Percentages on leads

[ajholland]

As we move into 2010, I am curious what everyone's goals are on closing %'s for the year:

What is your target on closing 3rd party leads (ATC, Cars.com)?
What is your target for closing your direct leads from your website?
Is that up or down from last year or the same?

 

[Marc McGurren]

I might be way off, but these are my goals for my leads:

Third Party Leads:
Dealix - 6-7%
Autotrader - 20%
Cars.com Used - 20%
Cars.com NLP - 8%

Website - 20%

Total combined ratio - 13% which is up from last years which was around 11.5%

 

[TAP]

Any stats on pay per sale?

 

[Bruce Novicky]

%'s are tough to compare between different operations... I closed at 8% last month... but that was counting EVERYTHING sourced from the net phone or email. Bad #'s, why the heck did you call me, I wanted a free toaster, all of them.

3rd party being around 6%-10% is good if you are counting all of them

Your own website should always be over 20%

Cars.com is always good for us in terms of % but the ROI is pretty bad... I am shifting that money to get people on our site instead...

I mean think about it... imagine taking the thousands you spend on 3rd party and AutoTrader/Cars.com and investing that into your own website traffic...

Say you are spending $8,000 on all 3.... imagine how much traffic you can generate with just $2-$3k of that... now if you can generate good traffic and keep your traffic/lead ratio the same... and lead/closing ratio the same... it is a no brainer...

 

[danoneil]

What is your target on closing 3rd party leads (ATC, Cars.com)? 16%
What is your target for closing your direct leads from your website? 25%
Is that up or down from last year or the same? That is up from last year


Best lead source is our website and leads from Honda. We average 520 leads a month.

 

[ddavis]

%'s are tough to compare between different operations... I closed at 8% last month... but that was counting EVERYTHING sourced from the net phone or email. Bad #'s, why the heck did you call me, I wanted a free toaster, all of them.

3rd party being around 6%-10% is good if you are counting all of them

Your own website should always be over 20%

Cars.com is always good for us in terms of % but the ROI is pretty bad... I am shifting that money to get people on our site instead...

I mean think about it... imagine taking the thousands you spend on 3rd party and AutoTrader/Cars.com and investing that into your own website traffic...

Say you are spending $8,000 on all 3.... imagine how much traffic you can generate with just $2-$3k of that... now if you can generate good traffic and keep your traffic/lead ratio the same... and lead/closing ratio the same... it is a no brainer...

I did extremely well with AutoTrader and Cars.com for both new and used. No brainer? I've been watching a two local import dealers implement exactly what you propose but they more than doubled what they had been spending on third party display advertising. I understand one of them spent over $20K. From what I am hearing, it was a disaster. If your website doesn't give the customer a compelling reason to engage you, the results are predictable.