Autotrader, Cars.com or KBB?

[yagoparamo]

Thank you Jerry. I will look in to doing this. I apologize for going off. I put a lot of pressure on myself to choose the right vendors. Everyone comes to me and they have this to sell and that to sell. We guarantee this, that and the other thing! There is so much available and only so much to spend! I try to spend as best I can.

Being a vendor I hate that myself;
Remind them what great Ben said (with guarantee being exhcnageable with certain)

Ben Franklin's quote "but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes."

 

[ed.brooks]

Honda, Toyota, Chevrolet, and Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge, life should be good.

Are your vehicles competitive? My friend, Ed Brooks might run his special program that will give you a market days supply. I did go to AutoTrader and you are a featured dealer. Honestly, I think you should be premium or nothing. It is all about being on the top.

I like that you have actual pictures of your new cars but the ones that I clicked on I didn't see a description. Looking at Cars.com, how well does the Toyota dealer in Ithaca do?

Ryan, I'd be more than happy to run an analysis of your inventory. It's a service we offer to any DealerRefresh member at no charge. feel free to give me a call anytime.

 

[joe.pistell]

Yes.. All the time. I then try to explain that I am a "Marketing" guy, not an IT guy. My newest IM at CDJ is an IT guy as well. He's a great asset to our company and we use him now to fix these little bugs! That helps me out a lot! I just deflect the questions to him now.

Ryan,

If you have multiple rooftops, this can be a handy tool TeamViewer - Free Remote Access and Remote Desktop Sharing over the Internet

...now that I thinkkabout it, you probably already know about it

 

[joe.pistell]

DD, who are you talking to? Our Toyota Dealer is in Auburn, NY. We don't have anything in Ithaca. We are focusing on Used Car descriptions at the moment. Our guy we just hired last week has been writing them since last week. I don't see the need at this time for new car descriptions. New cars are mostly the same and new car buyers in my opinion, are just shopping price.

FWIW Ryan, we built a fully automated Comment Generator, launched it (with great expectations) and saw little change. >:-/

 

[ryanabbott]

Ryan,

If you have multiple rooftops, this can be a handy tool TeamViewer - Free Remote Access and Remote Desktop Sharing over the Internet

...now that I thinkkabout it, you probably already know about it

Nope, I didn't know about that. That looks like it could be handy. My job is more to see the ISM's face to face and see how they are attacking the day. I try not to be the guy they call when their computer breaks! Not because I don't want to be that guy, I just don't always know how to fix it!

 

[ryanabbott]

Ryan, I'd be more than happy to run an analysis of your inventory. It's a service we offer to any DealerRefresh member at no charge. feel free to give me a call anytime.

Thank you Ed. I appreciate that.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

My question is, do you base your ROI measurements for ATC & Cars off of strictly phone ups and email leads (trackable's), or do you include walk-ins as well and trust the sourcing was accurate? (We base it off of phone,email & walk-in, I'm just trying to get a feel for what everyone else does)

Absolutely - as best as I can. Why would a dealership NOT factor in walk-in floor traffic into the ROI of any internet marketing channel.

We as dealers really NEED to quite separating "Internet" traffic from "traditional - walk-in" (or whatever you want to call it) traffic.

A lead is a lead no matter where the customer comes from.
A show is a show no matter there it came some
A sale is a sale no matter where it came time - Internet lead, phone or walk-in.

Marketing is marketing not matter the medium. Just be sure all your marketing mediums have the same message and synergies.

 

[Bill Simmons]

Great points Jeff. I have take the generic lead source "phone up" completely out of our CRM system. Our sales people can no longer log a customer using that term. I insist that my sales force find out as best they can where the customer viewed us. I already know they called in on the phone because the CRM logs all of the calls. For example, a customer is on one of my AT VDP's and the clicks through to my website. They will probably not call from the AT tracking number but the toll free tracking number on my website. Either way I know that the lead is really internet related, but with proper questioning of the customer I can attribute the lead to AutoTrader.

The same goes with "floor up" or "drive bys". I have not gone so far as to remove those types of leads out of the sytem yet. But the same philosophy applies. Something brought the customer to my store, its our job to find out what it was.

 

[joe.pistell]

I take a bit different look at lead sourcing. It's a FAIL if you leave it up the the reps because customers are preparing for negotiation and...

• Customers hate sales reps asking probing source questions
• Reps hate asking source questions until they've "won them over". Then, you rep has to circle back and enter the lead source before the close? ahhh... NOT in my world.
• Reps will "plug in any source" to sastify the wonks upstairs.

Add another layer of complexity that you can't ignore is that 19 hour multi-month shopping journey. In 99% of the ups, can there really be a single lead source?


SUMMARY: In my view (only), the DESIRE to match an up to a single source is an error in the making... and, if you lean on these numbers, they can skew your decision making.

 

[ajholland]

Though not perfect, we use a simple one page survey with the logos of where we advertise, broken down by internet, TV, radio, print. We also have a section at the bottom to put in a referral name or if they are a repeat customer. Customers are welcome to circle multiple sources and they often do circle 2-3. Every month internet leads the way by a mile!