Google's Dealer Guidebook 2.5 is out - Your thoughts?

[Rob]

We had a massive lift in % of online leads compared to phone and walk-in. What am I missing?

I'm going to go out into left field here; please bear with me.

I saw the exact same thing you did - HUGE increase in raw lead counts, HUGE increase in % of total sales that started as a lead.

So.

I think it's as simple as this: Google doesn't know *quite* as much about our industry as they purport to.

Google Ads keeps getting more and more dealer hostile. Most of the recent changes have made Google Ads worse for the dealer. If they know everything there is to know about our business, why would they keep making things worse?

 

[Alex Snyder]

3) DR tools worked because people had plenty of time to sit on their ass and play with them. Kids took the laptop and I am stuck on my phone fiddling for crap to do to keep my attention away from the nonsense outside!

That's a BINGO!

And now that people are less afraid of the pandemic we are seeing dealership shopping behaviors move back into traditional methods.
Digital Retailing

 

[AdamMurray]

So.

I think it's as simple as this: Google doesn't know *quite* as much about our industry as they purport to.

This. I've been on campus several times and talked to a few different folks on the auto team and can say with 100% certainty that they have no idea what actually happens in a dealership and vicariously drive their narrative via anecdotal stories they hear from cohorts.

 

[Dan Sayer]

This. I've been on campus several times and talked to a few different folks on the auto team and can say with 100% certainty that they have no idea what actually happens in a dealership and vicariously drive their narrative via anecdotal stories they hear from cohorts.

@AdamMurray well said. Google spends way too much time with industry vendors and not in dealerships. I would say there is a high % of this throughout the entire industry's vendor pool. When I worked for Dealer Inspire there were about three of us that legit had well-rounded experience in the dealership out of 300 employees. There were a handful of others and although they worked for a dealer (IT, dev, marketing) they didn't work in the Sales/Retail side so didn't really have context of the customer-facing aspect of the business. Dealer Inspire was genuinely interested in making sure we spent time with departments defining how dealerships were structured. That may have been the only reason Joe hired me, LOL.

On the other extreme, if I hear another demo introduction from an industry vendor spit his bio of "I sold cars... so I know what you do each day", I'll puke. 90% of the time he is overstating his success at a dealership and then proceeds to make everyone uncomfortable revealing that he definitely sold cars the wrong way by bragging about 10 pounders. SMH

 

[John V.]

After reading the section on Online Video - I immediately saw the BS sales pitch here. "88% of people who used online video said they were 100% certain of what they were going to buy before visiting the dealership".........It's called Sex Panther by Odeon. It's illegal in nine countries........

Another GEM....80% of shoppers who were exposed to video ads started visiting automotive websites in the same session.......Yea, okay.......

I ran my own Pre-Roll ads in truview for a while and Google kept claiming that over 30% of my video ads were getting watched the full 30 seconds.....it was my GD commercial?! I kept at it because I was addicted to seeing 100K views on our YouTube channel videos but once Covid hit we cut ad budget and this went with it.