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The Eureka! Link

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joe.pistell

joe.pistell

Uncle Joe
Apr 7, 2009
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#1
Mr. Perry and Mr. Golub, if I may speak for the dealer body,  it’s well known that we all are upset about the high costs of advertising in classified sites like AutoTrader.com and Cars.com, but, it’s not the costs of the services, it’s the lack of visibility to your shoppers! Gentlemen, this is the Internet Age, even newspapers give us coupons for shoppers to submit. Why in the world have you not built your system to give shoppers tools to REWARD both shopper and dealer? (aka lead generating tools) Please help us create ROI!

The potential for lead generating opportunities are literally everywhere on your sites!  Today, I’d like to focus on just one opportunity... I’ll nickname it “The Eureka! Link.”  Let’s go find it!

Is there a moment in Classified Shopping that splits the casual car shopper from the highly motivated shopper?   My “Uncle Joe” marketing instincts are telling me yes, and if I’m right, it’s got win-win written all over it.  First, some back ground…

Shopping on the web is now 2nd nature for many of us.  Whether it is travel, real estate, automobiles or appliances, the mechanics for shopping a high-ticket purchase is almost the same for every industry.

Here are the steps:

  1. research for products to fill the need
  2. price discovery on that product
  3. possibly communication beforehand
  4. the transaction itself

IN THAT ORDER.  If this makes sense to you, here is the simple path to a merchants door.  Research, Price Discovery, Transaction.

I want to focus on the “price discovery” stage of shopping, and establish it as a CORNETSTONE in the shopper’s Internet journey.

Here’s an example to clarify my point:
Say you’re planning a vacation; you’ve got the “product selection” narrowed down to Aruba, but, you’re not ruling out Bermuda. You need a finalist.  It’s time to compare costs between the two destinations.  You compare costs with the “price discovery” tools and now you’re down to one!  We’ve all done it right?  Imagine how frustrated you’d be if there was No Expedia, No Orbitz or No Kayak.  I say that “Price Discovery” sites are a critical part of decision making process.  There’s no denying it, “price discovery” tools are at the center of internet shopping!

How does this apply to car shopping? “I want to fly to Boston on the 3rd, find the best prices, but I can’t arrive later than noon”, sounds the same as “I need a SUV that seats 7, with AWD, a good price and less than 30k miles”.

Shopping behavior is shopping behavior, regardless of industry.  It’s the same mental drill down process.  It’s a TASK BASED PROCESS called “Shopping.”
Click to expand...

Ok, we’ve established that the steps of internet shopping are: Research, Price Discovery, Transaction, then lets side step out of vacation shopping and into automobile shopping.   We have Research, Price Discovery, Transaction, now it’s time to put names on them:

Research = Edmunds, KBB, OEM, etc..
Price Discovery = Cars.com, AutoTrader.com, etc…
Transaction =  DEALER'S WEB SITE

Ok, it all fits!  Where to next?

In the travel biz, the Kayak.com shopper can execute the transaction right at Kayak.  In the automobile biz, the shopper is ready for the “transaction” but, as we all know so well… the auto shopper vanishes….  WHY?  Because there are a lot of questions unanswered.

We know from AutoTrader/Polk research that the typical car shopper will spend MANY hours inside the classified sites.   They’ve invested time and energy into drilling thru classified pages, finding the best choice.  The auto shopper who is ready to buy has to visit the dealer(s) in person.  They use the “price discovery” tool to drill the list of many choices to a small list. What makes Auto Industry different from the Airline industry is the Auto shopper can’t buy online.  There are too many unanswered questions.  Where do they go to find more answers?  THE DEALER'S WEBSITE.

The “Eureka Link” is the link to the dealer’s home page.
 
#6
Would auto dealers be willing to pay on a CPC type model in order to get the click through for that vehicle? Without something like that Autotrader, and the like, would be losing their lead information.

If there are too many unanswered questions people may need to look at a few different ways to resolve this too. Often times you'll see marketing information where dealers have an opportunity to answer some of the questions such as the vehicles comments. Granted you can't put in a lot of the stuff you like and stay within the guide of the aggregater but folks have to learn to wisely, and creatively use the space they have to answer some of those questions themselves.
 
#7
Okay Champions!

Joe you are almost there, president! However, the idea that a consumer is satisfied with only the 'price discovery' is a farce. For many dealers who have survived a turbulent transitional era in automotive retail spaces (and for some who have not...), the idea that each and every auto deal stands on its own merit has been established.

At Auto Buyer Consultants, my company down here right in Atlanta, GA, I have been working through an idea I shared with Chip and the crew at AT many years back - let's call it '04 or '05 when they came up with the "create your dealership on our website" concept. It is called "Active Communicating", and it has tremendous scope, so I am challenging myself here to keep it focused on your synthesis of thought, Joe.

Active Communicating will work something like this for auto retail present.

'A Handshake' is the currency of an Information Age (not Internet Age, Joe) wherein the commerce is 'Socialization' and the commodity 'Information'.

At the root of the problem preventing AT and Cars from being able to optimize their current value propositions (and the Revenue Models attached to them) is they are in the capsule of an 'advertising age' - no pun intended.

You see, Joe, advertising is becoming obsolete each and every day. It has been surpassed in an Information Age by ACTIVE COMMUNICATIONS. When I recognized these things, I began to build out the first auto retail platform that targets 'consultants' - the top 20% to 25% of auto retail professional sales consultants, that is. I recognized the value proposition the consumer seeks has always been dependent upon a conversation between these two parties - 'the consultant' and 'the consumer'.

So, (stay focused, Dee) the key to auto retail future is to remove as many unnecessary layers between these two as possible, and to initiate the handshake as early as possible.

At AT and Cars, the handshake has yet to be identified as the 'Currency' of an Information Age, and they therefore offer a subscription-based value proposition to dealers (both on the verge of obsolescence, today) that ignores the value of the actual transaction.

If these vendors you cry out to for ROI are to REALLY introduce something, then it should be a product based upon "Active Communicating" which harnesses the valuable conversation between the two most essential components of any auto retail transaction. They would harness the manpower of the dealer clients they currently struggle to keep on their subscriber lists by leveraging a transaction-based proposition to the professional consultants responsible for managing the conversations and handshakes that are the true ROI.

Give me a call if I got off focus, champion. I think I brought it home well, though.
 
#10
Excellent Wine Brian;

Alright, here it is plain and simple.

Capture 'the handshake', capture the ROI.

Who handles the handshake? Consultants, for over 120 years. If AT and Cars are to survive an Information Age zeitgeist shift, then they must Stop Selling Subscriptions, and Start Selling Results.

Easy enough, I think to enjoy with your wine - you can call this "cheese".

And, call me tomorrow champion.
 

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