Freed up some budget, what should we add?

[JesseJ]

I do. I basically just do it myself through Homenet.

 

[Manny Luna]

Jesse,

Do you do CL?

Cost went down and unfair competition is over.

Great point Yago, Craigslist is wide open right now, we are staring off our dealers with 500.00 and spitting it up in two markets. It's a small investment but when the dealers see the ROI, they will be more open in investing more.

 

[yagoparamo]

Great point Yago, Craigslist is wide open right now, we are staring off our dealers with 500.00 and spitting it up in two markets. It's a small investment but when the dealers see the ROI, they will be more open in investing more.

This is out of this thread bounds but... how do you split into two markets? Are you doing it full manual? If you open an account with CL to automated the price update and car deletion you have to chose just one market for posting.

 

[joe.pistell]

@Joe Great ideas. I wonder if I can implement any of that without spending extra $. The new car photos probably wouldn't be feasible without help. Is there any data showing the impact of new car photos? I'm not sure about video vs still pics. I was thinking about doing video walkarounds. Can't hurt. As for incentives, our OEM website, while generally pretty lousy, does include incentives on new vehicles. I'll have to find out if it's something our current website provider can implement.

Jesse,
Pictures sell cars. Why? Buying a car is an emotional experience & Pictures speak to emotions. Stock photos are NOT personal, they are a robotic solution... period.

I'll make a Bet.
Pick one or two F150s (T4851 & T4813), take pics and then look at VDP view counts, before and after. I bet you'll see a 100%+ increase in VDP views.

Practical Advice from ol' Uncle Joe.

1. If you don't have time for a test (or VDP traffic sats), the BEST advice I can offer is to take pics of your top of the line units only (i.e. trims: Titanium, ST, GT Premium, SEL, Limited, LTD, etc...)
2. If you don't have enough time to shoot new and used and you have to choose which car to take pics of 1st, DON'T take a pics of the el' cheapo cars, cheap used cars almost sell themselves. Take pics of your high line new units 1st.

re: walk around videos.

1. Don't do walk around videos, until your photos of the high line, new vehicles are done.
2. If you do a walk around video, only do it on the high line used cars
3. After they are done, then move to the high line new Fords. On the new fords, you can make ONE walk around video for each trim level and use it for all units that match.

re: VDP video vs still pics
Your VDP defaults to a video, not the still photos. Do you have any info that proves to you that your shoppers like your videos AND want to see the video before the still pics??. You need PROOF. You should ask to see the engagement stats and click stats and heat maps. My instincts tell me that video presented 1st is not an "expected user experience". Many Shoppers are looking for select pics (dash, upholstery, moonroof, bed, etc), the video does not help this behavior. Lastly, video is almost always an "opt in experience", not a default, so you had better be right on presenting the video ahead of the stills.


HTH
Joe

 

[joe.pistell]

IDEA!

Ask your web dudes for a custom feature:

If Uploaded Pics = zero, then add a lead generator button that says "Want Real Pics?" (or some other CTA) Have a popup lead gen form that has a personal message from you, some thing like:

"Hi Jesse here, I'll move this vehicle to the top of our photographers list and email it to you when it's done!".

HTH
Joe
p.s. the button has to be up high right near the pics.

 

[JesseJ]

Joe,

This is an awesome bit of insight. I can't thank you enough. I think your lead generating idea for vehicles without photos is phenomenal. I'm going to get that implemented asap.

Great guidance as well on which vehicles to highlight as far as photos and video go.

 

[joe.pistell]

Your welcome.

Few people on the planet know how to make the Internet cash register ring like I do.

 

[joe.pistell]

Joe,

This is an awesome bit of insight. I can't thank you enough. I think your lead generating idea for vehicles without photos is phenomenal. I'm going to get that implemented asap.

Great guidance as well on which vehicles to highlight as far as photos and video go.

Any Update Jesse?

 

[JesseJ]

Any Update Jesse?

@ Joe

Well I got my hopes up a bit on the added budget. We did finally cancel our print advertising contract which was a big budget drain but I have yet to make any progress on getting those funds reallocated to something useful. Part of the problem here is that we are a small dealership, yet we draw about 300 leads/month. Since I'm a one-man show in the Internet Department I always have my hands full. I revised parts of my follow up process and some of my best salesmen are now actively helping me with long-term prospecting and even short-term follow up (i.e. calls during the evening or my day off when I'm not around). I think this small change alone has been enormous. Jan-March was my personal best three month stretch since getting into the business.

I took your advice and was able to get OEM incentives right on our website. I saw a noticeable influx in new car leads as soon as that change was made and was even able to sell a few cars at full sticker because some customers seem to think the price listed with incentives is the final internet price (actually just MSRP minus incentives). I also think that some (not many) customers in the past actually thought we were quoting MSRP as an internet price because that what was listed on our inventory.

We also added a few more third-party leads with CarGurus which is a very inexpensive lead provider and has already led to several sales in just under a month.

As for pictures...not so good. I was doing great in Jan-March but this month has fallen off. Our process/timeline for used vehicle inspection, detailing, etc is eternally broken and I am beating a dead horse trying to get it fixed. I work with a few too many people who hate change. Needless to say, since my photo process isn't fixed, video is still on the back burner. Like I said, since it's just me here, balancing time can be an issue. I did change our inventory listing so that the slide show video was removed and our still photos displayed but I see that has reverted back . I'll have that changed again asap.

Starting today, I'm going to conduct your experiment on VDP for our inventory before and after pictures are added. I will let you know what I find. Thanks for checking in!

 

[JesseJ]

Oh yes and also I added the "want more pics?" button. We can't move it directly next to the pictures which probably cuts down on the leads from that but we do get inquiries.