We recently began using Cars.com again earlier this year after dropping them a couple years back: What a difference: they have transformed to a complete solution, but more importantly our measured ROI makes large leaps as we began using more products because they interplay between them. As most of this board has likely already seen given the sophistication of many posts, Cliff Banks (one of the few who we follow in their analysis) posted today that they will be sold this week:
http://www.thebanksreport.com/analysis/cars-com-sale-likely-close-heres-rundown-possible-buyers/
Will be interesting to see who the new buyer is and if they continue to innovate as we see a marked difference that accelerated when we moved to almost their entire suite of products of DealerInspire, Dealer Rater and Social/Facebook offerings while on trial for the 360 product and the new DInspire offerings.
We've experienced some sort of feedback loop where our ROI has made a dramatic jump and our salesforce no longer has to overcome customers anchored to their "Good Deal" from Cargurus that is not always the correct car for our customers needs (and lower margin - we are still car dealerships
). Our only issue is the lag of pieces that remain old tech (we had the save VDP issue as a previous poster that was fixed fairly promptly and a few other integration hiccups, but nothing major and all is smooth and customized now).
The potential buyers he mentions reputations all seem like they will only accelerate this process. I'm curious who others think the buyer might be, and if its Ebay as noted, how will that work with the Social Marketplace? Most importantly, have others experienced this upon moving to a suite of their products, and does the jump in ROI last or was it a one-time jump that faded? We had switched to Cargurus until the invitation-only New Tech Conference described Cargurus spending 80% of their revenue on buying keywords, which explains why they have made keywords more expensive while posting deals that are lower margin for us - though a sale is a sale so we aren't complaining too much. Has anyone else had this experience in switching back?
Our Cargurus contact told us they intended to cut back on SEM spending now that they are established - if this is not misleading then this seems like a good combination. It seemed like switching back to Cars.com was a relatively new phenomenon at the conference as most had the old version ingrained but is certainly accelerating and improving. We do like Cargurus so are keeping them as I"m sure they will increase price again, but still are cheaper than Autotrader and we find the other lead-generating players less sophisticated.
I"m curious others experience and thoughts? Am always impressed with this forum's ability to see around the corner, so looking forward. Thanks!
http://www.thebanksreport.com/analysis/cars-com-sale-likely-close-heres-rundown-possible-buyers/
Will be interesting to see who the new buyer is and if they continue to innovate as we see a marked difference that accelerated when we moved to almost their entire suite of products of DealerInspire, Dealer Rater and Social/Facebook offerings while on trial for the 360 product and the new DInspire offerings.
We've experienced some sort of feedback loop where our ROI has made a dramatic jump and our salesforce no longer has to overcome customers anchored to their "Good Deal" from Cargurus that is not always the correct car for our customers needs (and lower margin - we are still car dealerships
). Our only issue is the lag of pieces that remain old tech (we had the save VDP issue as a previous poster that was fixed fairly promptly and a few other integration hiccups, but nothing major and all is smooth and customized now).The potential buyers he mentions reputations all seem like they will only accelerate this process. I'm curious who others think the buyer might be, and if its Ebay as noted, how will that work with the Social Marketplace? Most importantly, have others experienced this upon moving to a suite of their products, and does the jump in ROI last or was it a one-time jump that faded? We had switched to Cargurus until the invitation-only New Tech Conference described Cargurus spending 80% of their revenue on buying keywords, which explains why they have made keywords more expensive while posting deals that are lower margin for us - though a sale is a sale so we aren't complaining too much. Has anyone else had this experience in switching back?
Our Cargurus contact told us they intended to cut back on SEM spending now that they are established - if this is not misleading then this seems like a good combination. It seemed like switching back to Cars.com was a relatively new phenomenon at the conference as most had the old version ingrained but is certainly accelerating and improving. We do like Cargurus so are keeping them as I"m sure they will increase price again, but still are cheaper than Autotrader and we find the other lead-generating players less sophisticated.
I"m curious others experience and thoughts? Am always impressed with this forum's ability to see around the corner, so looking forward. Thanks!
