Jeff, you get a bunch of VPs on here, you might raise your standards. Quinn will have to get a new tie and every family has a crazy uncle. I can see if eHarmony has a senior section.
Cars.com and Yahoo split? Someone please explain
- Thread starter AWW_Spencerport
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Jeff, you get a bunch of VPs on here, you might raise your standards. Quinn will have to get a new tie and every family has a crazy uncle. I can see if eHarmony has a senior section.
- Dec 2, 2009
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- John
VP's will recognize the styling nuances of the Purple Tie... like most things we discuss, waaaay over your head, Doug!
VP's will recognize the styling nuances of the Purple Tie... like most things we discuss, waaaay over your head, Doug!
John, you really need to stop drinking at work.
- Dec 30, 2009
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- Yago
OK, if Cars.com was the PREMIER lead source and you sold 2-3 cars per month... This could be just a small outfit but:
What did the other sources bring? 1 sale/month?
Lexus dealers have really suffered since the disasters in Japan. Now that inventories are going up and we are seriously getting back into the used car business, I am seeing a huge increase in my Cars.com leads and phone calls. I cancelled my new car leads plus but purchased their new package.
I will not give up on display advertising.
I will not give up on display advertising.
I will not give up....
I will not give up on display advertising.
I will not give up on display advertising.
I will not give up....
Well, there is a story behind that. For years and years the owner of the Dealership used Cars.com exclusively. Garnered 30-40 leads per month and sold 2-3 cars per month. He hired AutoPosters in July of last year when Cars.com started to steadily drop. By December of 2011, Cars.com had dropped to 10-12 leads per month and maybe, if he's lucky 1 sale per month. Since then - in the last 140 days - Cars.com has not lead to a single sale for the dealership. However, were still selling the same amount of cars we ever have. The leads just aren't coming from Cars.com. When someone walks in the door theyre given a sheet of logos (cars.com, ebay, carsforsale...etc) and asked to circle which they had seen us on and check mark any other logo of a website they have even been on to look at cars. Since we started this practice 2 months ago, there has been ONE cars.com circle and TWO check marks. None of those three led to sales. Were getting nearly ALL of our leads right now (40-50 a month) from Craigslist and Drive-By's. Craigslist dominates. Why every single dealership is not on Craigslist is beyond me. It works! Going back to the "how did you find us" sheets - In the last two months, we have received over 130 Craigslist circles on those sheets. A large percentage have led to sales. In fact, over 80% of our sales is now from Craigslist. Thats why we chose to drop Cars.com - we were paying $800 a month for 10-12 leads, zero sales, and meanwhile getting 30-40 leads and 12-15 sales a month from Craigslist and AutoPosters who charges 1/4th of what Cars.com charges.
- Apr 28, 2009
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- Jerry
And I have data to back this statement. When we hear the customer identify the lead source on the recorded call, we track that. As you can see Craigslist is third. Dealer Website is first and AutoTrader is second. Cars.com is fifth.
- Dec 30, 2009
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Well... I know a bit about CL...
If you are getting 40-50 leads a month with an autoposter... find someone that does it manually (a bit more expensive) but that can drop text (key words) and fine tune the ads. You can easily get double the leads from CL doing that.
Hi Yagoparamo. I actually own AutoPosters - it's a company, not a program. Thats how I got into business with Anything With Wheels. After working with them for a few weeks, the owner loved what I was doing and asked me to be their full time marketing guy. So now I balance my week between AutoPosters and AWW.
AutoPosters is a play on words between AutomaticPosters and AutomotivePosters. It can mean both things. But we don't use any automatic software to post cars to craigslist. We post every ad, for every car, every day, manually. We add in keywords and tags, and we drive customers to that advertisement. Every dealership we work with see's a surge in sales after we begin. As I said, Anything With Wheels business went up so drastically after hiring us that he wanted to hire me.
Hi Jerry. And I bet you are going to see that trend continue upwards for Craigslist and downwards for AutoTrader. The Dealer's websites is and probably will always be the premier player in the market. HOWEVER, remember that any good Craigslist ad sends the viewer back to the Dealers website for more information. So there is a bit of double dipping.
