C'mon, 3 clicks before you get to see a car for sale? Huh? Granted, there's a lot to look at on the home page, but if I just want to buy a car you need to have specials on the first page.

Who voted for these? This looks like another example of whatever company pays the magazine the most money. Some of these sites look terrible.

Thanks everyone. I'm not sure whether I should shake Jeff's hand or punch him - lol. I'll keep my photo up there until the YouTube video comes out.

You're right Jeff - most of the dealer awards for online stuff is extremely inconsistent, but this particular award is something I'm quite proud of.

I am truly amazed! I may have changed my mind regarding Dealer.com. Well made, and well maintained! Good Job Alex!

Tony Weaver

and he refers to Jeff as the rockstar?

Well deserved Alex!

Congratulations King Alex!

Yet another reason I try to keep my picture off the Internet, nice job Jeff!

Congrats Alex!
Months and months of planning pays off! I can't wait to see what you have planned for the new Inventory display.

Long live the LONG TAIL!!
Joe

Would you rather…

I would:

1 - B. Get one phone lead : I have the customer on the phone right now and I have more chances to take control of the situation.

2 - B. Spend $2,000 on high-level SEO : I need more traffic at my website because I have a better closing percentage with leads from my site.

3 - A. Get an email from a customer saying “your price is too high" : I know the customer is a buyer and if we can come to agreement we have a deal. It gives us an opportunity to keep working with them and grinding them to make a deal.

4 - B. Have no form at all: Those leads are often ignored and they clog up the CRM/ILM. Although the choice of having the service form would work greatly if a process can be created for those leads to come directly to the service department. Perhaps it might be a great idea to create a service CRM?

5 - A. Have a competitor directly under you in the SERPs : Keep the competitor under me so that dealers can see how great my site and dealership are and they can look at the other dealership to see how much they such when compared to my store. I do not want to sound like a sales person marketing the company that I represent. However, even if and when I stop working for this company I will keep believing in the product because I think it is genius. I think that when you keep it on your site you are more likely to impress a customer because they are seeing something different. This is why I want the competition right below me. I want to stand out and be different.

6 - B. Have one that pays out for Internet-based Service revenue : It would be nice to earn residual income a few times per year from retaining and keeping a loyal customer. It takes work to keep them loyal so why not get paid for the work?

7 - I have to agree with Jeff on this one. Being that I have worked with hiline and most of my career was with Honda. I will say that you are more likely to reach a Honda lead then a BMW lead that comes in. It is much better to have a hiline lead on the phone then as a form lead whereas Honda will work well both ways. So it depends on the brand you represent and you need to use your discretion.

8 - A. Lose your domain name : This is better then having a bad reputation.

ooohhhh I love this game..But lets try this versionjust for fun guys..)
Would you rather-
1)Be an ISM
or
Wear a purple gorilla suit and wave in customers?
2)Call tech support
or
Bite your own arm off and eat it?
3)Ask your GM why it is that you generate the sales you do every month and get paid less then the clean up guy
or
Have sextuplets?
4)Have your new car sales manager ask you AGAIN why you are GIVING away a car for that price
or
fight a bobcat in a paper bag?
5)Have someone who does not even know how to turn on a computer tell you they picked out your NEW crm that you will start using tomorrow
or
Get a large gun for them or you, at this point it does not really matter?

Ah yes, I remember now why I NEVER said "I want to grow up and be an ISM"..just needed a little reminding..Hey guys, maybe one day I can be promoted to villege idiot..just kidding, I really do love my job and since I'm the only one crazy enough to do it at our dealership, maybe I won't have a heartattack. I wonder if workers comp would cover it if I did...

ooohhhh I love this game..But lets try this versionjust for fun guys..
Would you rather-
1)Be an ISM
or
Wear a purple gorilla suite and wave in customers?
2)Call tech support
or
Bite your own arm off and eat it?
3)Ask your GM why it is that you generate the sales you do every month and get paid less then the clean up guy
or
Have sextuplets?
4)Have your new car salesmanager ask you AGAIN why you are GIVING away a car for that price
or
fight a bobcat in a paper bag?
5)Have someone who does not even know how to turn on a computer tell you they picked out your NEW crm that you will start using tomorrow
or
Get a large gun for them or you, at this point it does not really matter?

Ah yes, I remember now why I NEVER said "I want to grow up and be an ISM"..just needed a little reminding..Hey guys, maybe one day I can be promoted to villege idiot..just kidding, I really do love my job and since I'm the only one crazy enough to do it at our dealership, maybe I won't have a heartattack. I wonder if workers comp would cover it if I did...

Brian wrote:

"I have found ways to push all negative comments off page one and two for my clients."

Hi Brian, I'm currently focused on this and was curious what ways you are using. I'm using PRs right now. Last week I submitted two PRs and they filled up 4 positions on the front page of Google results the very next day. Thanks

1. One Call vs. three 3rd Party leads - If 3rd party leads close at around 8% then you have a 25% shot at selling a car where a good phone salesman can close 1/3 or 1/4. I'll take the phone lead because it’s pre-qualified for location and dealer appeal. I don't believe people call too often to waste your time, and ask for lease prices and deals, if they don't like your dealership.

A 3rd party email lead may be out of your PMA and just price shopping and often is a blind lead (they don't know where the lead is going). Thus if the consumer had a bad experience at your dealership in the past, they will not respond to your email quotes or calls. So, some of the 3 could be bumped out once they see who you are either by location or past experience.
_______________

2. $2,000 PPC vs. $2,000 SEO - SEO wins if dealership has a longer term strategy to sales development. PPC is designed for instant gratification so if the owner of the dealership gave me $2,000 and expected me to pump up this month's sales volume, it would have to go PPC. If he wanted me to invest in the future, SEO is always the smarter choice.
________________

3. Price is too high vs. You don't have what I want - Always easier to work on the price argument since in the second case they may need to purchase a car quickly and getting a car from another dealer (if possible) may delay and lose the sale. In most cases, everyone is in the same ballpark. With lease pricing it may be due to how the deal was written with drive-off costs and fees. Take the time to walk through the numbers and make the deal work.

_____________

4. Broken Form vs. No Form - The choices was not to fix the form so my answer would be to have no form. It will only frustrate the customer and when they show up for an appointment, that they thought they booked, the experience will alienate a customer.

__________

5. Competitor Under Your Name or Bad Review - Competitors are always around SERP's when you do state and local searches so I'd take that any day. A negative comment on a site like "Dealerrater.com" showing under your SERP can blow up a sale. I have found ways to push all negative comments off page one and two for my clients. That has been a blessing since it is very easy for consumers to post negative and harmful posts at no cost at all that stay indexed forever. Also, dealers need to get their positive reviews posted on Yahoo Local, Google Maps and Dealerrater which will balance comments if negative articles are found or if consumers visit sites like Dealerrater directly.

_______________
6. Pay Plans - I think I would want to be paid for today's performance since the longevity of most sales professional is short and the "annuity" life model in the question may never pay off for past Internet customers.

_________

7. Phone vs. Email - Without reading too much into this, the question would seem that a site could operate in a vacuum and not have a phone number on the site. This would mean that people would have to use 411 or the yellow pages to find their number and call after visiting the website. If other dealers did not have to abide by the same rule, it would soon become obvious that you would have frustrated customers who go to the website to call “service” or “support” and find no phone numbers on the website. So, since I would never want to anger my customer or shoppers, email would come off.

8. Lose Domain vs. Blacklist Mail Server - You never want to lose a good domain, especially one that has been indexed and ranked for years. It takes one phone call to godaddy.com to get a new domain name that you can use for email. So, if your site was www.circlebmw.com, you could create a new URL for email which could be www.circlebmwsales.com.

Blacklisting only applies to outbound emails, so people could still email you and you would just respond with the new URL name until everyone was aware of your new email address. Remember, your URL is what is ranked by Google and Yahoo and not the mail server. If you unfortunately sent out a bunch of spam and got blacklisted, you will still have your domain rankings unharmed.

1. Definitely phone leads.

2. Spend $2,000 on PPC - I like instant gratification, especially if you put money on keywords that convert the best. SEO is important, but I think most of us who read this blog are constantly optimizing our sites by creating relevant content and keywords that are appreciated by consumers and indexed by search engines.

3. “your price is too high” Can't sell what you don't have.

4. Have no form at all - lack of response is a buzz kill for converting first time unique visitors into returning visitors and getting bookmarked. If you're gonna spend money on service PPC campaigns to drive customers to your website, you better answer their online request. If they put out the effort of giving their real name and a valid phone number/email, they deserve an immediate response. Otherwise, delete the form and convert to a phone lead.

5. Have a negative consumer review directly under you - curious customers will still click on your weblink. Bad press is better than no press. Negative reviews give more attention to you than your competition dominating the SERPS. How many people are aware of Husker BMW now? The great thing about feedback, positive or negative, is that you can respond to it, blog about it, refute it, YouTube it, provide "happy customer" testimontials to counteract it, and use it as a launch pad for even more press.

6. Have a payplan that pays out for previous Internet customers - the internet has changed owner loyalty and it's important that we don't forget about the customer after the first sale. We spend all this time trying to buy leads from third parties, optimize our websites, implement SEM, just to get new prospects. We should spend at least half the time we do on current customers as we do prospecting. These customers can be a huge referral base, regardless of geography. We should get back the investment we put into advertising so hard to acquire the "internet" customer in the first place!

7. Remove all the email forms from your site and rely only on the phone numbers. PHONE LEADS rock! The biggest challenge of our bdc is getting customers to give us their phone number. It takes a lot of effort - we average between 5 and 10 emails back and forth to a customer - before they finally give in and share their phone #. How many of you get ebay local "best offers" on a car, and all you have is their ebay id? ? No phone number, no email address, no customer name. How much time is wasted trying to respond to these leads? In "internet lead triage," the ones with phone numbers are always treated first.

8. Have your mail server blacklisted. Their are tons or legit, whitelisted email marketing firms out there who are happy to host your email marketing campaigns. Losing your domain name or getting blacklisted by the search engines is sure death for a website and it can take years to get back into Page 1 of SERPS.

Ha, I know you were joking Alex... just wanted to spin it so people would realize you can actually get positive reviews out of customers. It's just that you can't wait for them to do it themselves.

I'll think I'll go over to Ron's blog and post an ad for a used Chevy Trailblazer.

I Have to place my 2 cents worth and it would be spend the budget on PPC & SEO. 2k on PPC will get you the immediate results and SEO will eventually take over, of course that is if your existing site is optimized and continually updated. So I would recommend a vendor that offers website design as well as PPC with the testimonials to back up the results. So to conclude my 2 cents with past and current experience what we have found is that direct hits to your website have the highest conversion and we all know Owners and GM's like high ROI!
- Ron (DealerFire)

Mitch -

"And Alex, regarding your comment about those elusive "positive" reviews from consumers... that's pretty much on you, the dealer, to solicit. Consumers aren't going to write good things by their own accord."

That was a joke - I've never seen a customer create a happy website about a car dealership.

I'll take my crack at these. It's interesting, I look at this from a Internet Marketer perspective rather than a dealer insider so there could be some differences of opinion here.

A. Get three third party email leads
Or
B. Get one phone lead - Big time. There is all sorts of controversey around 3rd party leads, across lots of industries these days (look up news with a stock VCLK). Further, someone that calls the dealership is likely to be further through the buying process and has already expressed an interest in your particular dealer.

A. Spend $2,000 on PPC - Absolutely here as well. SEO is a process that can take time and it's hard to find decent SEO work for under $1,500 per month. BTW - Ranking for your dealer name isn't decent SEO work, you wouldn't believe how many people want to argue with me on this. So, at best you would get about 1 month of SEO, where solid SEO work usually requires about 12 months. Further, for $2,000 you could buy a lot of clicks to your site. A lot dealers say PPC doesn't work, but I often see PPC being too poorly targeted - too broad and too early in the buying cycle - to be effective.
Or
B. Spend $2,000 on high-level SEO

A. Get an email from a customer saying “your price is too high” - If the price is "too high" then you have what the customer wants so they are emotionally tied in to you, the price might just be an excuse for other emotional triggers they are having about a major purchase. Good salesmanship and consulting seems like it would frequently overcome this - if you actually have what the customer wants.
Or
B. Get an email saying “you don’t have what I want”

A. Have a Service Appointment form on your site that never gets responded to - YOU HAVE TO HAVE FORMS - Internet users expect forms. If the form isn't getting responses then you can always test and alter it until you are closer to the performance you wanted for it.
Or
B. Have no form at all

A. Have a competitor directly under you in the SERPs - Absolutely. Customers expect competitors - there are 10s of thousands of dealerships in the US. Negative customer reviews can really harm a business - just Google 'Husker BMW'. These guys have been slaughtered on the Internet for a problem they had on eBayMotors.
Or
B. Have a negative consumer review directly under you

A. Have a payplan that pays out for previous Internet customers - This one is out of my league.
Or
B. Have one that pays out for Internet-based Service revenue

A. Remove all the phone numbers from your site and rely only on the email forms - I would have to say remove phone numbers. A lot of Internet visitors don't want personal contact for their stage of the buying cycle, but they do want to ask questions through email at 2am. Once the email dialouge is good, they will want the phone number or you could send it to them.
Or
B. Remove all the email forms from your site and rely only on the phone numbers

A. Lose your domain name - A good email marketing campaign is crucial. Domain names can change.
Or
B. Have your mail server blacklisted

B. Get one phone lead - of course the disclaimer is that if the three email leads came from my highest closing ratio provider...

B. Spend $2,000 on high-level SEO - nobody with any smarts clicks in the paids

A. Get an email from a customer saying “your price is too high” - not having what they want is almost always insurmountable

B. Have no form at all - agree with Jeff on this one...only get one chance to make a first impression

A. Have a competitor directly under you in the SERPs - hate bad reviews!

A. Have a payplan that pays out for previous Internet customers - there is something to be said for being able to garner repeat and referral from the mooches

B. Remove all the email forms from your site and rely only on the phone numbers - again...the phone is the gold.

B. Have your mail server blacklisted - Mail server is replaceable - domain is not as easy to replace.

"6. B. Have one that pays out for Internet-based Service revenue - Residual on a previous customer in the sales department is but nice making money on service could be several times a year rather then once every 3-5 years."

Right, and besides, who stays at one dealership for 5 years? Fuggedaboutit!

@ Alex Synder- Don't know if this was posted yet but Congratulations on being voted #1 Dealer Website by Auto Dealer Monthly. Your group site is very impressive!!

kind of debating that very thing now, the problem I have is finding what category that thing fits in..... any ideas? medium duty, semi truck or box truck? I see that commercial truck trader has about 216,000 visits a month according to compete. Thanks for the feedback but it was actually a trade on a Sienna van....go figure.

@ Brian in Etown:

Not sure what your test consists of, but commercialtrucktrader.com will be your best bet on something like that. Let me guess, someone traded it in for a Prius?

running a little test at the present time to see what will be the best place to market this semi truck thing