Lead wall on your website

[jon.berna]

We have used this strategy at a handful of dealers and created some pretty interesting data around it. Right wrong or indifferent, leads are a measure of success for agencies, websites, etc. and this is a way to manipulate that metric.

First, while I don't personally like this tactic, and I don't like the UX, I fully believe that you have to test everything, and then retest it. What we like or don't like is irrelevant.

That said, here is some sample data:

	Average Unique New Car Email Leads per Month	Average Unique Used Car Email Leads per Month
Before Price Lock	150	250
After Price Lock	600	800
Net Lead Increase*	360	480

*Of the leads received after locking the prices, approximately 60% included legit contact data.



Now for the important information...None of the following KPIs were positively affected by the increases in leads: Appointments, Ups or Sales. In some cases these actually suffered.

What did we learn from this?
While creating a lead wall does increase one KPI, it does not increase the bottom line, may actually hurt sales by pissing people off and tie up your resources chasing people who have no intention of engaging, they just wanted to see a price. This tactic only manipulates a stand alone metric, it will not change the number of people in the market to buy a car. It's math.

Here is what we are currently testing with a number of our dealers:
Show a price, but use a strike through and use a "Get Today's Price" type CTA. The key is the strike through, and will increase leads by 100% - 200%. The most important part, however, is the email response from the dealership. It has to clearly explain how the dealership adjusts prices daily and it has to either show a better price based on "today's market value" and/or similar vehicles good, better, best style. Our hypothesis is that this strategy provides the best balance in terms of what the dealership wants, what the customer wants and providing a quality user/buyer experience. While the email content may seem like a basic thing, it's often the break point in the process.

Hope this is helpful!

I have been following this and thinking carefully about this topic. This is the best response on this thread and perfectly illustrates the problem with chasing one metric only to create an unintended consequence.

As dealership employees we feel better when we have a lead, we feel better that our marketing converted into something tangible. The vendor feels better as they can point to something valuable.

However feelings don't sell cars. More tests, more data like this is what we need. We are in the epicenter of this at driven data right now and I look forward to studying this more and reviewing this holistically as Gayle did.

Thank you sir for the review, this was hard to put together and communicate as clearly as you just did.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

We have one store in our group that absolutely crushes their district for volume and gross and they only advertise MSRP. Their formula is very simple - attract and find better customers. The entire store is focused on equity mining, service drive and running campaigns that appeal to their ideal customers. Every market is different but what I've noticed is that if you offer rock-bottom online pricing, you are going to attract bottom feeding customers who have seven quotes and want you to beat the best price by $500.

I think that makes sense. There's no point in always being the cheapest, even for commodities like cars.

Do you job well, and you'll keep the gross and make your customers happy.

Show them you can go the extra mile because you're running a healthy business. Let those offended leave, they wouldn't have bought anyways.

Cost-searching customers are often the ones ending up slapping you with a single star on Google because they can and what you did for them is never enough.

That applies to B2C and B2B.

 

[Carluminati]

When are you guys going to start implementing conversational chat to the game??????

 

[Marc Lavoie]

When are you guys going to start implementing conversational chat to the game??????

Conversational chat has been in the game for a while, it's a different subject. A lot of dealers use them for various purposes.

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

Now for the important information...None of the following KPIs were positively affected by the increases in leads: Appointments, Ups or Sales. In some cases these actually suffered.

If the salespeople taking the leads suck at technique, throwing more opportunities at them will only make them suck more! Dealerships should make sure their people are properly trained to handle leads before throwing more opportunities at them.

While the email content may seem like a basic thing, it's often the break point in the process.

Why are you bothering with e-mail. Tell the customer you'll text them a price immediately upon hitting the submit button . Now you have a cell phone number, and that's 1000% better than any email you'll ever get. When you ask for name, email and cell, and the customer customer is going to give you a fake phone number if they know you''re emailing the info.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

If the salespeople taking the leads suck at technique, throwing more opportunities at them will only make them suck more! Dealerships should make sure their people are properly trained to handle leads before throwing more opportunities at them.



Why are you bothering with e-mail. Tell the customer you'll text them a price immediately upon hitting the submit button . Now you have a cell phone number, and that's 1000% better than any email you'll ever get. When you ask for name, email and cell, and the customer customer is going to give you a fake phone number if they know you''re emailing the info.

You're right, but you have to be smart about text message conversion.

The channel is wayyy better for sure, but as people know you'll be texting and calling on their personal device, they are often harder to get in the first place. You just need to use a little more wizardry

 

[joe.pistell]

We have one store in our group that absolutely crushes their district for volume and gross and they only advertise MSRP. Their formula is very simple - attract and find better customers. The entire store is focused on equity mining, service drive and running campaigns that appeal to their ideal customers. Every market is different but what I've noticed is that if you offer rock-bottom online pricing, you are going to attract bottom feeding customers who have seven quotes and want you to beat the best price by $500.

It's everywhere I look, a tectonic shift is happening beneath our dealer's feet.

• Past: Pioneering dealers found a marketplace advantage buying any new digital marketing tech .
• Present: Pioneering dealers are cutting non-critical expenses to return to profitability.
• Future: Pioneering dealers are looking internally to create marketplace advantages.

Examples like @Michael Warwick and @Jon Berna represent this future.

The arms race is over; a new era is upon us.

A tectonic shift is happening beneath our dealer's feet. Past: Pioneering dealers found ROI buying any new digital marketing tech to gain marketplace advantage.

www.linkedin.com

 

[George Nenni]

We had a local dealer who used a 'Lead Wall' until they were bought out by a much larger dealer group. This dealer used a "For The People" marketing program that I believe was developed by Greg Goebell. As I understand it, for this dealership anyway, they relied on an extensive radio advertising program designed to reach people BEFORE they were 'in market' and actively shopping any other dealers.

The dealership did okay, but they were far from being a market leader for volume. I suspect that it would NOT work if your goal was to do any volume at all.

If your goal is to increase leads, I think this would help.

If your goal is to increase overall sales, I think this would hurt.

It sounds like a plan designed to help the BDC and Internet teams take more credit for sales while not increasing variable ops volume or total revenue one bit.

View attachment 4467

Ed,

A new dealer-customer is using the "For The People" campaign, I had never heard of this program/vendor, found this thread on search. If anyone else has information, please share.

The strangest part for me is, while they seem to run radio and other campaigns to drive traffic to the vanity URLs, they replace the dealers' Google My Business main website link with the vanity URL. I feel this artificially inflates the results of their program with the dealership's high volume of natural GMB traffic. If you look at the GMB search queries, the vanity URL is almost never in the list, proving the radio campaign didn't drive the GMB traffic. Even worse, it puts a lead form firewall in front of every GMB visitor, likely causing a poor customer experience.

I would love to be enlightened with additional data points, but so far my suspicious side is on alert.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Ed,

A new dealer-customer is using the "For The People" campaign, I had never heard of this program/vendor, found this thread on search. If anyone else has information, please share.

The strangest part for me is, while they seem to run radio and other campaigns to drive traffic to the vanity URLs, they replace the dealers' Google My Business main website link with the vanity URL. I feel this artificially inflates the results of their program with the dealership's high volume of natural GMB traffic. If you look at the GMB search queries, the vanity URL is almost never in the list, proving the radio campaign didn't drive the GMB traffic. Even worse, it puts a lead form firewall in front of every GMB visitor, likely causing a poor customer experience.

I would love to be enlightened with additional data points, but so far my suspicious side is on alert.

What is FOR THE PEOPLE?

We’re on a mission to put the fun back into buying a car and treat our customers with the respect they deserve. We’re here for you. We believe in you. We want to help you own the car of your dreams!

We believe that if you treat people courteously and truly help them they’ll become your customers for life. That’s what we’re promising. We’re not in business to sell cars to make a quick buck. We’re in business to find great people who will buy cars from us for life.

We want to build a relationship with you — a relationship that adds value to your life — one built on trust and mutual respect — a relationship that will give you a dealership you feel comfortable doing business with for life.


Replacing the GMB link is a red flag for sure!

If you do a search for "For the people car dealers" you'll find may examples of their vanity URLs and landing pages.

Grote Mitsubishi - For The People

For The People

fredforthepeople.com

Premier Auto Center - For The People

For The People

scottsaysyes.com

Stoops Automotive Group - Muncie, IN - For The People

For The People

www.stoopsforthepeople.com

The WALL:

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Whoa, check out these websites...