Which third-party lead sources are still worth the money?

[MakaiMorais]

The "cut one and didn't miss it" question is the most useful one in here and I'd almost run it on purpose. Cost per sold still gives a source credit for buyers who would have found you anyway, especially with duplicates where the same person shows up from three places and whoever fires last gets the credit. Pausing one source for 30 to 45 days and watching total sold, not that source's sold, is the only clean read I've found. Usually a chunk of what looked like it was producing turns out to be intercepting demand that already existed.

 

[Ralph Ebersole]

Going through our lead bills again and wanted to compare notes.

Cars.com, CarGurus, Autotrader/KBB, TrueCar, OEM leads, whatever you have in the mix.

Not looking to beat anybody up. Some of these work in one market and fall flat in another.

What are you guys running right now?

Roughly what are you paying, and what are they really producing after the duplicates?

I’m less interested in CPL than appointments, shows, sold units and cost per sold.

Which sources are still worth the money?

Which ones are on the bubble?

Anybody cut one recently and realize you didn’t miss it or cut one and regret it?

Rough numbers are fine.

You will find for 3rd party it is market driven. Cars is stronger in some-many are the old newspaper markets; Trader in others, etc.

 

[joe.pistell]

You will find for 3rd party it is market driven. Cars is stronger in some-many are the old newspaper markets; Trader in others, etc.

OG Ralph E is in the house!

 

[DanMorgan]

Here in Baltimore MD. Area Guru's and Trader always had high referral traffic even if lead count wasn't the highest which is why we always kept them for that reason. I'm now at a Infiniti/Nissan point that hasn’t had any 3rd parties for a while and relying on an ad agency doing more organic Google advertising that I'm keeping my eye on to see if it makes sense or not.

The jury’s out right now but around this area dealers either pay up because they “have too” for all the leads they can get others limit 3rd party spend since the flip side is people may or will find us anyways by their google search and us showing up well in those results.

We’ll see.

 

[ryan.leslie]

Here in Baltimore MD. Area Guru's and Trader always had high referral traffic even if lead count wasn't the highest which is why we always kept them for that reason. I'm now at a Infiniti/Nissan point that hasn’t had any 3rd parties for a while and relying on an ad agency doing more organic Google advertising that I'm keeping my eye on to see if it makes sense or not.

The jury’s out right now but around this area dealers either pay up because they “have too” for all the leads they can get others limit 3rd party spend since the flip side is people may or will find us anyways by their google search and us showing up well in those results.

We’ll see.

Hey @DanMorgan-

Organic is great for all of the reasons that you mentioned. I'd suggest making sure that your agency is running an aggressive campaign with minimal impression share lost to budget on new and used VLA too. Do some searches. The 3rd parties are in there for a reason.

Please PM me if you want to discuss this. Always glad to have a discussion with a fellow Refresher.

 

[joe.pistell]

@Jeff Kershner , wow, the OG's are poppin'!


After all of these years, It's frickin' amazing how sticky DR is.

DealerRefresh, it's the Reddit of Car ppl.

 

[DanMorgan]

@Jeff Kershner , wow, the OG's are poppin'!
View attachment 11574

After all of these years, It's frickin' amazing how sticky DR is.

DealerRefresh, tt's the Reddit of Car ppl.

I found this place from that PrezSkroob guy that's on here from our S2000 days and we both worked for Toyota too then he said there's "Some Other Guy On Here In Hagerstown" jump on and check it out since we're all internet sales gluttons for punishment

 

[Alex Snyder]

Dan - the only man who knows where our smilies came from

 

[DanMorgan]

Dan - the only man who knows where our smilies came from

and I won't tell....they look pixelated just like they are still from that era too

 

[Mind2Motion.ai]

Going through our lead bills again and wanted to compare notes.

Cars.com, CarGurus, Autotrader/KBB, TrueCar, OEM leads, whatever you have in the mix.

Not looking to beat anybody up. Some of these work in one market and fall flat in another.

What are you guys running right now?

Roughly what are you paying, and what are they really producing after the duplicates?

I’m less interested in CPL than appointments, shows, sold units and cost per sold.

Which sources are still worth the money?

Which ones are on the bubble?

Anybody cut one recently and realize you didn’t miss it or cut one and regret it?

Rough numbers are fine.

We built Mind2Motion Synapse to aggregate all of your ad sources into one dashboard for real time visibility and monitoring. We connect the portals, the ad accounts, and the CRM into one operating screen so you see, close to real time: unique buyers (duplicates collapsed), appointments, shows, sold, gross, and cost per sold by source. Not CPL. Not “leads this week.” If CarGurus is loud on leads and quiet on shown/sold, you cut it this week instead of arguing about it at month-end. If OEM and the website are carrying solds after you strip the double-counts, you protect those. Same scoreboard you asked for, just live, so you’re not waiting on a spreadsheet to tell you what already happened.