I think someone should revive this thread so we can compare and see if any real improvement has happened with each third party source over time!

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Leads is a business that I've been contemplating getting into for years.  But I've shied away from doing it.  My business is a post for free, or pay for top priority in the inventory lists kind of site.  No commission on sales, and is generally free to use.  if anyone would be interested in purchasing leads from me or setting up some type of relationship, check out my site and let's talk.  Hot Auto Deals dot com is the site.  Check it out and let me know...

This is surely one of the well read posts. The concepts provided and shared are really helpful for both dealers and buyers.

A Lead Generator's Perspective:

First and foremost, I'm an Internet marketing guy who likes cars, not a seasoned car guy by any means. I've been involved with Internet marketing since 1999 and have piloted new technology with MBUSA back in the day when the Internet was just supposed to be a fad.

I do have a unique perspective in the sense that I've experienced the full spectrum and life-cycle of a lead by working with a couple of local dealers and analyzing leads and data at the BDC level and from writing ad-copy for nearly 1 million keywords to generate the app.

I think there is plenty of blame to go around and this is why I lament on some days about lead generation at http://leadinreview.com - Auto dealers and lead generators have created the monster that is third-party lead generation today.

Here are some of the things "pure" lead generators deal with on a daily basis:

- PPC fraud on all the major search engines
- PPC abuse from competitors
- Un-predictable traffic spikes from major search engines.
- Form fraud
- Server attacks
- Brokers & lead aggregators post rejecting and stealing our data.
- Never ending criteria changes for leads
- Bogus or phony lead returns
- Non payment from lead brokers and aggregators
- Non payment from retail customers or direct auto dealers
- Complaints from customers because dealers never call

For every lead we generate that gets submitted across the network, that same lead can be offered to the same aggregator 100 times in a matter of seconds due to lead overlap or coverage overlap. There are just too many entities trying to get in the middle of the process. This is why we are looking to work directly with auto dealers as an arm or extension of their lead generation and marketing.

Why are third party lead generators still needed? Because for "real" or "pure" lead generators - companies that actually generate the lead and not simply try to resell, we can generate the lead more cost effectively and efficiently than an auto dealer.

Lead generation is hard work and extremely competitive if you are going to use any type of PPC.

As mentioned in a previous post above, I believe dealers need to start looking at ROI as it is the primary indicator as to how effective a particular lead source might be.

Lead providers that cannot demonstrate some measurable ROI for a dealership should be dropped.

Got a question on third party lead generation? Drop me a line and I'll be happy to answer as best I can.

I want my third party leads to have more serious buyers. I want my third party lead providers to put a disclaimer on their sites to tell customers not to submit a lead unless they are really shopping for a car or are in the market? I do not want to pay for garbage leads. Now in no way am I saying not to buy them because we need third party leads to supplement out lead count. If the leads are worked right they bring in more deals every month. Focus on generating your own leads before spending money on others.

Steve,

One of the best ways to market your website outside of search engines is to promote your site to your existing customer base via email campaigns and POS material in the store.

Make sure all employees are collecting email addresses at all times. A great way to email using a soft sell approach is through regular newsletters such as IMN Loyalty Driver. Hopefully, this helps...

Just reading these comments, it's amazing how a discussion of third party lead providers turns into a crusifixion of Auto trader, and it's justified. Truth is that the autobytels, autousa and dealix's of this world are no longer viable looking at ROI which is the bottom line determinate.

As to Autotrader, that's a dog and pony show that has run it's course. Cars.com is still doing well on our ROI reports because of it's much lower cost.

Our own website is the mainstay of our business development center and we are working on situations that convert to hits on our own website. It seems like the more we market the website via TV, newspapers, the better we do.

I am open to any suggestions for marketing our website.

Steve from NJ

JL..."Not sure about you, but my mother always told me "if it sounds too good to be true..." and I'm sure you know the rest. If you are holding out hope that a new start up is going to come along and advertise all of your vehicles with customized video presentations, secure credit apps that integrate with your CRM and, hell, detail all of your cars before they take 47 photos of them and all at no cost to you because they "need" your inventory, I'm going to suggest that you don't hold your breath. That makes as much business sense as a dealership giving away cars to build brand loyalty.

You have points but you need to understand that looking at this is an "inherently lazy" approach and "they can do all" look at it.

Custom video? slideshows are not video! and looks still like crap and DOES NOT SELL ANYTHING but can entertain and "maybe" get to the next step of calling for more info or to test drive.

Secure apps? be real about that one because this is not a buy it now checkout for a pair of sunglasses and credit leads are what they are mostly GMD's or the deal was made and now its time to apply securely for the loan online(fax the app still works as well)

Detail your cars? when did porters/detailers becomes part of advertising or lead providing?

Giving away cars? happens everyday...price leaders

Anyway you cut it the only stat I count is if the rep has spoken to the client after the lead. Is there a deal to be worked or appoint to come in and demo? Until then any correspondence is still a hello how are you I was e-driving by and not a customer yet.

Cars, Autotrader and others are not by my definition lead providers in the primary, they are a marketplace to display your vehicle in a collective virtual setting and the lead is a by-product that you get sold the "sizzle" not the steak by cars.com and autotrader.

When is the last time you invited someone to cook your dinner in your own home. It's kind of expensive and that is my point and do agree it may not become totally free but a lot cheaper when someone does offer a much better service that truly is an ad content provider of your merchandise.

Why do you think Cars.com is getting into the website business?

I apologize in advance if this is a bit of a fragmented opinion/response...
Pete

Here is what I want.
1.Exclusive real leads that are actually in the market,not submitted by some unknown gimmick
2.Coversion with metrics reporting to justifly the cost of the product or seervice
3 review of reporting with best practices in this ever changing section of the market.
4. a company that is on the cutting edge ie leads,video,blogs to optimize seo and sem to stay out front of the competition not duplicating it.
Just a Thought!!!

Frank Wrote:

"If you take a real hard look at third party lead provider's I think you might agree that we are competing for the same leads on the web as the providers we purchase from. So what happens here is we perform SEO and SEM then we turn around and purchase leads from providers that have advertised our products for less money than we want to sell them for such as carsbelowinvoice.com who buys those leads? I know, do you? Try this, type the name of your dealership into Yahoo such as Jim Glover Chevrolet. You should not see Jim Glovers name being used although I am having a hard time with Nextag.com they sell those leads to? So what is happening is these lead providers are using our names of our dealerships to entice consumers to their websites right next to ours. Then we pay them up to how much a lead, (better if it is scrubbed right) So what I want from third party lead providers is to stop advertising on the same plat form as I am advertising on, but with no wakeup call from all dealerships I do not see that happening. Think about it, why pay for someone else to advertise right next to us on the same venue? Makes no sense does it? But we have all been doing it for years, yet who has woke up to the facts?"

Amen. Another reason why I don't and haven't used them for awhile. Put this in any other venue and you would say that it doesn't make any sense. So why do we support them? Afraid of missing the market on something?

Either way, well put Frank.

Well I weighed in awhile ago and can't believe the traffic this thread received. In reading some comments, I guess this can be broken down a couple of ways.

One-

Lead providers are those that provide leads. I would usually define that as a purchased lead, including but not limited to; Dealix, Carsdirect and Cars.com's NewLeadsplus. These leads are supposed to be scrubbed, proprietary leads from some unknown source in Leadland.

What I want from them is along the lines of what Jeff said. I want what you are claiming to be selling to me. I want real leads with a chance of conversion. "Scrubbed" has to be the most abused, subjective word in our business. I want one company (or more) to step up and deliver (yes, like the good ole fax days).

Problem is; I think this model is going to be obsolete soon. People don't just hit one source. So even though they might apply for something and it isn't being sold by another lead provider, doesn't mean that they haven't or won't fill out more inquiries elsewhere. Too many unique lead providers means none of them are unique anymore. I could be wrong, but I think this is going away.

Two-

Leads that are derived off of our inventory. I have been doing a lot of thinking on this lately and still stick with my first comment. However, I would like to add a bit more clarification.

Yes, seeing page views is neat and could provide some point of reference. I still firmly believe it is not indicative of true performance; both internally and externally.

I believe that there is still no way to track all the people that simply walk in, view a map, or don't get tracked at a showroom level. Therefore, it should be treated just other advertising and not held to a completely different standard.

I think a fix would be change the format completely. Maybe make the browsing only available by creating an account. Integrate RSS feeds for vehicles they want. Do targeted marketing and allow Dealers to buy specific ads. Send a summary of people who actually clicked on your ads for the month or create a neutral tool that will cross reference it with your DMS sold vehicles. Give premium placement to the dealers with the most photos, prices and custom comments. Allow the good dealers to shine.

You know what they say, "The definition of Insanity..."

I am the General Manager for www.duPontREGISTRY.com. We are not a lead provider, but rather an online advertising media. Our niche is putting our affluent marketplace to work for highline dealers. I know that this may not fit in the current discussion but I would like to ask a couple of questions that I think may apply. “How important is your relationship with your account executive,” and, “What do you want/expect from them?”

Thanks

A little background on me, I have been involved with automotive internet sales for over nine years now and I have dealt with I think every vendor out there including special finance vendors etc.

If you take a real hard look at third party lead provider's I think you might agree that we are competing for the same leads on the web as the providers we purchase from. So what happens here is we perform SEO and SEM then we turn around and purchase leads from providers that have advertised our products for less money than we want to sell them for such as carsbelowinvoice.com who buys those leads? I know, do you? Try this, type the name of your dealership into Yahoo such as Jim Glover Chevrolet. You should not see Jim Glovers name being used although I am having a hard time with Nextag.com they sell those leads to? So what is happening is these lead providers are using our names of our dealerships to entice consumers to their websites right next to ours. Then we pay them up to how much a lead, (better if it is scrubbed right) So what I want from third party lead providers is to stop advertising on the same plat form as I am advertising on, but with no wakeup call from all dealerships I do not see that happening. Think about it, why pay for someone else to advertise right next to us on the same venue? Makes no sense does it? But we have all been doing it for years, yet who has woke up to the facts?

I have not purchased third party leads this last year, instead I have taken that money and put it into NAME BRANDING, or direct advertising, We enjoy a great amount of quality leads, and better name branding for the store. Now what are you going to do?

Also Come on, Autotrader and Cars.com are NOT third party lead providers unless you purhase new lead plus from Cars.com Autotrader and Cars.om are advertising venues, we dealers pay to advertise on these sites..

Just an opinion of another Internet Director

McCoy,

Your scenario sounds great for that 1 out of every 100 that goes through it. Realistically speaking, that doesn't happen an overwhelming majority of the time.

My background is Marketing and eCommerce, not cars. I handle those duties for 2 large domestic dealerships. I'm hourly analyzing my website traffic, phone traffic and walk-in traffic to better understand where these customers originate. I'm actually an employee of those dealerships and not a vendor.

Only had one of those dealerships a short time so will use the one I have the most information gathered.

I currently get in the neighborhood of 30,000 unique visitors per month, 18k of which are pre-owned. I used several different sites to drive and track our website traffic. I used just one to pick up traffic from cars.com and autotrader.com so it's fairly easy to see what they do regarding referrals.

cars.com is well behind autotrader in page referrals 242 - 88.
that's real numbers, not in hundreds.

granted, we spend more money with autotrader and I see spikes with spotlights.

unique phone calls are 43 - 12, again for autotrader.

I sold 2 cars.com customers last month.

My website visitors just on one site, nothing but SEM/PPC no SEO. are 8,000+ uniques.

My unique phone calls off that same site are 472 email leads are over 300

When I said I was there because my competitors were, I really meant that. I get nil to nothing off of those sites. With pricing, especially Autotrader going the direction it is, I'm soon going to stop thinking "it's so little money we have to be there"

Obviously, the koolaid tastes better to you because it pays your bills.

At this point, it's just another bill to me without ROI

Right now, in general, all leads look the same, and therefore are pretty much priced the same. Yet, some of us posting state that some lead generators have better quality leads than others. So why is it that the lead generators all charge pretty much the same price per lead? COuld it be they don't know what leads close outside of the retailer the lead was sent to? Probably.......lead generators (including dealers own websites and microsites) can't provide true closing rates for those leads. They can only tell you if a lead closed at your dealership, not whether it closed at all, or if it closed at a competitors store. These companies would need to have registration data to do that, and the ability to match lead information to other demographic info to confirm who the lead is.
Your best bet to verify lead generation companies close rates is to have a third party verifying all your lead sources and inform you of what is happening to your leads in the marketplace in general, not just at your dealerhship!

Your concept relies on all dealers not providing prices quotes over the phone. I know many that do currently and more that are moving that way. It's up for healthy debate but I wonder if consumers are willing to pay you for the privilege of paying you.

All lead sources provide the same thing, it's how you respond to a lead that effects the ultimate outcome. I keep perspective by understanding that sales, in a nutshell is a numbers game - period. However as an outside the box type of guy, I really think consumers will eventually pay for a quote, and I'm creating the model for it now. It makes sense because if they (the consumer) know they would be getting a for sure, ultra low and very competitive price with full details on the vehicle, they'd pay to get it... versus what they really get now, hoping that their free quote request will be replied to. I know that in my market, I'm the only guy with my brand to make real follow up calls, and follow up emails hand written, versus the other guys who still send the same boring emails devoid of any substance - asking them to call them to get the information they requested. I'd be willing to try to get customers to pay for a quote. It's unchartered territory, but isn't that where entrepreneurs like to roam?

Hi Folks!

Great topic and some excellent commentary thru out.

I'd like to offer my own comments- if I may.

What Jeff is saying is exactly right about Lead Provision and Aggregation. Dollar cost per leads had their place in the evolution of the digital space. But that time has past.

Let's be really honest about a 3rd Generation in Market Digital Car Shopper. Do we think they want the Dealer to be in control of the process? How many of these shoppers go into the Endemic sites, search engines, software programs and then outright refuse to give up their Name-Email Address and Phone # in lieu of going directly to the dealer to control the process themselves? I'll give you a hint. It's more than 75%. (3rd Gen Folks here--which are the people we should be concerning ourselves with)

I think we all know the reason why this has become the norm.

So what to do?

The answers are littered thru the comments in this section.

The buzz word is TRANSPARENCY!

Tell your vendors you want this:

*Click stream Data up to 60 days from first visit measuring any/all transaction.

*Microsites(Landing Pages) Built into all Banner Ad Campaigns specific to the path of the site visitors intent(ie Used Content for a Listings shopper)

*Web Based Real Time Analytics with log in for multiple parties at store level(Customizing for supreme granularity, or basic overview)

*Rich Media Ads Enabling Video-Direct Text Linking(SEO)and most importantly Pixel Tagging.

*Co-OP Support and Approval

*Thank You Pages and Follow Up(Calls/Emails) from the Vendor/site to all Shopper generated lead submissions(transparent to the Dealer)

*Endemic Auto Site Lead Programs directly indexable by the Major Search Engines

The sooner we/the Industry start giving you this kind of transparency, the faster you will maximize your digital spend and truly realize the power of this medium.

This is what I want from a 3rd Party Vendor assuming tools, processes and trained personel are in place to accomodate at dealership.

ROI: 10% sold ratio new/used with grosses accordingly to franchise and market.

Quality lead scrubbing: Ex: Calling a phone number and it's disconnected, sending the perfect email to an address that's non-existant, or receiving a new car lead from 250 miles away, unacceptable.

Acceptance of bad leads: Don't charge me for all the leads this month, then subtract the "accepted" bad/duplicate leads on following months bill.

Ease of return bad/duplicate leads from any CRM tool to vendor, not faxing, calling or otherwise.

Marketing: 1. Exact knowledge of how the Vendor produces their leads. What are the URL's customers click on to produce a lead? If a General Manager knew it was CarsBelowInvoice or WhyPaySticker . com, that contract wouldn't go very far. 2. Is my dealerships new vehicles exclusive to a certain mile range?

I dont consider ATC or Cars.com online advertising as a 3rd party Lead Vendor. The best ROI I've experienced from a 3rd party lead source is clickmotive, hands down.

McCoy and Billy: It's been my experience that you're both right.

What you both are talking about is lead funnel analysis. Car shoppers use more than one method to contact multiple dealerships when given the opportunity - and they have plenty of opportunity.

Billy, your results of leads closing is incomplete unless you are properly identifying every step the prospect created during their entire sales process.

McCoy, you are way off base if you think you are not a lead provider... you are an email lead provider, a phone lead provider, a walk-in provider - all that matters to the dealership is the fact that they give you inventory and you provide them leads in multiple forms.

The better debate would be effective measurement and optimization of each of a dealerships funnels to increase ROI.

Lead providers in all forms can better enable dealerships to work with them by providing more information about where leads come from so that empirical tools can be employed. Getting back to the idea of this post... more transparency please.

Mike / Carfeine.com

Billy:
The leads from your own website are ALWAYS going to close at a higher clip. That doesn't mean that those leads are exclusive to your own website (meaning your website didn't originate the consumer). If a consumer saw your vehicle on a third party site (lets just say for the sake of argument your name was Billy Ford) and then decided in the next day or two to come back to that vehicle, but instead of going to the third party site they thought, hmmm his name was Billy Ford, I wonder if there is a BillyFord.com or if there is not I know I can google it. That way I won't have to sift through all the other vehicles to find it again. BOOM! Now the consumer is at your front door and ready to learn your hours, your salespeople, your history, and come buy a car. People that go to your website are usually in the final stages of purchase. It is where they start their search that doesn't get credit. You, the dealer, don't want to know that a consumer went to your website, contacted through it, and then bought a vehicle, do you? I would think you would want to know how they arrived at your website. I may be wrong here, but I don't think people just wake up and go to BillyFord.com. There must be some kind of call to action(advertisement). The great thing about Cars.com and AutoTrader.com is that people that go to those site are only looking for one thing, a vehicle. Those two sites dominate the online used car marketplace. You do believe that most of your consumers are finding you online now, right?

Saying that the leads on your personal website are the best to you REP is the same difference as you not allowing your REP to say "We are not a lead provider." In my case, and I sell for Cars.com, I AM NOT A LEAD PROVIDER, but I do sell a "lead-providing" product, ha! You, the dealer, create your own leads and are not relying on me to provide them to you. If you are sitting back and waiting for AutoTrader.com or Cars.com to provide you leads, then other dealers are taking advantage of you. My job is to put your inventory in front of as many car shoppers as possible and then let them contact you in any way they seem fit (email,phone,website,walk-in). The analogy of comparing Cars.com/AutoTrader.com to a billboard is ridiculous, unless of course you live in a town where everybody that drives down the road is a car shopper at that moment. If so, I think all the dealers on here want to relocate to your town.

Also, I know you were kidding when you said that "My willingness to be on these vendor sites has everything to do with the fact that my competitors are on there and nothing else."...right? If not, there are plenty of one-liners that will fit here (insert one to your pleasing).

This is a great topic and I have enjoyed learning some of the things dealers expect and want from us as third party vendors/salespeople. I will keep telling my dealers that I am NOT a lead provider even if they think otherwise. I love what I do and my dealers know that. I expect them to have the same passion about their business as I do. Yes we will butt heads on occasion, but we can also learn from each other and try to understand our different points of view.

I got to eat dinner now.

McCoy

I do agree with much of what's been said here but have to add my .02.

As I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, how you handle the vendors such as Autotrader and Cars.com depends on your biz model. If you're interested in branding your particular dealership, and you're willing to get the mack-daddy premier package, then open the wallet and spend away.

However, if it's the bang for the buck you're looking for, i.e. - leads, phone calls, walk-ins, you can't beat your own site/s.

My willingness to be on these vendor sites has everything to do with the fact that my competitors are on there and nothing else. I could care less about the branding aspect. My reps all know not to use that "We're not a lead provider" line with me.

My opinion on the branding you get with these sites is about like having a billboard on an interstate where the traffic is always 75MPH. With another billboard over yours, under yours and right behind it.

We close our website leads at a much higher percentage than any 3rd party lead provider or marketing site so why shouldn't we put more focus there?

After all, you're the only billboard on that particular interstate.

I concur with this statement and one we all should visit when salary time comes around.
"Additionally the shopper can simply go directly to the store without leaving any evidence to demonstrate that it was the dealer’s listing on Cars.com that sent them. This makes it impossible for Cars.com to be compensated on a per sales basis."

Dennis - thanks for posting. Jeff and I were just talking about your comment and we both think it is awesome you decided to let everyone on Dealer Refresh know Cars.com is listening! We both thank you.

We also hope you've started a trend.