I didn't get past page 2 of the responses to this thread... So, I may repeat some of the content in these responses.
I have done a complete study like this including some serious tracking of traffic and came to the same conclusions with am identical reaction my old reps. Since I first conducted my study (5 years ago) I have been at 2 different dealerships in 2 completely different markets and ran similar studies. My results were the pretty similar. Although, different markets show varying strengths in cars vs AT... the results did not show a large enough volume of traffic (of any sort) to justify the astronomical COST.
For the record, my dealership did not see ANY decrease in walk-in traffic after we cancelled AT. We substituted by investing in SEO, SEM, and VSEO... and wouldn't ya know... we had an INCREASE in QUALITY traffic.
To the post about the fact that we used to spend $5k on a weekend for a paper... Umm... no! Just because we did something in the past doesn't mean it is a justified practice. We used to do a lot of things. I wore polka dots with stripes and teased my hair in the early 90s ... doesn't make it right!
The profit margin has decreased so our spend should also mirror that shouldn't it? At the end of the day ... AT costs above $11k in my market and I have incredible respect for rep, but the facts are the facts. Listing sites are great until they start segmenting the results. To any lead provider that justifies their "value" in the unaccountable areas... I get it. I do. I value the whole package, but the costs should be in proportion to the quality of ROI. Whatever that ROI means is up to the rep and dealer to define. Because every company should be accountable to some measurement of ROI, just as every employee has areas of measurement we value their performance on. Just because my dealer doesn't understand my role and all that I do, is no reason to keep or fire me without setting metrics to value my worth. I can say that my work helps all departments and we cannot track it OR I can say that AND verify it with baselines and actual numbers. Just my opinion. I love to debate so ... let's have at it!
