Digital Retailing for Dealers - What are your results?

[John V.]

@Rick Buffkin I share your sentiment. I do honestly want to see a dealer who has had real world success with DR **and not be listed in some vendor's whitepaper**

I am also seeing that our eprice leads close at the highest percent. My whole advertising strategy is to drive as many 1st party leads off of our website as possible since they are our highest converters. My belief is that DR will throw a wrench in the gears by scaring people away with $650mo.+++ payments - OR - it will become a negative review driving machine when the customer thinks they can come in on a $350 $0 down payment only to have the sales agent laugh at them.

I don't know the answers but I do know that the last 3 vendors that came in to try and pitch me DR could not produce a report that shows website form lead volume increasing as a result of adding DR to their clients website. So what if your DR leads supposedly close at 25%?? I would rather have 100 eprice leads close at 12% than 25 DR leads closing at 25%.

Am I crazy?!

 

[Kevin McKillop]

@Rick Buffkin
I am also seeing that our eprice leads close at the highest percent. My whole advertising strategy is to drive as many 1st party leads off of our website as possible since they are our highest converters. My belief is that DR will throw a wrench in the gears by scaring people away with $650mo.+++ payments - OR - it will become a negative review driving machine when the customer thinks they can come in on a $350 $0 down payment only to have the sales agent laugh at them.

I don't know the answers but I do know that the last 3 vendors that came in to try and pitch me DR could not produce a report that shows website form lead volume increasing as a result of adding DR to their clients website. So what if your DR leads supposedly close at 25%?? I would rather have 100 eprice leads close at 12% than 25 DR leads closing at 25%.

Hi John, this is exactly what I just got off the phone about with a CDJR dealer. "Leads are down" is how the conversation starts. The problem is they removed "Get ePrice", it was their highest converting CTA button on their SRP/VDPs and they've replaced it, trying to FORCE people into using Digital Retailing (in this instance it's DealerTracks 'Driver" products) with "Structure My Deal".

The DT rep will never tell you how many people enter into the workflow and how many abandon the process, because that doesn't sell. This is true for a lot of these services/widgets on sites.

Evaluation in a silo "these leads close at 30%" "these are awesome leads" blah blah. Yes that's great, but you have 10 of them, so who cares, work the 100 Get ePrice leads (just as you said).

 

[Zhendrix]

@Rick Buffkin

Am I crazy?!

Ok. You are crazy. I don't think you can compare "ePrice" form leads to "digital retailing or whatever it is". If you have some comparison logic, let's hear it? (something other than an internet lead close rate report)

Im interested to hear how others have tested Digital Retailing. For example:
1. Did you leave other CTAs on your website on while testing? For example, left "ePrice" as a CTA and also offered a "buy now" button for DR?
2. Did you change your in-store process and operations to better serve the customer who did the entire transaction online?
3. Did you change the DR CTA? For example, "Buy now" vs. "customize payment" vs. "Add to cart" or an alternative?
4. Did you change your advertising strategy to promote awareness for local consumers or "leave everything the same"?
5. Why did you decide to purchase a DR tool? Incremental leads? Better consumer experience? Listened to a weird whiny dudes podcast?

 

[John V.]

. If you have some comparison logic, let's hear it? (something other than an internet lead close rate report)

I guess that would be a philosophical question on "what is the purpose of your website?". I see it as a lead generator. Spend $$$ to send traffic to your site to convert those visits into leads and sales. I, personally, could care less if I had thousands of DR interactions, I want leads to work deals on. If it's not generating that, why have it? Eprice buttons also happen to be free - not $1,000++ per month as an add on to my site.

I also want to see answers to the 5 questions you posed.

 

[John V.]

I'd be happy to circle back on this in 60-90 days. Online Shopper from DI is being setup for our store at the moment. We had to wait quite a while for the Canadian banks to be integrated but should be going live very shortly.

How did it go?

 

[joe.pistell]

"what is the purpose of your website?". I see it as a lead generator.

John V, while you're working 10-20 leads to get one sale, 5 silent internet buyers just walked in. Leads are important, but not the most important. (unless your paid on working leads and not floor ups

"Crap! My car is dying and I need to go to Google so I can find a car and send in a lead" said the car shopper never.

 

[John V.]

John V, while you're working 10-20 leads to get one sale, 5 silent internet buyers just walked in. Leads are important, but not the most important. (unless your paid on working leads and not floor ups

"Crap! My car is dying and I need to go to Google so I can find a car and send in a lead" said the car shopper never.

I see the point you are trying to make but with that logic my internet close rate would be over 50% because pretty much every customer that walks in the door has been to my website. My concern from the get go is that those 5 silent internet buyers are not going to just walk on in because we have DR. I would argue they will run away. Why call me or submit a lead when they can pencil their own fictitious deal then shop it with someone else?

Again, I could be totally wrong, just have not seen any numbers to prove it otherwise, just theories.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Also... I'm gonna throw this in as well. Let's get one thing out up front. I'm not a Cargurus fan. Although they did leave a pair of socks on my desk. They appear to be unworn and new but... you never know!


I think we can all pretty much agree that CarGurus is kicking all of the other 3rd party websites asses. Guess what?!?! They don't have a digital retailing tool on their site! They're still driving more leads into dealers CRM's than most of the other sites combined. Also, look at the referral traffic they are sending to the dealers website as well. My point is... They have a simple payment calculator on their listings. I can see where John is coming from.

 

[Alex Snyder]

CarGurus' calculator isn't the reason they bring so many leads. It is because their emails are so damn engaging! They bring you back into their site daily with relevant things.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

CarGurus' calculator isn't the reason they bring so many leads. It is because their emails are so damn engaging! They bring you back into their site daily with relevant things.

My point is, they're able to capture the conversion without a Digital Retailing solution on their site. Their extent of a Digital Retailing solution is a simple payment calculator.

They're able to capture more traffic and convert more of that captured traffic and all of this without a Digital Retailing tool.