The background for this post is that I'm three months into my job as the Internet Sales Manager at an Upstate NY car dealership. The dealership does well as a whole, but the internet department was non-existent before my arrival. I myself am new to the car business. The dealership averaged around 5 Internet sales per month previously. Since I arrived the numbers are Feb: 10, March: 13, April: 14 and counting.
Here is the general overview of our department. I'm not asking to have my hand held, I'm just asking if any of you veterans see anything that jumps out as something we are missing or doing incorrectly. Mind you are budget for the internet department is currently somewhat limited, but subject to a slight increase though I'm not sure when.
We utilize the following:
- Reynolds and Reynolds Contact Management
- Dealer Connection website plus premium home page service
- Auction 123 for exporting of photos only (I know there are other ways to use this but I'm not sure what)
Lead sources:
- Ford direct (Dealer Connection)
- ZAG, Every Car Listed...that's about it. We average between 90-140/month
Things we don't use:
- Craigslist (I can't figure out how to not be ghosted)
- Youtube (I think our videos are up there but not by my doing)
- Ebay, Cars.com (anymore)
- Autotrader (anymore). I can't convince the owner that those third party sites are for more than leads alone.
We have no SEO management of any kind. We have no chat platform set up either. I just took a look at our google analytics for the first time. We had 6,000+ page visits last month. No idea if that's good or bad.
Bare in mind we are a smaller dealership. We sell between 40 and 80 units per month on average, so I have actually been closing out over 10% of our leads which isn't too bad I guess for entry-level.
Any knee-jerk reactions? Thanks in advance. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff.
Here is the general overview of our department. I'm not asking to have my hand held, I'm just asking if any of you veterans see anything that jumps out as something we are missing or doing incorrectly. Mind you are budget for the internet department is currently somewhat limited, but subject to a slight increase though I'm not sure when.
We utilize the following:
- Reynolds and Reynolds Contact Management
- Dealer Connection website plus premium home page service
- Auction 123 for exporting of photos only (I know there are other ways to use this but I'm not sure what)
Lead sources:
- Ford direct (Dealer Connection)
- ZAG, Every Car Listed...that's about it. We average between 90-140/month
Things we don't use:
- Craigslist (I can't figure out how to not be ghosted)
- Youtube (I think our videos are up there but not by my doing)
- Ebay, Cars.com (anymore)
- Autotrader (anymore). I can't convince the owner that those third party sites are for more than leads alone.
We have no SEO management of any kind. We have no chat platform set up either. I just took a look at our google analytics for the first time. We had 6,000+ page visits last month. No idea if that's good or bad.
Bare in mind we are a smaller dealership. We sell between 40 and 80 units per month on average, so I have actually been closing out over 10% of our leads which isn't too bad I guess for entry-level.
Any knee-jerk reactions? Thanks in advance. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff.