Generating Leads

[HK Rides]

We are having trouble with generating leads, specifically on Autotrader. Mainly looking for insights, tips, etc. We recently listed 3 vehicles earlier this month, two of which we were led to believed were well sought after in Los Angeles after researching. They are priced at or below what other dealers are offering, well below retail value, in great condition. Of course we understand that we are still relatively new with not too many reviews, so the trust might not be there.

Are there any steps to improve we can take?
Better/more pictures? Are our descriptions well written? Are our prices not as competitive as we thought? Is it our website design?

We have been thinking of running Google Ads for the week but not entirely sure how effective that will be. Any insight, tips, constructive criticism, etc. is appreciated.

This is our autotrader and website link if anyone wants to check it out:

Autotrader - page unavailable

hk-rides.com

Again, any help is appreciated.

 

[Carsten]

Site is looking better. I see that you have put a lot of work into it!

Check out our featured vehicles link is wrong. This really should point to the cars page.

"Contact Us: Call or text (310) 760-6874 or visit hk-rides.com. Schedule an appointment today"
I don't know why you are linking back to your own site.
Schedule an appointment ... doesn't give me that come take a test drive.

I'm more of a traditionalist and like sites that get straight to business. But your top page has a wonderful Origins story. I love what you wrote but this gives your website a blog feeling. So do the actual car pages.

I don't know the inner city LA experience for car shopping but google maps ends up at a parking lot. This could explain the schedule an appointment solution you came up with.

Those cars do look like a LA good choice.

Where else do you advertise?

 

[HK Rides]

Site is looking better. I see that you have put a lot of work into it!

Check out our featured vehicles link is wrong. This really should point to the cars page.

"Contact Us: Call or text (310) 760-6874 or visit hk-rides.com. Schedule an appointment today"
I don't know why you are linking back to your own site.
Schedule an appointment ... doesn't give me that come take a test drive.

I'm more of a traditionalist and like sites that get straight to business. But your top page has a wonderful Origins story. I love what you wrote but this gives your website a blog feeling. So do the actual car pages.

I don't know the inner city LA experience for car shopping but google maps ends up at a parking lot. This could explain the schedule an appointment solution you came up with.

Those cars do look like a LA good choice.

Where else do you advertise?

appreciate the insight! Recently made some changes and forgot to edit our homepage.

Good catch, we just copied and pasted our ad that we have on Offerup, Autotrader, and Facebook Marketplace.
Instead of schedule an appointment should it be something similar to "Take a test drive today"?

Oh ok, I was told for SEO purposes it is best to have our website have a blog feel. Do you have any tips on what we should change?

Yes, since we are an independent self funded dealership we had to start somewhere. Hence our dealership is located in a commercial building, and our "lot" is dedicated parking spaces in the underground lot lol.

We see these cars all the time!

Autotrader (thinking of switching to Carfax), Offerup, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist.
Also just started a Google Ad campaign, hoping that helps boosts leads/sales.

 

[Carsten]

Parts of the site can be a blog but you also need to think of what your business is.
To sell cars, so put them front and center.

I'd keep the blog. This helps with what they call content changes.

I was referring more to the car listings.. They look like blog posts because of the template that you used.
I'd grap a ecommerce one and just delete the cart options out.

trader/cars/guru vs Oferup/FB/CL
These are vastly different customers. Basically credit scores vs Bad / No credit folks. (not judging just saying)
so, I'd imagine that your inventory would need to reflect that.
However, a quick check in Austin ... I might be wrong .. the market is more upscale than it used to be.

I'd see how COF (CL-OfferUp-FB) does for you.
Maybe doing FB ads might have a better ROR.

 

[HK Rides]

Parts of the site can be a blog but you also need to think of what your business is.
To sell cars, so put them front and center.

I'd keep the blog. This helps with what they call content changes.

I was referring more to the car listings.. They look like blog posts because of the template that you used.
I'd grap a ecommerce one and just delete the cart options out.

trader/cars/guru vs Oferup/FB/CL
These are vastly different customers. Basically credit scores vs Bad / No credit folks. (not judging just saying)
so, I'd imagine that your inventory would need to reflect that.
However, a quick check in Austin ... I might be wrong .. the market is more upscale than it used to be.

I'd see how COF (CL-OfferUp-FB) does for you.
Maybe doing FB ads might have a better ROR.

Got it, I appreciate the advice! Will definitely look into changing up our used car page.

Right, it's just free so thought might as well. Autotrader just hasn't been good even though our prices our extremely competitive, so we will be trying Carfax out hoping for better results as mainly dealer vehicles are listed!
FB has definitely surprised us, as in a lot of real leads.

So far CL has been basically nonexistent, Offerup is mainly no real leads, definitely will continue to use FB and check out FB ads.

 

[Carsten]

Makes sense that FB would be which is hitting the best for you.

Hope you start getting some traction!

 

[poniboy1]

We are having trouble with generating leads, specifically on Autotrader. Mainly looking for insights, tips, etc. We recently listed 3 vehicles earlier this month, two of which we were led to believed were well sought after in Los Angeles after researching. They are priced at or below what other dealers are offering, well below retail value, in great condition. Of course we understand that we are still relatively new with not too many reviews, so the trust might not be there.

Are there any steps to improve we can take?
Better/more pictures? Are our descriptions well written? Are our prices not as competitive as we thought? Is it our website design?

We have been thinking of running Google Ads for the week but not entirely sure how effective that will be. Any insight, tips, constructive criticism, etc. is appreciated.

This is our autotrader and website link if anyone wants to check it out:

Autotrader - page unavailable

hk-rides.com

Again, any help is appreciated.

I put a pdf file for you to look at the challenge's of running ads on these platforms. See the attachment.

I just wrote an article on using AI and the human touch you can read that here:

https://blogs.zenithmarketingai.com

I work with dealership to help increase there leads but you have to have a minimum of at least 1000 clients in your current database.



Cheers,
Anthony Poni

 

[Greg_Gifford]

ok - first of all, you need to get a better website. This custom-coded thing isn't helping you... You have a TON of problems on the site that make it load slowly, and without individual VDPs you're never going to get indexed and show in any Google search results. Even if you hired someone awesome to do your SEO, they couldn't do anything with this site.

so fixing the site is step one.

Concentrating on building your own profile is step two. You should never rely on third party leads if you haven't handled your own site/footprint first. If anyone clicks to your site from AT, they're going to bounce, because you don't look like a legitimate dealership (again, you NEED individual VDPs). you've got to do some SEO if you want this thing to work for you...

once you have the site fixed and you've done some work handling SEO basics, THEN you should start to worry about what you're doing with third party sites and Google Ads - DEFINITELY don't spend any money on Google Ads right now... you're going to pay significantly more for clicks until you get the website experience fixed (in fact, you probably wouldn't be able to run inventory-based ads at all, since you don't have VDPs)

 

[HK Rides]

ok - first of all, you need to get a better website. This custom-coded thing isn't helping you... You have a TON of problems on the site that make it load slowly, and without individual VDPs you're never going to get indexed and show in any Google search results. Even if you hired someone awesome to do your SEO, they couldn't do anything with this site.

so fixing the site is step one.

Concentrating on building your own profile is step two. You should never rely on third party leads if you haven't handled your own site/footprint first. If anyone clicks to your site from AT, they're going to bounce, because you don't look like a legitimate dealership (again, you NEED individual VDPs). you've got to do some SEO if you want this thing to work for you...

once you have the site fixed and you've done some work handling SEO basics, THEN you should start to worry about what you're doing with third party sites and Google Ads - DEFINITELY don't spend any money on Google Ads right now... you're going to pay significantly more for clicks until you get the website experience fixed (in fact, you probably wouldn't be able to run inventory-based ads at all, since you don't have VDPs)

We checked with pagespeed insights and it says everything is over 90 (Performance, Accessibility, Practices, and SEO). Could you provide more insight on how we can look more legitimate? I know it's not perfect but thought it was not too bad.

We can create individual VDPs no problem, that just means to have a dedicated page for each vehicle correct?

Just a bit confused. If you could provide more insight that would be great.

 

[Greg_Gifford]

page speed insights has almost nothing to do with SEO or user experience...

it's simple - you need separate pages for each vehicle. There are TONS of options for dealership websites that work with inventory feeds, there's no reason to try to reinvent the wheel and create some different version. Customers won't trust your site because it doesn't function like a normal dealership website... That means Google won't trust it either.