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Uncle Joe's Makeover Diary 2.0

I believe Referral Traffic from Marketplaces (Used cars) is damn near the best 'car shopper' traffic money can buy. I added a 'time on site greater than 5 mins' and Edmunds is still knocking it over the fence. Cargurus shoppers are damn near invisible.
View attachment 7639
Comparing this marketplace ranking chart above to marketplace lead gen and the list flips (Gurus' is #1 for lead gen volume)
Joe, out of curiosity, how much of that traffic for cars.com is from "cars social" as opposed to actually cars.com platform traffic?

Aside from time on site, what other criteria are you evaluating this by? I would be curious to know how those convert to chats/leads/calls etc.
You also may want to start flirting with multichannel attribution, as I'd wager you actually see a LOT more from facebook (if running marketplace/inventory type ads).
 
Joe, out of curiosity, how much of that traffic for cars.com is from "cars social" as opposed to actually cars.com platform traffic?

Aside from time on site, what other criteria are you evaluating this by? I would be curious to know how those convert to chats/leads/calls etc.
You also may want to start flirting with multichannel attribution, as I'd wager you actually see a LOT more from facebook (if running marketplace/inventory type ads).

ASuave,
Background thoughts that fuel my madness:
  1. ~20,000 surveys-at-delivery revealed 70% of all sales were on my dealer's site 3x or more prior to purchase. chats/leads/calls are not my KPI (Key Performance Indicator), repeat visits are.
  2. Divide your monthly sales by monthly unique visitors. You about 1.5%ish? Most stores are. Regardless if it's 0.5% or 3%, a vast majority of your shoppers buy elsewhere.
  3. Context is important. Is your store a big fish or a little fish?*
I am very pleased with the engagement profiles of the in-market social traffic. Although significantly smaller, the classified referral VDP-to-VDP visitors give me great engagement signals too.

*Big fish is a high volume store, little fish is low volume. Big fish likes to carpet bomb (billboard, radio, OTT & broadcast TV, front page of sunday sports, etc), little fish likes to snipe (retargeting, inmarket socials). Big fish likes everything in VOLUME because they have the scale to leverage it all. Little fish needs to buy traffic that is far more precice.

All of the classified socials are in markets, so they are excellent sniper ads.
 
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USED CAR MERCHANDISING IDEA: "What's this car cost today"?

Compare your 2020 used car price to it's 2023 replacement.
1673967357263.png

The 2020 window sticker is helpful for features and options and MSRP, but, the 3yr-old used car buyer is finding value by comparing it to TODAY's MSRP.

Anyone know of a service that can do this automagically?
 
QR code to VDP
View attachment 7737
For Desktop-to-mobile, or for window sticker-to-mobile

Cool idea with low ROI.

I like to see this done in conjunction with the website.
QR codes are tagged with the necessary tag that triggers something on the website to say "a customer is currently looking at this car".

Without that data and lead, it's just a convenience to customers IMHO.
 
Without that data and lead, it's just a convenience to customers IMHO.

Speaking as a merchant, if I see any idea that intuitively improves shopper satisfaction, I'm all in. If I get data or leads from that idea that's a bonus.

Lots of QR code vendors with an API. Automating the majority of this should be very easy, but, once it comes out ot the oven, you gotta manually upload it (& dont f*kup the insertion process). I could MVP this, but my problem is the use case is tiny, the 'send to your phone' link does this better and there are 100 other ideas to explore before this one.

Next.
 
ASuave,
Background thoughts that fuel my madness:
  1. ~20,000 surveys-at-delivery revealed 70% of all sales were on my dealer's site 3x or more prior to purchase. chats/leads/calls are not my KPI (Key Performance Indicator), repeat visits are.
  2. Divide your monthly sales by monthly unique visitors. You about 1.5%ish? Most stores are. Regardless if it's 0.5% or 3%, a vast majority of your shoppers buy elsewhere.
  3. Context is important. Is your store a big fish or a little fish?*
I am very pleased with the engagement profiles of the in-market social traffic. Although significantly smaller, the classified referral VDP-to-VDP visitors give me great engagement signals too.

*Big fish is a high volume store, little fish is low volume. Big fish likes to carpet bomb (billboard, radio, OTT & broadcast TV, front page of sunday sports, etc), little fish likes to snipe (retargeting, inmarket socials). Big fish likes everything in VOLUME because they have the scale to leverage it all. Little fish needs to buy traffic that is far more precice.

All of the classified socials are in markets, so they are excellent sniper ads.
I like the direction you're going in with what you shared, so I'll share why I asked.

Ive found that most clients of cars.com are not aware that traffic to their website is primarily social. When comparing that same "referral" traffic to others, it is utilized as a sales tool to say that they drive more referral traffic than their competitors. Im not a fan of this apples to oranges comparison, as I dont believe that 1000 visitors from social is the same as 1000 visitors from a 3rd party site. They simple arent the same traffic. One is directly shopping, the other is converted over through a display ad.

I do think that repeat visitors is important, but I would not say that its a direct correlation primarily responsible for sales. To me thats similar to saying that "80% of my shoppers listen to x radio station, so x radio station is responsible for helping me sell cars". I think this is where multi-channel attribution is critical and understanding context, exactly as you said. I want to know what they were doing each time before they returned. For example, if that customer googled you each time before they returned, then the keyword is more relevant to me that got them there, or the ad. If they googled your dealership name, and came that way, thats important to me too.

Ive seen a higher correlation of organic search decline in 2022 for many dealerships as vendors have increased their spends on the dealership name as a way to 'pad the numbers' on overall campaign effectiveness.

I can dig into the second question over this week and see where that spread is across a few locations. Im interested in the number as well, if it is around 1.5% and how much that varies.

Beyond that, I would venture to bet that you'd see those same engagement profiles on in market social traffic (or maybe even better), if you ran it yourself. Do you know what % of the media is put into the engine, vs. what % is pocketed by their margins?

$1000 spent on paid social is not spent the same way depending on who you spend it with. Ive seen margins as high as 75% on that spend.
Thats not to say you shouldnt continue to do it. None of this suggests or even implies that. I just continue to be curious about those who know about the social portion of their 'referral' traffic or not.
 
Ive found that most clients of cars.com are not aware that traffic to their website is primarily social. When comparing that same "referral" traffic to others, it is utilized as a sales tool to say that they drive more referral traffic than their competitors.

Dude, why did you complicate it by worrying about what/how other dealers understand or don't understand this traffic source? Let the data stand on it's own, analyze it for your ROI analysis. We all are in competition with our fellow dealers, your advantage is how you see and interpret the data and the action plan that you make from your data.

Real life Example: If you and I were competitors, and -if- I highly prize the in-market social traffic and you find this traffic to be low value, this is great, we both win (I get a larger share of this audience and you shift your funds to other traffic sources you deem more productive)
 
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I do think that repeat visitors is important, but I would not say that its a direct correlation primarily responsible for sales.

Totally agree, and..
A merchant knows that the digital showroom is an on ramp to the physical showroom. The merchant measures and evaluates both show rooms to monitor his performance.

The merchant knows traffic doesn't sell products, but, products can't sell without traffic. So, getting eye balls on product important. The merchant also knows, in both showrooms, that the wrong products, the wrong prices, or worse, a strong competitor will cause it's shoppers to NOT deeply engage with the products.

Traffic & Engagement matters... instore and digitally.
No Google Analytics in 2018


Selling cars is a team sport, the marketing director highest mission is to create high yielding opportunities for the sales team. When I see this data:
~20,000 surveys-at-delivery revealed 70% of all sales were on my dealer's site 3x or more prior to purchase. chats/leads/calls are not my KPI (Key Performance Indicator), repeat visits are.

...my highest goals are to create a UX that causes a shopper to conclude "hey, I am smarter than I was when I came". So, as a merchant, I look at the UI thru the eyes of the shopper, and attempt to create a vibe that causes a shopper to want to return.

Case in point, Frikenteck's SalesIQ nails this UX.
 
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