Autotrader - Good, but $800-900/sale good????

[joe.pistell]

1. Customers dont shop in one place, so why attribute the sale to one source.
2. Shopping is a multi-week JOURNEY, There are many PATHS to your dealership, NOT a single path to your store.

If we could see the paths that shoppers take, it would be a lot easier to justify the money we spend. In my world, as long as AT and Cars.com is on Google's top3 for:

• Used Car
• Used Cars
• Used Cars for sale
• Used Car Dealer
• Used Truck
• Used Trucks
• Used Trucks for sale
• Used Truck Dealer
• etc...

Then AT and Cars.com are steps in major traffic paths that can't be overlooked. (You can leap frog this path with a Google PPC campaign.)

 

[eag818]

I agree with Joe. However, we feel that we constantly have to spend more with ATC to continue being exposed everytime some nifty little product comes out. Since we sell only pre-owned, we would much rather invest in SEM and more traffic to our website than rely on a highly competitive outlet.

 

[Andrew Carr]

That being said, where do I get the best value on SEM/SEO? Or is that a topic for another thread?

This is exactly what I am trying to figure out with the department right now. I hope that someday my department will generate enough revenue that I can have the best package with every vendor, but I am going to have to step up to that. Our previous IM was doing Cars.com, Autotrader, Unity Works Videos, and had it all pointing at a sub-par Reynolds site that didn't convert well.

My feeling is that your site has to be right first...that's the core. Then you can go out and pay for all of those things that lead people to your site and be confident that the site will stick with people and convert once people are there.

Anyone work with BZ marketing or Reach Local? Those are just a couple of providers who have approached me so far. Every company that approaches me says they are the best, and I need to get educated before I spend any of my departments budget.

March 1 I will be launching our dealer.com site and I am hoping that will be the core I need.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Andrew - you're asking the right questions and it sounds like you have the understanding of the "core" down on the customer side. I just want to point out that the real core is your people.

We just had BZ/ADP in our dealership presenting their whole kit. They set it up with our CFO and didn't include me at all - however their social media campaign sickened the folks in the presentation, and when asked about accountability they had nothing to say other than "you have to let some things go on faith." Yeaaaaaaaaah. From what I heard I'm glad I wasn't there to get another ADP-ache in my head. There is no amount of Tylenol that can squelch that pain.

Reach Local is a good company. I've worked with them in the past and I think they have a very sharp staff. Shaun Raines and Jaime Adams do a lot to benefit the automotive world, and they're just cool. Before going all the way through with Reach Local, take a look at Dealer.com's Total Control Dominator since you're launching a site with them. There are a lot of options on that program and it is nice to have all your reporting meshed together. You could get Reach Local to manage TCD or consult with you to get you up to speed on SEM.

If you want to continue this discussion, I suggest you start a new thread. Let's keep this one on ATC and Cars.com.

 

[ideveroux]

Autotrader promotes the "who's wallet is thickest" scenario in determining inventory display order. If you can't stomach a budget to top tier list, I would recommend cutting them out entirely, or at the bare mimimum listing. Atleast with bare listings you can reach those consumers who are looking for your specific vehicles. You will definetely suffer a loss of lead traffic in general from autotrader.com but you should find that the quality of those leads are better as their interest is more focused on your vehicle which they had to search to find. <-i.e. larger gross. Having said that, it is imperative that your listings have maximum photos, upload your videos to the backend and insure detailed options are listed and descriptions on every vehicle. Good luck.

 

[NBianco]

As someone who has worked for AutoTrader.com in the past, I have seen both sides of this coin. I have seen some dealers that get 80% of their business off of AT and I have also seen dealers that list everything in the premium section and don't get much bang for the buck, at least not as much as it seems they should.

The common thread that ran through the dealers getting outstanding results on AT was that they had something unique about their vehicles. The most obvious one being price. There was/is a dealership that always has X amount of vehicles below $2000. They got created dozens of sales every month off of AT. The second uniqueness was in the vehicle itself. Cars that were limited edition, had rare options, or were rare themselves and hard to find tended to do very well on AT. The dealers that consistently carried these types of vehicles got nice results.

Consider what you're selling and where it will be listed on AT. Is your vehicle going to get lost in a sea of other similar vehicles? Will someone fly in from across the country or drive 3 hours for your vehicle or can they get the same thing at a very similar price 5 minutes from their home? Does your price stand out in any way? Does the vehicle stand out in any way?

If your vehicles are not going to stand out, then it's probably best to be doing an SEM/PPC campaign and drive traffic to your website. This way, when consumers are searching inventory, they are searching only your inventory, not every other dealers' as well. As someone mentioned earlier however, the website needs to be strong and created to provide an engaging user experience, which will translate into more leads/better conversion. As a general rule I think it's better to generate your own leads rather than using a third party, but you have to go with what works.

I hope this helps. I do know that AT does work if used correctly and the people there are great.

 

[ddavis]

AutoTrader works everytime, if done correctly. Why wouldn't it? You have tens of thousands of people that are able to view your entire inventory on a daily basis. Think of it like a newspaper ad. What would be the result if you listed used cars above the market price? Would you run new cars, in the paper, at MSRP? Would you show a picture of a vehicle, have a video, description and say "call for price or click for ePrice? How many people actually call or click for a price?
Yes, the cost is high and I'm a firm believer that you go premium or home in a major market. Having your vehicles well priced, will put your entire inventory above the competition, when customers sort by price. Having that position, you still need great descriptions, pictures, and videos. It takes work. You can't buy a good website and pay your dues on AutoTrader and Cars.com and expect results.

$800 to $900 a car? I would probably be cutting my wrists.

 

[yagoparamo]

ddavis revived this thread... so it wasn't me Jerry

If Mark McGurren still around I would love to test the ROI of Autotrader Vs. Craigslist in that market.

EDIT: Advertising


Got it. Sorry. Will stick to the rules.

 

[JamieS]

Just looked at last month and based on the info I have for October it looks like we were at about 25% of your figure from ATC, and roughly double that for cars.com (we're shutting down our cars.com). The TIM-KBB tie in has already had an impact (15 leads since yesterday) in a short time.

 

[john.quinn]

$800 to $900 a car? I would probably be cutting my wrists.

I hear you. But these days, I have a hard time simply equating LEADS and ILM to Sales as the only cost factors. Any more than I can put a cost factor on newspaper or broadcast advertising per sale.

This is a timely topic. Just today I received the results of a survey (our sold clients) that told us that 2 out of 3 of the respondents 1st contact with the dealership was via walk-in (no call, text, or email), despite 54% who reported shopping the internet prior to purchase.

I really think people are looking, researching, evaluating, etc., and not contacting us. I mean, we hope they are, right? We put an awful lot of effort into pictures and descriptions and merchandising, et al!

There was another discussion I read not too long ago... OH WAIT -- that was a Larry Bruce discussion on the blog a while back. They were talking about measuring SERP's and VDP's against costs for a truer analytic. I think there's some merit to that.