• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

Used Car Leads

This is an obvious example of the quality of lead generated. As I spot monitor leads this was one area of focus for me. Vehicles without pics, pricing, or lacked information often received a lower a quality of lead. Meaning once they got their information that was last contact. Sure lead volume goes up, but those leads often convert to a lower sold rate than higher quality leads.

Phone and walk-ins should also be counted towards website leads if you have a trackable phone numbers used for website only or customer mentioned finding you on your website. I've found our mobile users tend to call instead of submitting form leads. With the focus group research I've done, they felt more comfortable calling and didn't like filling out forms on phones because of time it took.

We also pay our internet managers on solds not by leads generated.

Chad, I'm sure that you are doing everything right. High "Days to Market" is an area that robs leads and gross. A vehicle is "to Market" when you have a description, price and pictures. When we kept it to three days and less, we sold more cars. When it moved out, our sales dropped. I proved this time after time. Improving the quality of pictures and descriptions and market-based pricing helps dramatically.


If mobile customers tend to call, God Bless them and figure out how to encourage it.

No matter what you do, 65% of consumers are not going to call or email you, before coming in. We should do everything in our power to influence more traffic to our showrooms, no matter who gets credit.

I never considered it an internet deal unless the customer asked for an Internet Manager. I didn't care if their first words were I saw a car on AutoTrader.
 
We had on average 450 vehicles listed on carsforsale.com. I recently did a ROI for digital sources and carsforsale.com had 3rd lowest cost per lead, but highest cost per sold (1 combined for entire year for 2 dealerships in Lincoln, NE)

Chad,

Lots of good articles here lead by Joe Pistell on why you can't easily account for digital sales VS source.

Carsforsae.com may bring more sales, tey may not get properly sourced because customers or salespeople are not asking/recognizing/remembering their name VS other sites they used like cars.com for example.
 
Chad,

Lots of good articles here lead by Joe Pistell on why you can't easily account for digital sales VS source.

Carsforsae.com may bring more sales, tey may not get properly sourced because customers or salespeople are not asking/recognizing/remembering their name VS other sites they used like cars.com for example.

I agree your data is only as good as the person who inputs it. That is why a high focus in our dealerships was to get the appropriate source for walk-in leads and have unique tracking numbers attached to digital and printed sources. Form leads are easy because they automatically get marked in CRM where they originated. Phone calls are automatically tagged as soon as sales advisor picks up the phone with "Call from xxxxx source". Walk-ins are truly the x-factor in this argument because like you said they might get sourced wrong, but I can probably estimate that at a +/- 2% error at our locations due to sales advisor training and focus to get appropriate source.
 
Chad, I'm sure that you are doing everything right. High "Days to Market" is an area that robs leads and gross. A vehicle is "to Market" when you have a description, price and pictures. When we kept it to three days and less, we sold more cars. When it moved out, our sales dropped. I proved this time after time. Improving the quality of pictures and descriptions and market-based pricing helps dramatically.


If mobile customers tend to call, God Bless them and figure out how to encourage it.

No matter what you do, 65% of consumers are not going to call or email you, before coming in. We should do everything in our power to influence more traffic to our showrooms, no matter who gets credit.

I never considered it an internet deal unless the customer asked for an Internet Manager. I didn't care if their first words were I saw a car on AutoTrader.


We're far from doing everything right all the time. But, we have made significant progress on all in the last year - pricing, inventory (dol) management, carfax run, photos, description, trade turnaround time, have all been streamlined at all locations.


I've never run the figures on what percentage of customers call or email before stopping in our showroom, it would be pretty interesting figure. Coming from a marketing team the ultimate goal is to get people stopping in and buying vehicles, but who/what method that credit is significant to us. You can easily figure out where and what you are wasting money. Put money in high ROI areas and eliminate in low ROI areas.
 
I agree your data is only as good as the person who inputs it. That is why a high focus in our dealerships was to get the appropriate source for walk-in leads and have unique tracking numbers attached to digital and printed sources. Form leads are easy because they automatically get marked in CRM where they originated. Phone calls are automatically tagged as soon as sales advisor picks up the phone with "Call from xxxxx source". Walk-ins are truly the x-factor in this argument because like you said they might get sourced wrong, but I can probably estimate that at a +/- 2% error at our locations due to sales advisor training and focus to get appropriate source.

What happens to a customer that went to cars.com then to Autotrader.com then to Craigs list than back to cars.com then to Carsforsale then to your website and called from there?
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
No matter what you do, 65% of consumers are not going to call or email you, before coming in. We should do everything in our power to influence more traffic to our showrooms, no matter who gets credit.

I just ran the numbers
Last 90 days at our 2 Lincoln, NE locations
69.8% of all leads either called or submitted a web lead - 31.2% walked in without a phone call or lead.

Last 90 days at our 2 Lincoln, NE locations
56.2% of solds either called or emails before stopping at dealership - 43.8% walked in and bought without a prior phone call or lead.

17.5% of walk-ins without prior contact purchased from us.
9.5% of phone or email contact purchased from us.


************* NOTE **************
I just thought of obvious issue with these number because a lot of customers are still in buying cycle in last 90 days. (Pending F&I, still shopping, deciding, etc.) I'll run these same numbers reaching back past the 90 or 120 days.
 
I agree your data is only as good as the person who inputs it. That is why a high focus in our dealerships was to get the appropriate source for walk-in leads and have unique tracking numbers attached to digital and printed sources. Form leads are easy because they automatically get marked in CRM where they originated. Phone calls are automatically tagged as soon as sales advisor picks up the phone with "Call from xxxxx source". Walk-ins are truly the x-factor in this argument because like you said they might get sourced wrong, but I can probably estimate that at a +/- 2% error at our locations due to sales advisor training and focus to get appropriate source.


Chad,

You know I have the highest regard for your work, but, here is some data to layer into your analysis.

Google 2011 survey:
"Average Car Shopper visited 18 automotive web sites prior to purchace".
"50% of auto shoppers were in market 3 months or longer".

Shoppers donot follow a linear path to your store. They start shopping then dissapear, 2 weeks later they start again and tear it up for 3 days straight, then vaish again. While your shopper is taking random stabs at product discovery (aka shopping), your shopper gets stimulus from traditional ad sourses that include your dealers ad spend, your OEM spend, your competitors ad spend.

What happens is multiple PATHS are built to your dealership. I caution from putting too much weight to assigning a sale to a single ad source because it does not reveal their journey to your store.

just my $0.02
Joe
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3 people
I just ran the numbers
Last 90 days at our 2 Lincoln, NE locations
69.8% of all leads either called or submitted a web lead - 31.2% walked in without a phone call or lead.

Last 90 days at our 2 Lincoln, NE locations
56.2% of solds either called or emails before stopping at dealership - 43.8% walked in and bought without a prior phone call or lead.

17.5% of walk-ins without prior contact purchased from us.
9.5% of phone or email contact purchased from us.


************* NOTE **************
I just thought of obvious issue with these number because a lot of customers are still in buying cycle in last 90 days. (Pending F&I, still shopping, deciding, etc.) I'll run these same numbers reaching back past the 90 or 120 days.
Chad,
There has been a lot of discussion on DealerRefresh on surveys to measure this. Your numbers are not typical of most of what I have experienced or read on here. If the 17.5% and 9.5% are closing ratios, I would be concerned.