So this brings up an interesting "what if" that came up at a 20Group of mine last month. We had a new vendor speak that has experience with Google (as in former Google employee). They compared the listing sites (CarGurus, Cars.com, etc) to the travel classifieds (Expedia, Travelocity, etc). Their point was the birth of the travel classifieds .com's came about to fill the void created by the airline and hotel industries inability to get found on search as well as their crappy sites to book flights/rooms, etc. Fast forward to today, I found myself, and everyone else at that 20Group, booking my flights directly through the airline and it was a great experience. Same comparison years ago, the retail dealer's inability to get our inventory found via search and our crappy websites opened the door for the Classifieds. The classified sites took over and basically most retail dealers, still today, spend money with them instead of just building inventory dynamic campaigns for their Used. This new vendor was pretty adamant that with the right strategy, whether with them or another capable provider, a dealer could show up on page one with their "2016 Ford Fusion SE" along with the Cars.com and Cargurus listings.can we shift that budget to another source and maintain the status quo or increase it (SEO, SEM, other 3rd party vendors)
Thoughts on this?