HUH? "Don't put your cars up on the classified sites right away. Give yourself a few weeks or a month to make the big gross." That’s about an ass backwards statement as I have heard in the last 5 years since some nut tried to sell me that the big purple gorilla would help me sell more cars!!
Why in the heck would anyone give that advice when 3rd party classified sites; AutoTrader, Cars, and the 50+ sites Dealer Specialties sends my inventory to are helping drive click thru traffic to my web site, create phone calls, and walk in traffic. Why would anyone want their fresh inventory absent for 30 days? I sat in a Cadillac local marketing meeting today and the local paper was presenting to us the latest in consumer habits in our market with data by CNW, the national data on sources used by consumers showed:
"Other Online sites" (3rd Party) starts out at 6mo from purchase at 25% of the source used by the consumer. Climbs to 75% at the 2mo mark, then 35% 1mo and 25% 2wk. Dealer website was 42% at 1mo and 87% at 2wk.
If we didn’t put our units on until after 1 month, how many of those consumers using 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] party for 75% of their research at the 2mo mark might we miss that might say “wait, here is what I am looking for”. Why the heck would I not want our inventory in its first month on a place that people are going to 35% of the time to look for, and especially the 2 places on the web that consumers are using the most? Where is the data that says that online classifieds in 1st month lower your gross? If anything, with the competitiveness of the market today we want our units on as many reputable sites as possible to capture as many VDP’s as we can on that unit, hopefully sparking interest, leading to an email, phone call, or a walk in. Then it’s up to us to hold the gross or not.
That makes no sense as to everything I read, hear, and experience every day here in the trenches.
