Blueprint Series: Third-Party Lead Providers

[Steve (blog)]

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

 

[Richard Valenta (blog)]

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...

 

[Stan Sher (blog)]

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.

 

[Lead Dispatch]

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.

 

[Pre Owned Lexus]

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

 

[BrandendeBuhr]

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...

 

[shia vs sunni]

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[theedealerrefreshed]

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!

 

[theedealerrefreshed]

I would be very interested to hear comments about experiences with third party leads through a manufacturer