My entire dealer group just canceled Cars.com. More lead providers to come!

[thunder8671]

That is a good idea. I'm in the same boat as you guys. I am looking to get rid of Autotrader and reinvest it into video SEO, pre-roll and other ventures. Are there any other investments that you guys have tried that have worked?

 

[yagoparamo]

I don't know if being happy about the Cars.com representative getting a cancellation is a good thing, he/she is just a sales person making a living with the programs that corporate gives to them. I think that in general they have very little say on what can/can't do for you.

As of the Dealer refresh community being OK wight he cancellations, let me say that as much as I hate the tactics of some 3rd party providers in the end business comes down to a common sense equation:

Do we get enough leads/sales for the money that we pay?

If the answer is yes, keep it. If the answer is no, cancel it.

I have seen something interesting over the years with CraisgList (not a 3rd party provider but close). A lot of dealers get in, leads count drops for each specific dealer, when a lot of dealers get out, suddenly starts to work for the ones that stayed. The ones that stay start to tell people, and the reps start to show their numbers, so more dealers get in, leads drop, etc. See the cycle?

I don't know if the lead "issue" will ever be resolved, there are more cars for sale than buyers! If anything the future looks more complicated as more technologies make advertising harder to understand.

Many dealers will find that to produce your own leads also takes money so what you thought you were saving from Autotrader and Cars.com is just going to go to someone else (namely: Google).

To me the key to the change is again that simple common sense equation, are we better off now doing our own thing or not? Some dealers will realize that to be really successful in this lead market you are going to have to hire some pretty smart people like Joe Pistell, Alex Snyder, Jeff, etc (all worked at dealerships before becoming a vendor). It is not easy to find them, it is not easy to keep them, and when they leave they are not easy to replace.

Every change comes with positive and negative consequences, be prepared for both.

 

[Aussiewebmaster]

I don't know if being happy about the Cars.com representative getting a cancellation is a good thing, he/she is just a sales person making a living with the programs that corporate gives to them. I think that in general they have very little say on what can/can't do for you.

As of the Dealer refresh community being OK wight he cancellations, let me say that as much as I hate the tactics of some 3rd party providers in the end business comes down to a common sense equation:

Do we get enough leads/sales for the money that we pay?

If the answer is yes, keep it. If the answer is no, cancel it.

I have seen something interesting over the years with CraisgList (not a 3rd party provider but close). A lot of dealers get in, leads count drops for each specific dealer, when a lot of dealers get out, suddenly starts to work for the ones that stayed. The ones that stay start to tell people, and the reps start to show their numbers, so more dealers get in, leads drop, etc. See the cycle?

I don't know if the lead "issue" will ever be resolved, there are more cars for sale than buyers! If anything the future looks more complicated as more technologies make advertising harder to understand.

Many dealers will find that to produce your own leads also takes money so what you thought you were saving from Autotrader and Cars.com is just going to go to someone else (namely: Google).

To me the key to the change is again that simple common sense equation, are we better off now doing our own thing or not? Some dealers will realize that to be really successful in this lead market you are going to have to hire some pretty smart people like Joe Pistell, Alex Snyder, Jeff, etc (all worked at dealerships before becoming a vendor). It is not easy to find them, it is not easy to keep them, and when they leave they are not easy to replace.

Every change comes with positive and negative consequences, be prepared for both.

you have it in a nutshell - if the leads are profitable keep them and start generating more via the methods you want to try - surely you would buy as many sales as you can make - if however you can only handle a certain number of leads as not enough staff to cover etc then you want to max the ones that costs less - but unless you are using automated systems to get the leads like Haystak's ppc platform - but like it you need to amortize the cost of the person doing the work as well as the spend.

 

[JesseJ]

Just curious, those of you that are reporting success from canceling Cars.com, Autotrader, etc, what have you invested in that has worked?

 

[yagoparamo]

Just curious, those of you that are reporting success from canceling Cars.com, Autotrader, etc, what have you invested in that has worked?

Jessej,

Probably the best question in the whole debate:

Did you have a plan before you canceled?
Did you start an alternative plan?
What has worked so far?

Digital is a lot more constrained than any other advertising medium, we actually have few choices, and to make matters worst these alternatives take long time investment, hard work, and patience.

Just to make sure, I'm not saying don't cancel 3rd party providers. What I'm saying is:

Cancel them for the right reason.
Understand the choices available (investment, time line, etc).
Foresee the possible consequences.

 

[Rdpatrick]

Just curious, those of you that are reporting success from canceling Cars.com, Autotrader, etc, what have you invested in that has worked?

We've spent some money trying to better tie our non-digital advertising to our website. In our very rural area, we've had some success by driving traffic to our website through newspaper, radio, signage, and snail mail. We've also upped our paid advertising, added ContactAtOnce chat, and had some moderate success with using SMS.

It may be because we are in a very Autotrader-dominated area, but the quality of leads we were seeing from Cars.com were just awful so almost anything we've done has been a better ROI than Cars.com was. Obviously, every situation is different...and like we discussed with Cars.com, we can always come back if we're making a mistake.

 

[Stefan]

Just curious, those of you that are reporting success from canceling Cars.com, Autotrader, etc, what have you invested in that has worked?

Training & BDC

The first thing we did was to bring in Jerry PhoneNinjas | Advanced Phone Training & Automotive Sales Training and his team. Next we started a BDC. The BDC brought our closing ratio from 5% -18% and our response time from a little over an hour to under 15 min.

I can't tell you how important training is. Train how to use your CRM, how to answer the phone, how to present a price... train, train, train ....

And don't forget to train your managers.

 

[yagoparamo]

Stefan,


With all due respect;


I hope that by firing Autotrader we didn't just realize that training our people would result in a better performing team.


I understand that maybe not training people was an issue of budget and we were spending that money on leads, otherwise I would argue that better trained people will do even better if we give them larger numbers or leads.

 

[Alex.Lemoing]

We cancelled Cars.com, Autotrader, car guru and all other source of 3rd party leads except the OEM 3rd party. We invested half of our saving into SEO, PPC and SEM and it has been a huge step forward. Once we realized the 3rd party leads were essentially crap, we focused on finding customers that really wanted to purchase. I would highly suggest to re-think your strategy and stay away from 3rd party lead providers.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

We cancelled Cars.com, Autotrader, car guru and all other source of 3rd party leads except the OEM 3rd party. We invested half of our saving into SEO, PPC and SEM and it has been a huge step forward. Once we realized the 3rd party leads were essentially crap, we focused on finding customers that really wanted to purchase. I would highly suggest to re-think your strategy and stay away from 3rd party lead providers.

Too often we comment on how we don't like something, or how a particular channel doesn't work well. We comment with no explanation to back up our views and opinions.

Alex, curious to what you consider to be "Crap"?


If you like, feel free to break your crap out into buckets:

1. Crap results to Listing Portal Websites (Autotrader, Cars.com) -

2. 3rd Party Leads (Autobytel, Dealix , usually New car only) -