you number1 or number 2 in total spending for your market?
--The number of units on the ground and number of hits are closely correlated, how large is your inventory (relative to your competitors)

IMO, This size of inventory issue "makes or breaks" all your marketing discussions.

Joe
a proud member of IGURL (I've got a URL)

SCM - waaaay to vague.

what's the site?

Hi Everyone,

This might be a diffucult question to answer but what should a well established dealership thats advertisers a lot in a certain area (print,radio) , should have for unique hits to there internet site ?

Thanks

Wow... Such a heated thread, and going off in so many tangents... Gotta love the action, and the interaction. It is rare to see so much emotion in the words posted to a thread like this. Everybody is entitled to an opinion, but stating it does not make it any more or less accurate. Personally, I have worked on both sides of the vendor/dealer fence, going back and forth a few times. For the most part, I like the people working for dealership digital marketing suppliers, and I believe some of the best and brightest working in dealerships are involved with eBusiness. Sure, it may be true that comparing 2 different dealership web site traffic metrics is an apples and oranges thing, but let's face it... Dealers like to see comparisons between their store and others of similar planning potential, and we also have the OEM's who are always serving up comparisons between various dealership metrics. I agree that comparisons must be viewed from a perspective that takes into account the differentiation factors, such as PP, AOR, brands sold and more, but comparing dealerships with each other, and comparing car companies with each other is a very popular practice in our industry. So, once again, I suggest that the salesperson who generated the report at the beginning of this thread, and who went out of his/her way to do some self-initiated research, did in fact put forth a sincere effort to validate his pitch. And there in lies the difference between a crime and a questionable value proposition... Intent, effort and execution. Regardless of how you want to criticize the use of metrics in a sales pitch, it still beats the heck out of "Go ahead and look at this whiz bang web site, ain't she a looker!"

Joe P.,

I actually never have sat in a bitch circle and smoke like a chimney - although I've seen them at previous dealerships... never been part of them... and that atmosphere is nonexistent where I am now. By the way, your poetry sucks - and you really like to blow your horn.

What I can't stand is people telling me what I don't know. Here's what I do know that most salespeople don't - Follow up, over days, weeks, and months is MORE important that some hyped up website any day.

For you know it alls, why don't you tell everyone what are the essential components of the "latest lead generating" websites that are so important to dealership survival... so we can all see what are the MUSTS!?

Anyone?? Thanks!

Dealers are NOT victims.

The BZ story is not a victim vs. prey story. No one forced Mr Dealer to sign the contract. Mr Dealer was excited to DUMP his RIDICULOUS NEWSPRINT costs for a far cheaper (and sexier) web site. This ROI based decision still has merit.

Lao, why no URL? Gosh I hate a that! Are you a vendor? You write like one.

Joe

Ralph - I applaud threads like these on Dealer Refresh. I think this is the one pure place on the Internet, for dealers, telling it like it is. Yeah, sometimes it is tough stuff one might not like, but the debate is strong and worthy. Without debate, we build one-sided foundations.

Let the buyer beware.

Buzztrak/BZ Results is bloated, over priced and under delivers like most of the ADP products. ADP purchased this company so you would think they would purchase one that has state of the art technology, now just a year or so out of the gate the technology is dated already. Maybe ADP is afraid of getting ahead of themselves on the technology curve. If not for ADP strong arming their clients to use the BZ Program one wonders how many they would have sold. At the price BZ charges and locking clients into a multi year contract they should at least deliver what they sell.

If the dealers break down the components of what BZ offers and price out these with competitors they will find they are paying a 50-60 % premium for BZ which offers an inferior product/ service. As an example; the cost of what IOL charges for their inventory solution monthly, which is quite a good solution, is a bargain and is a month to month package, BZ bundles this into their package with a Mickey Mouse web site, a inferior email system, a bloated CRM tool charges $5-6000.00 a month for their solution and ties dealers into a multi year contract??? What BZ provides is not worth the cost.

There are more steps to the Buzztrak process than any other system out there. The control panel is a real work of art that must have been worked on by a bunch of high school students. The tech support, bless them for their hanging in there, is sometimes at a loss as the sales people over sell what the product can do. You wonder where this comes from. You have to call them so they can call you back which means you have to hang there waiting for the call.

If you use BuzzTrak CRM, your outgoing email to the email hosts and free ones like yahoo.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, msn.com, etc, is most likely ending up in their bulk email or SPAM folder not to the customer’s email. The lead that you just paid good money for is useless. How many potential customers waited for a response via email and thought that you weren't interested enough in their request to answer them.

One of the main complaints with Buzztrak is the automated responses drive the clients to opt out; when that happens you have lost the client. Clients complain they receive emails about financing, insurance offers ETC, they are not looking for this information nor expecting it.

Clients whose opt out rate is about 0.2% for their whole database. With BZ Results the rate was more like 63.3% in the 1st 4 months. These are clients that are technology lost as when they called them the customers just complain they have been spammed to death and do not want to deal with your dealership any longer.

Today when most dealers have to monitor their overhead and costs just to stay in business one wonders what they think of paying out all the additional money every month to BZ. This is for a product they could have gotten at half the price and that they are locked into for this for the next few years.

Ralph, my beef with this graph actually has nothing to do with the URLs used, and whether or not a mistake was made. Personally I don't even care about that third URL.

My beef is that any vendor would compare two obviously unrelated dealerships and try to say, "look at the difference between Dealer A and our client, Dealer B!" The traffic generated to dealer sites is based largely on how popular the dealer is in general, and the geographic region they do business in. You can make strides with good marketing but a site that gets no traffic on its own isn't going to become a powerhouse overnight with just a marketing campaign. I don't need to know who Dealer A and Dealer B is on this chart to know that it sure as hell isn't the same level of dealership. Whatever BZ marketing may have done for Dealer B has almost no influence on the difference between these two dealers... I can promise you that.

If you're going to a little mom-and-pop dealership in the boonies who gets 900 uniques a month, and telling them you can do for them what you did for their big city competitor who gets 9,000 uniques a month, you're lying, plain and simple. BZ knows damn well that 8,000 of those 9,000 uniques were already there before the marketing campaign started, so they're taking credit for something they didn't do. Frankly, a much more accurate reflection of their campaign performance would simply be a 12-month trend comparing their own client's traffic before and after.

That's my beef: every dealership is different, so don't slap two of them on a chart and act like their numbers should correlate. Rarely can you put together a comparison chart of dealer websites' traffic numbers and have them be objective.

I have looked at this post and the chart that originated it several times... Was the purpose to be critical of a salesperson that made a mistake in researching the dealer's URL? Is the purpose of this post to criticize Compete Inc.'s data collection model? Is the purpose of this post to warn dealers to check the validity of data being presented to them? Or, is all of the above and to take glee in finding mistakes made by others? Those that know me at all will know that I am not shy about criticizing my own team, on an internal basis, and then driving them towards improving their performance. However, I would like to make a point that all of us as so-called Digital Marketing Experts should consider... Just because we know the various flaws and weak spots in various approaches to eBusiness validation models, does not mean that we are making a positive contribution by ridiculing or embarrassing our colleagues in the same industry. Often times, we can come across as pompous arrogant know-it-alls, and this does nothing to promote our profession or encourage less knowledgeable "green peas" to learn more about our craft. As do most people looking at this post, I can see the tactical flaws in the salesperson's approach... But knowing that ADP neither endorses nor authorizes the use of Compete Inc. tools in sales presentations, I nonetheless applaud this salesperson for seeking additional data and 3rd party validation when making his or her case to the dealer or GM.

When one of our colleagues makes a mistake like this, those of us who are "in the know" should clearly identify that mistake directly to the person making it in a manner that seeks less to ridicule or embarrass, and more to improve our entire industry's level of overall professionalism. Otherwise, we are just a bunch of bullies picking on the new kid... Because we can. And, just because we can does not necessarily mean that we should.

I know most of the men and women selling both BZ Results and ADP Dynamic web sites. Like me, and each of you, they are far from perfect in their knowledge of Digital Marketing, but they are for the most part highly ethical and honest... They sincerely believe in the products they sell and they go about doing their jobs, like you and I do, each day. It is certainly OK, and even helpful for all of us to provide constructive criticism, but I do not think that gleefully piling on the ridicule train accomplishes anything of a positive nature.

oh Chris, so lost and woeful Chris.
Back in the 90's,
Ahead of the game was thee,
Buildeth 3 web sites did he,
with a chest puffing zeal, he'd tell anyone in reach...

"It's easy",
"just click this and push that ,
and a web you have... 1,2,3".

A decade does pass,
The web grows and matures,
Industries seek web savants and gurus,
and where is our hero?
Where is "it's no big deal" Chris?

His work is but another leaf in the forest,
known only to his mother and his 3 distant clients,
for they abandoned his web empire,
yet another casualty -no doubt- of the BZ juggernaut.

and now,
in a car lot somewhere in America...
huddled in a bitch circle, smoking cigarettes,
we hear his call...

"It's easy",
"just click this and push that ,
and a web you have... 1,2,3".

Joe
[lurkers take note, if you dont include your URL, this leaves my imagination open to draw any conclusion that fits the moment!]

Incidentally, a high percentage of our new customers come from situations where they tried exactly what Chris K suggested. It may work if you're simply looking to "have a website", but if you're looking to "have a professional, lead generating website" then you really need to work with a company who knows what they're doing, and that doesn't mean you have to spend $2000/month either. Dealers should really evaluate their vendors and if they're not using all the tools provided to them, take a look at cutting those particular tools out and reducing costs. Ask your vendor to discount your rate and remove some unused features.

Our company isn't the biggest out there and we don't offer some of the features that BZ offers, but what we do offer is a set of features that work for our clients. Sure, we're not the best fit for every dealer, but we're up front about that and don't resort to misleading sales tactics like you see in the original post above. Several of our clients forward me marketing emails from other companies, and without naming names, I will say that the apples to oranges comparison from BZ above is NOT the most misleading message I've seen. As long as there are uneducated dealers who don't know any better, there will be companies that take advantage of that. I learned a long time ago that even if I'm able to sell someone on some product, if I railroad them into that product it's only going to come back to bite me. I'd much rather work hard, make sure what I have is a good fit for someone, have happy customers tell me our $160/mo websites are too cheap, and keep my integrity.

This report comes from www.compete.com. Compete.com uses information from it's ISP and a Panel/Toolbar search engine plugged into supporter's browsers (Just like a google search bar in your Internet Explorer or FireFox browser).

What does this mean? This means that their information is not complete and is a rough estimate from only the people that use their plugin and their ISP.

< hello>Geek here< /hello>

I don't only work as an eCommerce Director for a dealer group, I also play one for other organizations online < /end cheesy take on infomercial intro>

Building a good website using all the dynamics: CSS, JAVA, Flash, Silverlight, HTML, and of course a well thought-out Web 2.0 package is tough! I charge a lot more than $1,000 for setup and definitely not $20 a month for hosting. A cheap hosting solution such as GoDaddy or DreamHost's lower packages is typically limited by bandwidth usage. How much would it suck to have your URL advertised all over the place and then not have a site because you were too cheap to pay for a proper hosting solution? Granted, you'll have a site, but what happens if you add a video or two and you exceed your bandwidth limit for that month?

Sure, you can put your inventory on a hosting solution like HomeNet, iMagicLab, or Auction123.....Sure, you can host your video on YouTube or Veoh......Sure, you can pay someone like me to keep things up......BUT what happens if I get hit by a bus? What happens when Google starts putting ads in your video or links to your competitors' videos? There are so many things to consider above and beyond the costs, and when you start considering those things the costs for a Dealer.com, Rey-Rey, or even BZ site become pretty small.

Yeah, there may be some things you want done custom with your automotive site host that you can't get done. There may be some costs your dealer doesn't want to add. Find a different way to get it done - the Internet is limitless in capability! You're only as capable as your imagination. This is truly the first time dealers have had to ability to get things done no matter how big the wallet - we're only limited to our vision.

Thanks Joe, I try.

There's definitely a medium ground between what Chris is saying and what most of the industry is used to. Chris, I don't think you're taking into account the fact that you're obviously a part of your own website expense... for many dealers, $1000/mo allows them to call up the vendor when there's a problem or they want something done. For a $20/mo hosting solution, it's the site owner who's doing the work. So think about how much you get paid (or if you're not in this situation, think about how much an Internet geek would get paid to be on-staff for this kind of thing), and tack that onto the $20/mo for hosting.

On the other hand, unless you've got unlimited support that allows you to make tons of changes every month, paying more than a few hundred dollars for hosting is just pure profit. So while I wouldn't ever go the route of letting some kid design my site and simply hand it over to me to host myself, I wouldn't do the opposite and flush cash down the toilet to a vendor like BZ for a four-figure hosting solution.

There is no need to pay a company $500- $1000 a month to host a website. Todays websites are fairly simple when you get down to it. I built my first auto dealer website in 1996! All new inventory and used inventory is pulled nightly into the system and populates the websites. Easy! Simple web forms allow you to get the customers to inquire. Text on the site and the images make a call to ACTION! You don't sell cars online unless you have a very aggressive follow up plan. Websites don't sell cars people - humans do! And it's called follow up. I will disagree with you, because I have been doing this stuff for over 10 years.

Todd -

Most of today's platforms (C#, Java, PHP, and a Python) aren't about to go away. Newer technology may run more efficient - but will take a while to be considered mainstream for the 'late-adopter' automotive client. (Ajax, Ruby, Squeak, Lisp)

FYI...RE: different shopping model sites, www.fididel.com is already out there and backed w/strong names and $$$. More will follow - soon.

In my opinion, I'd love to have the ability to add a 19yr. old developer to my team. The right kid will be at the epicenter of the IT pulse - plus I can pay him in Taco Bell coupons and he'll be in heaven. (JK - I don't actually pay my interns in food coupons.)

While many of the talented regulars within DR may be considered competitors of mine, I still feel a responsibility to help the dealer community be cognizant of the what's happening out there... (especially after seeing that BZ post)

Hasn't that been Jeff's purpose w/his blog all along?

With all due respect Chris, Wayne is completely right. Today’s technology is far more complex than yesterday's simple website pages. For example, we are about to release the industries first “online negotiation engine”. A system that will actually allow a desk manager or internet manager and the prospect to negotiate the deal totally online. Your college student wouldn't have clue how to build this type of system.

PS: Chris, just think if you had a robust website with a 19% close ratio, dude you would be rich with the leads it would produce for you.

Chris K wrote:

"any College student can build the most robust flash site and one designed for SEO is no more than $500 - you now own the website."

I think this statement is a stretch. You'll get what you pay for, I promise...

Website technologies have become more robust, thus enabling the development of more complex applications. This only means websites will become more functional, thus raising the bar on the shopping experience.

Do you think your college student will want to slave away 50 - 100 hrs building a website that'll compete in tomorrows market for only $500. That's 10 - 5 bucks an hour.

One more thing that I find makes me stand out from my competition: I actually quote a price within the first 2 or 3 emails - whether I talk to them or not. That's why we are #1 in our entire zone.

I think these 3rd party website/lead tool companies are outrageously priced and there are to me we keep getting sold stuff we don't really need like all the back end tools and fluff.

A great website costs not much to build, any College student can build the most robust flash site and one designed for SEO is no more than $500 - you now own the website.

Web hosting with unlimited traffic is about $20 a month. Month to month.

For me it all comes down to what you do with the leads you get. The fanciest website, name your price is all fine and dandy, but consistent follow up, week in, week out for several months is what works for me.

I just get the leads Nissan gives me, use the phone, use constant contact for $19.95 a month - and I close 15% to 20%.

Mitch,
You're wacked.

Joe
(I re-wrote this post 3 times to get it just right!)

Mitch,

So then who are we to listen to more?

a) the vendor
b) the vendor's customers

Based on my trench experience, I'll listen to both, but I'm mostly interested in results, not hype. So how does a vendor show results before a contract is signed? I'm not going to buy on promises alone. I guess I'll have to talk to the vendor's customers.

I understand why you bring up your reasons to be 'wary' of another dealer's testimonial. But to discount them entirely seems extreme. I'm sure there is a balance.

Wouldn't the experienced Internet folk in our industry see through the dealer hype anyway?

Actually I disagree with both of the previous posters who would ask other dealers about a vendor's performance. There are four reasons why another dealer would tell you something works great, and the reason you'd be looking for is unlikely to be the motive behind it... here's the top four reasons why dealers give positive testimonials:

1. They don't know what they're talking about. They had total crap before, and now they have something less crappy and think they found a gem.
2. They got paid or incentivized to say it.
3. They actually do know what they're talking about and the product is legitimately good.
4. They think the product sucks and they want you to suck as well. After all, if you're another dealer, you're the competition.

Let's also keep in mind that the number of testimonials you can dig up from your client base is proportional to how many clients you have. Would you see more value in a company with 20 written testimonials on a 5,000 client base, or a company with 5 written testimonials on a 10 client base?

Fact is I couldn't possibly care less about dealer testimonials.

Wayne,

I agree with your approach in asking vendors for references.

However, I think you (and everyone else) can take the vendor evaluation process a bit further.

The thing that has helped us the most evaluate potential vendors is a simple "questionnaire" we give our vendors. It consists of 20 questions we ask vendors ranging from their basic business contact information to requesting references to asking them knowledge of their competition.

The questionnaire really helps us not only understand price (as we know, it's not always about price), but most importantly, truly gauge our vendor's validity.

Keep in mind, this is not fail safe, but it has helped us narrow the scope of what we need from a vendor and how to incorporate their tools into our process.

Andy Warner