PCG Consulting Inc
What Is Your Cost Per Shopper?
By Brian Pasch
Dealers looking for insights into which digital marketing and social media investments are helping them sell more cars may find the answer is much simpler than they thought!
There are some differences in how dealers measure new car sales vs. used car sales, but both share a common ROI metric: Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views.
Recent research from Cobalt shows that just 12 more VDP views can make a vehicle sell 44% faster! Inventory "turns" a year is directly related to net dealer profits. So let's see how we can accelerate car sales by focusing on Cost per Shopper (CPS).
If VDP views are one of the key metrics to define if a car shopper is coming to a dealership website, shouldn't dealers inspect the cost to drive a shopper to their website? For some advertising expenses, like Google Adwords, the cost per initial shopper visit can be calculated.
However, if the shopper comes back a second or third time organically, then the costs can be skewed due to the current limits in attribution modeling.
What Is A Car Shopper?
Companies are working to create better attribution models but there are also some privacy concerns that still might prevent true attribution. In the meantime, I encourage dealers to look at the Cost per Shopper (CPS) for their advertising investments.
This focus is a step in the right direction. For this example, I will define a shopper as a consumer who looks at a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) for one of the dealer's vehicles. Dealers who want to include other metrics or page visits in their "shopper" definition can follow along with their own definition.
For example, a visit to the hours and direction page, might be aligned with a shopper's behavior prior to a showroom visit. In Google Analytics, filters can be applied to see how many visitors viewed at least one Vehicle Detail Page.
For this dealer example below, I wanted to see the sources of traffic coming to their website in the month of September:
The traffic from source #5, was from their group website, which was hidden to protect the dealership name.
In September, this Toyota dealer paid ReachLocal, a national advertising agency, $10,000 for new and used car advertising. The ReachLocal digital campaigns generated 4,352 initial visitors.
To stay consistent with the theme of this article, Cost Per Click (CPC) is not my focus but it comes out to $2.29. Some dealers who focus on the CPC metric and their Cost per Lead (CPL) might be content with this ROI.
However, only 30% of car sales are tracked to a "lead". The majority of car sales are from stealth shoppers who look at VDP's.
What I want to encourage dealers to calculate is the Cost per Shopper (CPS) because most sales are from consumers who visit your dealership website at least once! CPS is part of the visibility of all shoppers that is directly related to car sales.
When you apply a Google Analytics filter to the September traffic, that tracks how many visitors viewed at least one Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), here is how drastically the numbers change:
Only 497 of the 4,352 clicks were consumers who visited a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP). That calculates out to 11.4% of the visitors were shoppers, according to my definition.
The Cost Per Shopper (CPS) is $10,000 / 497 = $20.1 per shopper.
This calculation excludes PPC costs for service and if you are doing this calculation for your store, make sure the Advertising budget for PPC does not include service campaigns.
Dynamic Inventory Advertising
Not all PPC campaigns have such a high Cost Per Shopper (CPS) and companies such as PCG, Dealer.com, and Haystak have the ability to advertise vehicles and drive consumers directly to a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP).
These campaigns are normally part of a multi-campaign strategy that dealers utilize and can deliver a Cost per Shopper (CPS) under $2.00.
The challenge for dealers is to look at all campaigns that are designed to sell new and used cars, especially used cars, to see what the Cost per Shopper (CPS) is outside of dynamic campaigns.
In many cases, the non-dynamic campaigns dealers think would supplement dynamic campaigns are actually very costly. The costs can be in the range of $6.00 - $15.00 CPS, and that is where the opportunity exists to consider alternative strategies.
LotLinx Is The Perfect PPC Supplement
So how can dealers generate high quality shopper traffic? A new vendor solution called LotLinx delivers consistent CPS under $4.00 and directs shoppers directly to a dealer's Vehicle Detail Page (VDP). Dealers can drive low-funnel car shoppers to their website from over 130 third party classified advertising websites.
When these shoppers arrive at the dealer's website they can be greeted with live chat agents, offered your latest promotional offers, and of course they are captured in the dealer's remarketing campaigns.
When dealers take a look at what they are paying for third party leads and some of the PPC campaigns, they will find that the LotLinx strategy is a perfect compliment for incremental sales and to accelerate the sales of their in-stock vehicles.
If you have not watched the LotLinx overview video, take two-minutes to educate yourself on this advertising strategy.
Stop focusing on Cost per Click (CPC) when those clicks may not be the consumers that are ready to purchase a vehicle.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
PCG Consulting Inc
What Is Your Cost Per Shopper?
By Brian Pasch
Dealers looking for insights into which digital marketing and social media investments are helping them sell more cars may find the answer is much simpler than they thought!
There are some differences in how dealers measure new car sales vs. used car sales, but both share a common ROI metric: Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views.
Recent research from Cobalt shows that just 12 more VDP views can make a vehicle sell 44% faster! Inventory "turns" a year is directly related to net dealer profits. So let's see how we can accelerate car sales by focusing on Cost per Shopper (CPS).
If VDP views are one of the key metrics to define if a car shopper is coming to a dealership website, shouldn't dealers inspect the cost to drive a shopper to their website? For some advertising expenses, like Google Adwords, the cost per initial shopper visit can be calculated.
However, if the shopper comes back a second or third time organically, then the costs can be skewed due to the current limits in attribution modeling.
What Is A Car Shopper?
Companies are working to create better attribution models but there are also some privacy concerns that still might prevent true attribution. In the meantime, I encourage dealers to look at the Cost per Shopper (CPS) for their advertising investments.
This focus is a step in the right direction. For this example, I will define a shopper as a consumer who looks at a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) for one of the dealer's vehicles. Dealers who want to include other metrics or page visits in their "shopper" definition can follow along with their own definition.
For example, a visit to the hours and direction page, might be aligned with a shopper's behavior prior to a showroom visit. In Google Analytics, filters can be applied to see how many visitors viewed at least one Vehicle Detail Page.
For this dealer example below, I wanted to see the sources of traffic coming to their website in the month of September:
The traffic from source #5, was from their group website, which was hidden to protect the dealership name.
In September, this Toyota dealer paid ReachLocal, a national advertising agency, $10,000 for new and used car advertising. The ReachLocal digital campaigns generated 4,352 initial visitors.
To stay consistent with the theme of this article, Cost Per Click (CPC) is not my focus but it comes out to $2.29. Some dealers who focus on the CPC metric and their Cost per Lead (CPL) might be content with this ROI.
However, only 30% of car sales are tracked to a "lead". The majority of car sales are from stealth shoppers who look at VDP's.
What I want to encourage dealers to calculate is the Cost per Shopper (CPS) because most sales are from consumers who visit your dealership website at least once! CPS is part of the visibility of all shoppers that is directly related to car sales.
When you apply a Google Analytics filter to the September traffic, that tracks how many visitors viewed at least one Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), here is how drastically the numbers change:
Only 497 of the 4,352 clicks were consumers who visited a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP). That calculates out to 11.4% of the visitors were shoppers, according to my definition.
The Cost Per Shopper (CPS) is $10,000 / 497 = $20.1 per shopper.
This calculation excludes PPC costs for service and if you are doing this calculation for your store, make sure the Advertising budget for PPC does not include service campaigns.
Dynamic Inventory Advertising
Not all PPC campaigns have such a high Cost Per Shopper (CPS) and companies such as PCG, Dealer.com, and Haystak have the ability to advertise vehicles and drive consumers directly to a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP).
These campaigns are normally part of a multi-campaign strategy that dealers utilize and can deliver a Cost per Shopper (CPS) under $2.00.
The challenge for dealers is to look at all campaigns that are designed to sell new and used cars, especially used cars, to see what the Cost per Shopper (CPS) is outside of dynamic campaigns.
In many cases, the non-dynamic campaigns dealers think would supplement dynamic campaigns are actually very costly. The costs can be in the range of $6.00 - $15.00 CPS, and that is where the opportunity exists to consider alternative strategies.
LotLinx Is The Perfect PPC Supplement
So how can dealers generate high quality shopper traffic? A new vendor solution called LotLinx delivers consistent CPS under $4.00 and directs shoppers directly to a dealer's Vehicle Detail Page (VDP). Dealers can drive low-funnel car shoppers to their website from over 130 third party classified advertising websites.
When these shoppers arrive at the dealer's website they can be greeted with live chat agents, offered your latest promotional offers, and of course they are captured in the dealer's remarketing campaigns.
When dealers take a look at what they are paying for third party leads and some of the PPC campaigns, they will find that the LotLinx strategy is a perfect compliment for incremental sales and to accelerate the sales of their in-stock vehicles.
If you have not watched the LotLinx overview video, take two-minutes to educate yourself on this advertising strategy.
Stop focusing on Cost per Click (CPC) when those clicks may not be the consumers that are ready to purchase a vehicle.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
No Comments
PCG Consulting Inc
No Thanks For Submitting Your Contact Information
By Brian Pasch
Have you taken the time to submit a lead on your own website? Many website platforms present a "thank you" page after the consumer submits their contact information on a lead form.
The image shown above, is an actual page that is presented when a consumer submits a lead, on a dealership website. Are you impressed with the dealer's creativity?
What do you have to say about this page? I would love your feedback.
Let me share a few of my thoughts:
- Dealers should consider the "thank you" page as an opportunity to re-engage a consumer and not tell them goodbye...someone will call you.
- The example listed above, does not take advantage of the opportunity to re-engage. Who is this man in a car? Does this image give you a warm feeling?
- Does a consumer understand what an "Internet Manager" is? Doesn't it sound like some IT geek? Didn't they inquire about a vehicle?
- The "thank you" page should provide links to resources that would best serve the customer and the dealership. Those links could include:
- Customer Testimonials
- Current OEM Rebates
- Trade-In Incentives
- Just Arrived Used Cars
I bring this up because this is not the ideal website page design to present to consumers after a lead form is submitted. However, this is a common occurrence in the automotive community. Can't we do better?
You should also test submitting a lead from your mobile phone. What is the post submission page shown on your mobile phone?
Do You Have A Great Thank You Page?
I encourage DrivingSales readers to share their creative "thank you" pages that are increasing post lead submission engagement. Do you have a better customer experience after someone submits a lead?
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
4 Comments
Dealer Inspire & Launch Digital Marketing
100% agree. This is one of the pillars of conversion rate optimization and something we have been preaching for a while. The "thank you page" is such a great opportunity and a chance to explain the process to potential customers who may not have shopped for a vehicle online before. Adding a video like this http://www.coxchevy.com/thank-you-inquiry/ is another option. While this page could be even better it allows the consumer to continue rather than leading them to a dead end. The opportunities are almost endless as each form submission can have a unique thank you page.
PCG Consulting Inc
Thanks Joe. Placing a "Why Buy From Us" video on the thank you page....or any branding video as you suggest can add personality to the experience. It makes you different...and that is what dealers need.
Dealer Inspire & Launch Digital Marketing
Yes exactly. It's about the U.S.P. and marketing 101. Dealers often struggle with answering the questions, "Why are you different and why should the consumer choose you vs. your competition?" The best digital marketing efforts fall short when these aren't properly illustrated as you are clearly pointing out.
Quick disclaimer: We have a custom website so a lot of what our thank you pages have and do are not possible with a vendor website....although I believe vendor websites should integrate some of these features into their platform. So anyways, I also 100% agree Brian. I created a custom thank you page when we launched our custom website about 3 years ago. We have a custom thank you page for each type of lead form (credit app, vehicle inquiry, scheduled appointment, etc). On each of these thank you pages it explains what to expect next in the process and has a corresponding video. After the video explains what to expect we follow it up with a "Why Buy From Us" clip. Customers like to know the entire process from start to finish, and don't like to be blind in the process. We let them know what to expect, which puts their fears at ease and makes it easier to get them to show for an appointment. Since implementing these custom thank you pages we have improved our appointment set and show rate tremendously. Another nice thing we do on our custom thank you page is we pull variables from the form they just submitted. Instead of saying "Thank you for submitting your form" we pull their name and output "Congratulations John - You're one step closer to being approved.". If they fill out a lead form on a particular VDP, we integrate the vehicle details and primary picture into the confirmation page. Buying a car is all about emotions and psychology, by ditching generic pages and replacing them with tailored pages to their car it keeps them bought into the vehicle they selected and more likely to convert into a sale. But wait, we also have integrated custom calls to action on each and every thank you page. We don't want them to be "one lead form & done". We want to keep them engaged and push them along the sales funnel at our dealership as long as possible. If they filled out a lead form on a vehicle details page, it prompts them to get pre-approved for that particular vehicle, they can even schedule a test drive. It transfers over all the previous form variables (name, email, phone, etc) so all they have to fill in is the additional required information. We have over 20 locations on our group website so the custom thank you pages also show the location they selected. It shows a picture of the dealership, staff, store hours, address, phone number, customer reviews, latest blog posts, map, and integrated step by step driving directions form. Once they fill out one lead form, it automatically stores their selected location in a cookie and it no longer prompts them on any future lead form which store they are closest to (they do of course have the ability to change their preferred location if they choose to). Showing them the dealership and sales staff also further puts their fears at ease. If they are ready to convert from online to showroom themselves, we give them that ability. We provide the phone number to the store's sales department if they want to call in to discuss their lead or we give them custom google integrated step by step driving directions to the dealership. Dealer's need to stop focusing solely on search engine optimization and start spending some time on conversion rate optimization. So many of the websites in our space have a design that fails to convert, there is so much room and potential for improvement. We have done A/B split testing on countless designs of our pages to figure out the best layout, text copy, colors, etc. Instead of increasing adwords spend to increase website leads, why not just alter your website slightly to increase your conversion rate? If you take a two prong approach of search engine optimization via customer driven holistic content and pair it with conversion rate optimization you can easily double your internet vehicle sales with no additional budget increase. See the below example of how an organic traffic increase paired with an increased conversion ratio can lead to huge results! Before Example Organic Views – 5,000 Conversion Ratio – 10% Leads – 500 Sold / Lead Ratio – 10% Vehicles Sold – 50 After Example Organic Views – 7,500 Conversion Ratio – 15% Leads – 1,125 Sold / Lead Ratio – 10% Vehicles Sold - 113 These numbers are easily attainable with the correct practices, and are honestly a little conservative if you have the right person. Whether we like to admit it or not, so many of our websites could use help. I highly recommend everyone reads Convert Every Click by Benji Rabhan, it will change your viewpoint and help drive you to demand more of your website.
PCG Consulting Inc
No Thanks For Submitting Your Contact Information
By Brian Pasch
Have you taken the time to submit a lead on your own website? Many website platforms present a "thank you" page after the consumer submits their contact information on a lead form.
The image shown above, is an actual page that is presented when a consumer submits a lead, on a dealership website. Are you impressed with the dealer's creativity?
What do you have to say about this page? I would love your feedback.
Let me share a few of my thoughts:
- Dealers should consider the "thank you" page as an opportunity to re-engage a consumer and not tell them goodbye...someone will call you.
- The example listed above, does not take advantage of the opportunity to re-engage. Who is this man in a car? Does this image give you a warm feeling?
- Does a consumer understand what an "Internet Manager" is? Doesn't it sound like some IT geek? Didn't they inquire about a vehicle?
- The "thank you" page should provide links to resources that would best serve the customer and the dealership. Those links could include:
- Customer Testimonials
- Current OEM Rebates
- Trade-In Incentives
- Just Arrived Used Cars
I bring this up because this is not the ideal website page design to present to consumers after a lead form is submitted. However, this is a common occurrence in the automotive community. Can't we do better?
You should also test submitting a lead from your mobile phone. What is the post submission page shown on your mobile phone?
Do You Have A Great Thank You Page?
I encourage DrivingSales readers to share their creative "thank you" pages that are increasing post lead submission engagement. Do you have a better customer experience after someone submits a lead?
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
4 Comments
Dealer Inspire & Launch Digital Marketing
100% agree. This is one of the pillars of conversion rate optimization and something we have been preaching for a while. The "thank you page" is such a great opportunity and a chance to explain the process to potential customers who may not have shopped for a vehicle online before. Adding a video like this http://www.coxchevy.com/thank-you-inquiry/ is another option. While this page could be even better it allows the consumer to continue rather than leading them to a dead end. The opportunities are almost endless as each form submission can have a unique thank you page.
PCG Consulting Inc
Thanks Joe. Placing a "Why Buy From Us" video on the thank you page....or any branding video as you suggest can add personality to the experience. It makes you different...and that is what dealers need.
Dealer Inspire & Launch Digital Marketing
Yes exactly. It's about the U.S.P. and marketing 101. Dealers often struggle with answering the questions, "Why are you different and why should the consumer choose you vs. your competition?" The best digital marketing efforts fall short when these aren't properly illustrated as you are clearly pointing out.
Quick disclaimer: We have a custom website so a lot of what our thank you pages have and do are not possible with a vendor website....although I believe vendor websites should integrate some of these features into their platform. So anyways, I also 100% agree Brian. I created a custom thank you page when we launched our custom website about 3 years ago. We have a custom thank you page for each type of lead form (credit app, vehicle inquiry, scheduled appointment, etc). On each of these thank you pages it explains what to expect next in the process and has a corresponding video. After the video explains what to expect we follow it up with a "Why Buy From Us" clip. Customers like to know the entire process from start to finish, and don't like to be blind in the process. We let them know what to expect, which puts their fears at ease and makes it easier to get them to show for an appointment. Since implementing these custom thank you pages we have improved our appointment set and show rate tremendously. Another nice thing we do on our custom thank you page is we pull variables from the form they just submitted. Instead of saying "Thank you for submitting your form" we pull their name and output "Congratulations John - You're one step closer to being approved.". If they fill out a lead form on a particular VDP, we integrate the vehicle details and primary picture into the confirmation page. Buying a car is all about emotions and psychology, by ditching generic pages and replacing them with tailored pages to their car it keeps them bought into the vehicle they selected and more likely to convert into a sale. But wait, we also have integrated custom calls to action on each and every thank you page. We don't want them to be "one lead form & done". We want to keep them engaged and push them along the sales funnel at our dealership as long as possible. If they filled out a lead form on a vehicle details page, it prompts them to get pre-approved for that particular vehicle, they can even schedule a test drive. It transfers over all the previous form variables (name, email, phone, etc) so all they have to fill in is the additional required information. We have over 20 locations on our group website so the custom thank you pages also show the location they selected. It shows a picture of the dealership, staff, store hours, address, phone number, customer reviews, latest blog posts, map, and integrated step by step driving directions form. Once they fill out one lead form, it automatically stores their selected location in a cookie and it no longer prompts them on any future lead form which store they are closest to (they do of course have the ability to change their preferred location if they choose to). Showing them the dealership and sales staff also further puts their fears at ease. If they are ready to convert from online to showroom themselves, we give them that ability. We provide the phone number to the store's sales department if they want to call in to discuss their lead or we give them custom google integrated step by step driving directions to the dealership. Dealer's need to stop focusing solely on search engine optimization and start spending some time on conversion rate optimization. So many of the websites in our space have a design that fails to convert, there is so much room and potential for improvement. We have done A/B split testing on countless designs of our pages to figure out the best layout, text copy, colors, etc. Instead of increasing adwords spend to increase website leads, why not just alter your website slightly to increase your conversion rate? If you take a two prong approach of search engine optimization via customer driven holistic content and pair it with conversion rate optimization you can easily double your internet vehicle sales with no additional budget increase. See the below example of how an organic traffic increase paired with an increased conversion ratio can lead to huge results! Before Example Organic Views – 5,000 Conversion Ratio – 10% Leads – 500 Sold / Lead Ratio – 10% Vehicles Sold – 50 After Example Organic Views – 7,500 Conversion Ratio – 15% Leads – 1,125 Sold / Lead Ratio – 10% Vehicles Sold - 113 These numbers are easily attainable with the correct practices, and are honestly a little conservative if you have the right person. Whether we like to admit it or not, so many of our websites could use help. I highly recommend everyone reads Convert Every Click by Benji Rabhan, it will change your viewpoint and help drive you to demand more of your website.
PCG Consulting Inc
You Are The Only Person Seeing The Pink Shorts
By Brian Pasch 
Danny Sullivan addressed the 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit today, and the crowd was glued to his insights into Google search and the latest digital strategies for car dealers. There were many points that resonated with the audience, just check the Twitter feed for #DSES2013. Of course, the Hummingbird update was discussed.
To download a copy of Danny's presentation, using this link: http://selnd.com/1fAsZ6Y
One point that I wanted to share with the DrivingSales community that could not attend was that there is no longer a standardized Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Every search that Google presents is customized based on relationships it establishes directly or indirectly about the consumer conducting the search.
This creates an interesting dilemna for SEO and Digital Marketing vendors, because what their dealer clients "see" locally can be very different from what the vendor sees from their corporate offices.
Social Signals and Semantic Web
This observation is very important when you consider the factors that impact personalization and how much social media engagement will define future search Google results. Dealers who have avoided investments in Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and customized website content need to wake up and smell the coffee.
The semantic web will require dealership websites to evolve, and dealers who educate themselves on this change will be first to market with better search results. Websites must adapt to include machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other, enabling automated agents to access the Web more intelligently and perform tasks on behalf of users.
Change Is Constant
What is the takeway? Google will adapt search results to meet the specific known and implied needs of the consumer. Dealers who realize that Google is using social signals, Google+ Local, and other digital sources to serve up relevant content will diversify their marketing investments.
If a Dealer Principal or General Manager is not personally using Facebook or Google+ that is their choice. However, they cannot allow their personal choices to impact their marketing investments for the dealership.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
PCG Consulting Inc
You Are The Only Person Seeing The Pink Shorts
By Brian Pasch
Danny Sullivan addressed the 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit today, and the crowd was glued to his insights into Google search and the latest digital strategies for car dealers. There were many points that resonated with the audience, just check the Twitter feed for #DSES2013. Of course, the Hummingbird update was discussed.
To download a copy of Danny's presentation, using this link: http://selnd.com/1fAsZ6Y
One point that I wanted to share with the DrivingSales community that could not attend was that there is no longer a standardized Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Every search that Google presents is customized based on relationships it establishes directly or indirectly about the consumer conducting the search.
This creates an interesting dilemna for SEO and Digital Marketing vendors, because what their dealer clients "see" locally can be very different from what the vendor sees from their corporate offices.
Social Signals and Semantic Web
This observation is very important when you consider the factors that impact personalization and how much social media engagement will define future search Google results. Dealers who have avoided investments in Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and customized website content need to wake up and smell the coffee.
The semantic web will require dealership websites to evolve, and dealers who educate themselves on this change will be first to market with better search results. Websites must adapt to include machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other, enabling automated agents to access the Web more intelligently and perform tasks on behalf of users.
Change Is Constant
What is the takeway? Google will adapt search results to meet the specific known and implied needs of the consumer. Dealers who realize that Google is using social signals, Google+ Local, and other digital sources to serve up relevant content will diversify their marketing investments.
If a Dealer Principal or General Manager is not personally using Facebook or Google+ that is their choice. However, they cannot allow their personal choices to impact their marketing investments for the dealership.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
PCG Consulting Inc
Do Not Ask For Yelp Reviews
By Brian Pasch 
Dylan Swift from Yelp addressed the dealers at the 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) and of course the room was packed. Yelp impacts dealers in many ways especially since Yelp is integrated with Apple Maps, Siri, and even some OEM vehicles. Yelp reviews often appears on Google Page One search results when a dealer name is searched.
According to Dylan, dealers should not ask their customers for a review. That means no kiosks in the dealership, and no direct requests to post a review online when they get home, from inside the dealership.
Does this mean that every OEM Co-Op Reputation Management program that sends out emails asking for consumers to post reviews is violating Yelp terms of service, if they list Yelp as a link?
Dylan suggested that dealers could put Yelp stickers on their showroom windows. This would be passive engagement with customers which basically says that the store has a listing on Yelp.
Yelp Believes In Organic Review Growth
Dylan felt that if dealers have hundreds of transactions a month, organically some of those customers will post a positive review on their own, without any prodding. However nice that sounds, this is NOT the reality for so many dealers.
There are dealers that have service centers that perform THOUSANDS of repair orders every month, and their positive Yelp reviews do not budge. If we would believe Dylan's hypothesis, dealers should see more positive reviews being posted each month. Many do not!
Are customers of auto dealerships that different that Dylan's advice is not working?
I would like to hear what readers of DrivingSales have to say! I would love for you to share how many service RO's your store does each month and how your Yelp reviews are increasing each month.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
7 Comments
Apple Autos
Our largest store does 5000 ROs per month. Our Yelp page is claimed. We don't ask for Yelp reviews (We do solicit other sites such as Google + and DealerRater). We have just 2 reviews on Yelp. Is Yelp waiting for us to pay before reviews appear or is it that Yelp adoption is weak in the Midwest? Perhaps Yelp is only being thought of/used by our customers as a restaurant tool?
Text-4-U.com
I agree with Alan. Yelp equals restaurants. Understand the "passive engagement" comment, however unless you're doing it for them or giving them an incentive for doing it who takes time to help you advertise???
PCG Consulting Inc
Alan, your data set means that 60,000 people are serviced by your store a year, and you have only 2 visible reviews. Seems like organic growth for car dealers is not a reality for this generation....
MXS Solutions
I just moved to Alaska to build a BDC department for a major dealer group. As a consumer, Yelp has been extremely useful to me since I am in a new place with no way of knowing a quality establishment from a horrible one. Dealerships that aren't pro-active with their Yelp reviews are an unknown quantity to people that are from out-of-town, and that's a pretty large portion of the population these days. My dealership's situation is slightly different due to our high concentration of rotating military personnel, but I know I certainly won't be changing our practices based on this information.
Drive Promotions
years ago I was an internet sales and marketing manager for a Domestic/Import store in Michigan. When a lot of the review sites were still in their infancy, I can recall that we really didn't push the envelope with it either. It seemed like at that time, the customers who found the review sites on their own and invested the time to look into the dealership has more negative reviews than positive. It wasn't until we started asking to be rated on google or some other such website that we experiences MANY more positive reviews. So when I was on the dealership side, it was my experience that the customers we sold and directly referred to the review site...overwhelmingly posted positive things within days sometimes hours of taking delivery....whereas the "organic" spotty reviews...were getting posted by people who purchased months and in some cases years beforehand usually holding a grudge over something trivial...or complaining about needing a service repair etc.
Proactive Dealer Solutions
Before Yelp tells you how you should get Yelp reviews, perhaps they should look in the mirror. Yelp has a Yelp rating of only 3 stars. Perhaps if they "Asked for Reviews" that rating would be higher. We ask for reviews, we don't incentivize for them, but hell ya we ask.
Drive Promotions
@ Alan, great questions. I know that as a consumer...the only reason I've EVER been on yelp is to rate a restaurant that either blew my socks off or made me want to vomit. We experienced that a little bit years ago in the dealership as well. The organic reviews were often left by people who were "trolling" so-to-speak. I just dont think automotive adoption on Yelp is that fantastic. If I were a dealer today, I'd put the focus for reviews on FACEBOOK, Google, and as you said Alan, dealer-rater.
PCG Consulting Inc
Do Not Ask For Yelp Reviews
By Brian Pasch
Dylan Swift from Yelp addressed the dealers at the 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) and of course the room was packed. Yelp impacts dealers in many ways especially since Yelp is integrated with Apple Maps, Siri, and even some OEM vehicles. Yelp reviews often appears on Google Page One search results when a dealer name is searched.
According to Dylan, dealers should not ask their customers for a review. That means no kiosks in the dealership, and no direct requests to post a review online when they get home, from inside the dealership.
Does this mean that every OEM Co-Op Reputation Management program that sends out emails asking for consumers to post reviews is violating Yelp terms of service, if they list Yelp as a link?
Dylan suggested that dealers could put Yelp stickers on their showroom windows. This would be passive engagement with customers which basically says that the store has a listing on Yelp.
Yelp Believes In Organic Review Growth
Dylan felt that if dealers have hundreds of transactions a month, organically some of those customers will post a positive review on their own, without any prodding. However nice that sounds, this is NOT the reality for so many dealers.
There are dealers that have service centers that perform THOUSANDS of repair orders every month, and their positive Yelp reviews do not budge. If we would believe Dylan's hypothesis, dealers should see more positive reviews being posted each month. Many do not!
Are customers of auto dealerships that different that Dylan's advice is not working?
I would like to hear what readers of DrivingSales have to say! I would love for you to share how many service RO's your store does each month and how your Yelp reviews are increasing each month.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
7 Comments
Apple Autos
Our largest store does 5000 ROs per month. Our Yelp page is claimed. We don't ask for Yelp reviews (We do solicit other sites such as Google + and DealerRater). We have just 2 reviews on Yelp. Is Yelp waiting for us to pay before reviews appear or is it that Yelp adoption is weak in the Midwest? Perhaps Yelp is only being thought of/used by our customers as a restaurant tool?
Text-4-U.com
I agree with Alan. Yelp equals restaurants. Understand the "passive engagement" comment, however unless you're doing it for them or giving them an incentive for doing it who takes time to help you advertise???
PCG Consulting Inc
Alan, your data set means that 60,000 people are serviced by your store a year, and you have only 2 visible reviews. Seems like organic growth for car dealers is not a reality for this generation....
MXS Solutions
I just moved to Alaska to build a BDC department for a major dealer group. As a consumer, Yelp has been extremely useful to me since I am in a new place with no way of knowing a quality establishment from a horrible one. Dealerships that aren't pro-active with their Yelp reviews are an unknown quantity to people that are from out-of-town, and that's a pretty large portion of the population these days. My dealership's situation is slightly different due to our high concentration of rotating military personnel, but I know I certainly won't be changing our practices based on this information.
Drive Promotions
years ago I was an internet sales and marketing manager for a Domestic/Import store in Michigan. When a lot of the review sites were still in their infancy, I can recall that we really didn't push the envelope with it either. It seemed like at that time, the customers who found the review sites on their own and invested the time to look into the dealership has more negative reviews than positive. It wasn't until we started asking to be rated on google or some other such website that we experiences MANY more positive reviews. So when I was on the dealership side, it was my experience that the customers we sold and directly referred to the review site...overwhelmingly posted positive things within days sometimes hours of taking delivery....whereas the "organic" spotty reviews...were getting posted by people who purchased months and in some cases years beforehand usually holding a grudge over something trivial...or complaining about needing a service repair etc.
Proactive Dealer Solutions
Before Yelp tells you how you should get Yelp reviews, perhaps they should look in the mirror. Yelp has a Yelp rating of only 3 stars. Perhaps if they "Asked for Reviews" that rating would be higher. We ask for reviews, we don't incentivize for them, but hell ya we ask.
Drive Promotions
@ Alan, great questions. I know that as a consumer...the only reason I've EVER been on yelp is to rate a restaurant that either blew my socks off or made me want to vomit. We experienced that a little bit years ago in the dealership as well. The organic reviews were often left by people who were "trolling" so-to-speak. I just dont think automotive adoption on Yelp is that fantastic. If I were a dealer today, I'd put the focus for reviews on FACEBOOK, Google, and as you said Alan, dealer-rater.
PCG Consulting Inc
Are You Looking at Vehicle Detail Page View Trends and Costs?
One of the benefits of Big Data research in the automotive retail industry, is the direct correlation that Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views on vehicles have on the velocity by which they sell. As Scott Hernalsteen from Autotrader pointed out at the 2013 Driving Sales Executive Summit, dealers must have a clear merchandising and pricing strategy that makes their vehicles stand out from the competition.
A recent automotive study conducted by Cobalt, clearly shows that vehicles that have more VDP views sell faster. The chart, shown above, tells dealers that cars with more than 30 VDP views, sold on average in 76 days compared to 135 days when they had less than 20 views.
If dealers want to sell more cars, they need to get their inventory VDP's in front of as many Internet car shoppers as possible. A strategy that increases VDP views will increase the velocity of cars sold at the dealership. Thus, dealers should be focused on one question:
How do I get more consumers to select and view my Vehicle Detail Pages?
Adjusting Our Focus to VDP Views
Dealers who want to increase VDP views, have to be careful about the costs to drive consumer traffic to their VDP's.
Dealers drive traffic to their website by using traditional media (radio, TV, newspaper), as well as digital marketing strategies (Adwords, Craigslist, Autotrader.com, Cars.com, Social Media).
Dealers normally evaluate their marketing investments in terms of Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Sale (CPS) metrics. However, the majority of consumers do not submit a lead or call the dealership before they walk in the showroom.
Dealers who focus on VDP trends on their website and VDP trends on third party websites are tracking the shopping behavior of all shoppers; not just the ones that submit a lead.
Dealers need to look at VDP View trends on their website, like shown below: 
For this dealer their marketing investments are increasing VDP views on their own website. In two seconds this dealer could see that they were heading in the right direction!
Since it is easy to see which strategies are increasing VDP views, they can look further into each traffic source to see the costs associated with that traffic.
In the graphic below, dealers can easily see which referral sources are generating the highest number of VDP views: 
Calculating the Cost Per VDP View
Once you see trends, dealers need to focus on the cost to drive a VDP view!
Google Adwords is one digital advertising strategy used by most dealers. Few dealers receive monthly reports on how well their Adwords campaigns are working to drive consumers to view their inventory.
Adwords campaigns that are evaluated on a Cost Per Lead (CPL) can be further OPTIMIZED when dealers seek to find ways to lower the Cost per VDP View with their Adwords vendor.
For this dealer, you can see a wide range of VDP view costs starting at $1.67 per VDP view and going as high as $9.72 per VDP view. By looking at Adwords campaigns through this lens, dealers can ask their Adwords vendor to test landing page changes, keyword choices, or ad copy to increase the percentage of clicks that look at Vehicle Detail Pages.
The Rewards When Dealers Focus on VDP Views
Why is a focus on VDP views this important? If dealers can lower the cost per VDP, they can accelerate car sales at a lower cost! That is not a trival result when you consider how much money dealers spend on marketing per month.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
3 Comments
NV Subaru Benelux
Hi Brian, First of all, thanks for the interesting blog. However, I am curious how you calculate the VDP views in Google Analytics. Which metric do you use? Regards, Andra
PCG Consulting Inc
It depends on the website platform but you set a custom view in Analytics to calculate the VDP views.
DealerX
The results look "OFF", there is obviously a buy the dealers name campaign as the image has been redacted, the TOS is TERRIBLE, in fact the TOS on pre-owned vehicles average is at -00:00-, is that good? I suppose not, or it has been "altered"The whole last image is completely fabricated and or doctored..Maybe I'm wrong, walk us through the "Calculating the Cost Per VDP View" image
PCG Consulting Inc
Are You Looking at Vehicle Detail Page View Trends and Costs?
One of the benefits of Big Data research in the automotive retail industry, is the direct correlation that Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) views on vehicles have on the velocity by which they sell. As Scott Hernalsteen from Autotrader pointed out at the 2013 Driving Sales Executive Summit, dealers must have a clear merchandising and pricing strategy that makes their vehicles stand out from the competition.
A recent automotive study conducted by Cobalt, clearly shows that vehicles that have more VDP views sell faster. The chart, shown above, tells dealers that cars with more than 30 VDP views, sold on average in 76 days compared to 135 days when they had less than 20 views.
If dealers want to sell more cars, they need to get their inventory VDP's in front of as many Internet car shoppers as possible. A strategy that increases VDP views will increase the velocity of cars sold at the dealership. Thus, dealers should be focused on one question:
How do I get more consumers to select and view my Vehicle Detail Pages?
Adjusting Our Focus to VDP Views
Dealers who want to increase VDP views, have to be careful about the costs to drive consumer traffic to their VDP's.
Dealers drive traffic to their website by using traditional media (radio, TV, newspaper), as well as digital marketing strategies (Adwords, Craigslist, Autotrader.com, Cars.com, Social Media).
Dealers normally evaluate their marketing investments in terms of Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Sale (CPS) metrics. However, the majority of consumers do not submit a lead or call the dealership before they walk in the showroom.
Dealers who focus on VDP trends on their website and VDP trends on third party websites are tracking the shopping behavior of all shoppers; not just the ones that submit a lead.
Dealers need to look at VDP View trends on their website, like shown below: For this dealer their marketing investments are increasing VDP views on their own website. In two seconds this dealer could see that they were heading in the right direction!
Since it is easy to see which strategies are increasing VDP views, they can look further into each traffic source to see the costs associated with that traffic.
In the graphic below, dealers can easily see which referral sources are generating the highest number of VDP views:
Calculating the Cost Per VDP View
Once you see trends, dealers need to focus on the cost to drive a VDP view!
Google Adwords is one digital advertising strategy used by most dealers. Few dealers receive monthly reports on how well their Adwords campaigns are working to drive consumers to view their inventory.
Adwords campaigns that are evaluated on a Cost Per Lead (CPL) can be further OPTIMIZED when dealers seek to find ways to lower the Cost per VDP View with their Adwords vendor.
For this dealer, you can see a wide range of VDP view costs starting at $1.67 per VDP view and going as high as $9.72 per VDP view. By looking at Adwords campaigns through this lens, dealers can ask their Adwords vendor to test landing page changes, keyword choices, or ad copy to increase the percentage of clicks that look at Vehicle Detail Pages.
The Rewards When Dealers Focus on VDP Views
Why is a focus on VDP views this important? If dealers can lower the cost per VDP, they can accelerate car sales at a lower cost! That is not a trival result when you consider how much money dealers spend on marketing per month.
Brian
Brian Pasch, CEO
PCG Consulting
732.672.2356
Google
3 Comments
NV Subaru Benelux
Hi Brian, First of all, thanks for the interesting blog. However, I am curious how you calculate the VDP views in Google Analytics. Which metric do you use? Regards, Andra
PCG Consulting Inc
It depends on the website platform but you set a custom view in Analytics to calculate the VDP views.
DealerX
The results look "OFF", there is obviously a buy the dealers name campaign as the image has been redacted, the TOS is TERRIBLE, in fact the TOS on pre-owned vehicles average is at -00:00-, is that good? I suppose not, or it has been "altered"The whole last image is completely fabricated and or doctored..Maybe I'm wrong, walk us through the "Calculating the Cost Per VDP View" image
No Comments