Should I cancel Cars.com? I heard Carmax has.

[john.quinn]

I hear of the success stories from velocity dealers (because that's good marketing from the vAuto team , but, has anyone canceled 'Trader or Cars.com and have a story to tell?

I could never measure a lift from AutoTrader -- and when I tell you I had some measurement means/tools, please believe me. They were very good at coming-up with new ways to solicit money, and coming-up with new ways to show you how successful their platform is, but tying dollars spent to ROI? Uh-uh. It is my belief that with all the Advertising they do, they've become a brand unto themselves -- almost like an OEM -- and predominantly they attract high-funnel consumers. Which is OK, if you are charging high-funnel dollars, which they are certainly not.

My experience with Cars was better -- my experience was that they provided lower-funnel customers, a better bang for the buck. I could consistently close leads at a 12%-15% clip, which, to be honest, was marginal ROI -- it was OK, but comparatively nothing close to the consistent 25% to 30% of the home-grown leads.

The key here is having a tool to measure redundancy -- a way to look at your efforts and determine if you would have or would not have spoken to this customer if not for this source. If you can answer with a certain degree of certainty -- if it's reasonable to believe -- that you would have had a crack at the customer without the 3rd-party layer, then the 3rd-party ROI is effectively nill.

 

[ddavis]

I hear of the success stories from velocity dealers (because that's good marketing from the vAuto team , but, has anyone canceled 'Trader or Cars.com and have a story to tell?

Since I have moved back to Dallas, I noticed that most of the Toyota dealers are back to premium (new cars) on AutoTrader. This is a huge change from just over a year ago. They either figured something out or got some co-op money.

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

Todd, You are an awesome dealer and business man for sure you are just as annoying as your Buddy Billy Fuccilo

NO WAY! Todd is way more annoying than Billy! Just kidding Todd, you're great!

Not sure if you have seen this in our system, but we track ad sources. Every time we hear a customer name the ad source, we track that information. Here are our findings.



AutoTrader is kicking Cars.com in the ass from our findings. Show that to your Cars.com rep.

I have been saying for years that dealers should ban together and build a car search tool that is a non profit controlled by a board of governing dealers. Hire Jay Leno as the spokesman for the site and announce that this is the only search tool dealers will use moving forward. The message would also state, "We dealers are tired of having vendors price gouge us. In the past we have had to pass this expense on to you the consumer. No more, from this day forth we are the only search tool where you will find your next automobile."

Figure out overall budget expense to start this and then charge all participating dealers a per car fee that is minimal. My guess is dealers could save 10K per month or less by doing something like this. Then turn off the feeds to 3rd party lead providers!

 

[yagoparamo]

Jerry,

Are those numbers average of all your clients?

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

Jerry,

Are those numbers average of all your clients?

Yago, Those numbers are taken from the 300+ dealers who are on the Phone Ninjas training platform. They represent dealers from Florida to California and even a few crazy Canadians. Of the 5000+ calls we coach each month, we probably only hear the ad source on less than 20% of them. We advocate them asking, but they don't always do this step.

 

[Blake Arbogast]

save 10K per month or less by doing something like this.

Jerry I wish I was only spending $10,000!

 

[ddavis]

AutoTrader is kicking Cars.com in the ass from our findings. Show that to your Cars.com rep.

Cars.com started in the metroplex and I believe they have a better following here. Still, your numbers are really close to what we experienced. Looking at your graph, AutoTrader looks to be just over double Cars but it costs more than five times as much.

 

[ddavis]

I have been saying for years that dealers should ban together and build a car search tool that is a non profit controlled by a board of governing dealers.

The VanTuyl group has this in Dallas and Phoenix. They have 25 stores in Dallas but I don't think that it ever generated much.

 

[Stefan]

We did it, canceled AT and Cars and focused on training and processes. No regrets.

If you ask me you have nothing to worry about. I think AT and Cars should offer free listings for dealers that have large inventory. Yes i said free. They will be up against Google in no time.

Without our cars what do they really offer?

 

[jscole86]

We measure our 3rd party vendors pretty closely. What we have averaged over 2012 and the 1st quarter of 2013 has been:
Cars.com averages 2 1/2 times the number of email leads compared to autotrader.
Autotrader.com averages 2 times the number of *unique* phone calls compared to cars.com.
Autotrader.com averages two times the number of chats compared to cars.com.
Autotrader.com is 2 1/2 times the cost of cars.com, after all co-op credit.
Autotrader.com gets about 2 times the search pages than cars.com
Cars.com averages about $.30 per VDP while autotrader averages about $.33 per VDP.. (Our websites average of about $.23 per VDP)

We don't source our walk-in traffic specifically or give specific credit to any 3rd-party vendor. Instead, we compare our entire marketing budget and strategy (increase/decrease/changes) to our walk in traffic counts and sales numbers.