3rd Party Listings

[Dan Sayer]

Only thing you are likely missing is counting your web site traffic that Cars.com generates into your site that converts faster and is attributed to your website sales. We don’t withhold your information to spike leads and instead focus on driving more people directly into your website which converts to sales at higher rates than leads direct from 3rd parties. Do this analysis and we move to your #1 source of sales.

@Alex Vetter what percent of dealers have given their Cars rep access to their Google Analytics and do the reps know how to include Referrals as part of their account reviews? You make a great point that I've stressed in many of the Forum posts of "kill the 3rd parties!". Everyone focuses on leads and doesn't look, know where to look, or have access to look at their site Referrals or even Assisted Conversions, Top Conversion Paths, etc. You should have someone at DI come up with a webinar series, lunch and learn, of "How to fully measure ROI of 3rd party classifieds".

@BillKVMotorCo $380 per isn't bad but if you take your entire spend, all channels, against all sales, where are you at? We tend to land in the $400 per sold taking all New and Used into the entire budget (includes websites, leads, traditional, database mining, etc).

 

[Ryan Everson]

@Alex Vetter what percent of dealers have given their Cars rep access to their Google Analytics and do the reps know how to include Referrals as part of their account reviews? You make a great point that I've stressed in many of the Forum posts of "kill the 3rd parties!". Everyone focuses on leads and doesn't look, know where to look, or have access to look at their site Referrals or even Assisted Conversions, Top Conversion Paths, etc. You should have someone at DI come up with a webinar series, lunch and learn, of "How to fully measure ROI of 3rd party classifieds".

@BillKVMotorCo $380 per isn't bad but if you take your entire spend, all channels, against all sales, where are you at? We tend to land in the $400 per sold taking all New and Used into the entire budget (includes websites, leads, traditional, database mining, etc).

A lot of third party sites tend to use referral traffic as a crutch to help combat any dealer concerns over lead volume or results. Most dealerships have no clue on how to look into referral traffic so just take the rep at their word.

How many customers really click the small "View this vehicle on dealer's website" link each month? We average 30-100 visitors /month from Cars.com which is similar to what Autotrader generates in referral traffic.

I won't dispute the fact that this referral traffic is very high quality. It converts about 2-3x higher than our overall website traffic especially when you take assisted conversion into account, but again the referral volume is still pretty low.

@Alex Vetter are there any plans to get access to dealerships' Google Analytics and build the data into your DealerCenter reporting? I am a huge Cars.com proponent and how dealer friendly you guys are, so this would just increase the transparency further and eliminate the mysterious nature of referral traffic. And hopefully pressure your competitors to do the same, so they stop using it as a crutch.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

@BillKVMotorCo $380 per isn't bad but if you take your entire spend, all channels, against all sales, where are you at? We tend to land in the $400 per sold taking all New and Used into the entire budget (includes websites, leads, traditional, database mining, etc).

Our entire marketing budget is only $26,000. In that number we include 3rd party, all sites, FB, Google Ads, Pre-roll, OTT, reputation, Chat, HomeNet, and CRM. We average about 130 unites per month in normal times, so our overall number would be unfairly low. We're not a fair comparison as our only in town competition only sells about 45 cars a month and we're over an hour from any larger city. Typical Rydell stuff.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

A lot of third party sites tend to use referral traffic as a crutch to help combat any dealer concerns over lead volume or results. Most dealerships have no clue on how to look into referral traffic so just take the rep at their word.

How many customers really click the small "View this vehicle on dealer's website" link each month? We average 30-100 visitors /month from Cars.com which is similar to what Autotrader generates in referral traffic.

I won't dispute the fact that this referral traffic is very high quality. It converts about 2-3x higher than our overall website traffic especially when you take assisted conversion into account, but again the referral volume is still pretty low.

@Alex Vetter are there any plans to get access to dealerships' Google Analytics and build the data into your DealerCenter reporting? I am a huge Cars.com proponent and how dealer friendly you guys are, so this would just increase the transparency further and eliminate the mysterious nature of referral traffic. And hopefully pressure your competitors to do the same, so they stop using it as a crutch.

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A while back we had a big spike in Cars.com traffic and I made a post about it here. I then gave our rep full access to our GA to see what they might gleam from it. Never heard anything back.

 

[NickA]

In my markets, Cars.com delivers better results than AutoTrader (VDP's , referral traffic, leads, sales, close rate, cost per lead, cost per sale, etc). We started using Carfax used car listings after cutting CarGurus loose. Carfax is very well priced and delivers solid numbers, no complaints about the ROI.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

In my markets, Cars.com delivers better results than AutoTrader (VDP's , referral traffic, leads, sales, close rate, cost per lead, cost per sale, etc). We started using Carfax used car listings after cutting CarGurus loose. Carfax is very well priced and delivers solid numbers, no complaints about the ROI.

We've been very happy with our ROI on CarFax. I'm a little disappointed in how they have handled adding a component for customer being able to sell cars to us. It still comes over as a trade-in lead so we have to play stupid.

 

[jwittler]

A lot of third party sites tend to use referral traffic as a crutch to help combat any dealer concerns over lead volume or results. Most dealerships have no clue on how to look into referral traffic so just take the rep at their word.

How many customers really click the small "View this vehicle on dealer's website" link each month? We average 30-100 visitors /month from Cars.com which is similar to what Autotrader generates in referral traffic.

I won't dispute the fact that this referral traffic is very high quality. It converts about 2-3x higher than our overall website traffic especially when you take assisted conversion into account, but again the referral volume is still pretty low.

@Alex Vetter are there any plans to get access to dealerships' Google Analytics and build the data into your DealerCenter reporting? I am a huge Cars.com proponent and how dealer friendly you guys are, so this would just increase the transparency further and eliminate the mysterious nature of referral traffic. And hopefully pressure your competitors to do the same, so they stop using it as a crutch.

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@ryaneverson - So we do have a complimentary Data Studio view today that we can set up for dealers; a recent development that is helping address exactly what you are outlining above in terms of providing a better view into that referral traffic performance on your website.

More to come on directly integrating those site analytics into our Cars.com onsite performance dashboards, but happy to assist anyone in the Refresh community who is on Cars.com and would like to get this complimentary Data Studio view. Please don't hesitate to connect with your Cars.com rep about this option and reach out to me directly if interested: [email protected]