Advertising in the automotive business is a tough thing to track, especially when it comes to direct mail, TV, newspaper, and radio.  More and more dealerships are starting to pull more and more away from the ‘traditional advertising’ and putting it where you can track it more effectively and that is the internet.  How many times does a customer walk in the showroom and the salesperson marks them in the CRM that they are a ‘drive-by’?  

Almost  80% of the buyers that walk in the showroom did research online, but did not establish contact before coming in to look at the vehicle.  67% of those buyers went to the dealer’s website to get information on the vehicle.  This is a reinforcement that you have to have quality photos, good descriptions, and be competitively priced, or they will never show up at your front door.  Of the 80%, 64% were ‘walk-ins’, 27% picked up the phone, and 9% emailed into the dealership.  This shows me that almost every person that walks in the showroom is an internet customer. 

Since so many consumers are hitting your dealership’s website, how does it look?  Is it user friendly?  Is your website easy to navigate?  Does it encourage them to engage with you (i.e. chat, a coupon pop-up, etc)?  Is your website mobile phone friendly?  You want your website to convert that consumer to make a call or send in information on a vehicle or special.  That percentage should be in the 3-5% range of your total unique visitors.  I have been leary of chat, but have become a proponent of it in the last couple of months after putting it on our website. 

Things to concentrate on for 2011 is to make sure that your website are all of those things above.  Also, work on SEO to direct traffic to your site.  Buy urls that will enhance your visibility on the internet.  Buy for example buy a url that has a model and your city.  Build that landing page and direct them back to your main website.  Not only focus on sales, but look at your fixed operations.  Look at buying your city oil change dot com.  I did this and it was the top of google searches within 3 weeks.  We are generating phone calls and click throughs to our website.  Click throughs and engagement with the customer is the key.  Make it happen in 2011!

Advertising in the automotive business is a tough thing to track, especially when it comes to direct mail, TV, newspaper, and radio.  More and more dealerships are starting to pull more and more away from the ‘traditional advertising’ and putting it where you can track it more effectively and that is the internet.  How many times does a customer walk in the showroom and the salesperson marks them in the CRM that they are a ‘drive-by’?  

Almost  80% of the buyers that walk in the showroom did research online, but did not establish contact before coming in to look at the vehicle.  67% of those buyers went to the dealer’s website to get information on the vehicle.  This is a reinforcement that you have to have quality photos, good descriptions, and be competitively priced, or they will never show up at your front door.  Of the 80%, 64% were ‘walk-ins’, 27% picked up the phone, and 9% emailed into the dealership.  This shows me that almost every person that walks in the showroom is an internet customer. 

Since so many consumers are hitting your dealership’s website, how does it look?  Is it user friendly?  Is your website easy to navigate?  Does it encourage them to engage with you (i.e. chat, a coupon pop-up, etc)?  Is your website mobile phone friendly?  You want your website to convert that consumer to make a call or send in information on a vehicle or special.  That percentage should be in the 3-5% range of your total unique visitors.  I have been leary of chat, but have become a proponent of it in the last couple of months after putting it on our website. 

Things to concentrate on for 2011 is to make sure that your website are all of those things above.  Also, work on SEO to direct traffic to your site.  Buy urls that will enhance your visibility on the internet.  Buy for example buy a url that has a model and your city.  Build that landing page and direct them back to your main website.  Not only focus on sales, but look at your fixed operations.  Look at buying your city oil change dot com.  I did this and it was the top of google searches within 3 weeks.  We are generating phone calls and click throughs to our website.  Click throughs and engagement with the customer is the key.  Make it happen in 2011!

Craigslist has been around since 1996 with approximately 49 million unique page views.  The question is do you advertise there and what do you advertise? 

I have been dabbling with Craigslist for a couple of months with our used car inventory.  At one point, I was putting all 150 vehicles on there.  I was finding through analytics that the higher priced vehicles weren’t getting much action, but I had found a sweet spot with vehicles that are under $10,000.  If I have something that is a little higher up to $11,000, I may post it depending on what it is. 

You have to post effectively and be consistent with it.  I post every Thursday or Friday with about 30 vehicles.  I see my website traffic go up significantly when I post.  People are looking for that $10,000 vehicle that is a cherry.  We have a tool within our website provider that will generate code for us and all I have to do is cut and copy to the appropriate fields.  Click here to see an example of a Craigslist ad that we have. 

When you click on the vehicle presentation, it takes you to our dealership website.  Just by posting about 30 vehicles a week generated 348 unique visitors and 2312 page views in January.  We had some customers walking in with print outs of the ads.  We had 16 phone calls, and we had 12 email inquiries.  I know that I can account for 18 sales that we know of that they saw the vehicle on Craigslist in January.  Of those sales, that generated $42,966 of gross profit for the store.  Not a bad return on investment since all it cost was time. 

The question is are you posting there and how are you doing it?  Are you linking back to your dealership website?  Are you posting with pictures?  Do you have a tracking number within the ad so you can track the effectiveness?  Are you willing to step outside the box and post with personal ads, ads for ‘junk items’?  Maybe you will think it is a better idea to post there with that other stuff that is on there and dominate your market.  Good luck with your postings.

Craigslist has been around since 1996 with approximately 49 million unique page views.  The question is do you advertise there and what do you advertise? 

I have been dabbling with Craigslist for a couple of months with our used car inventory.  At one point, I was putting all 150 vehicles on there.  I was finding through analytics that the higher priced vehicles weren’t getting much action, but I had found a sweet spot with vehicles that are under $10,000.  If I have something that is a little higher up to $11,000, I may post it depending on what it is. 

You have to post effectively and be consistent with it.  I post every Thursday or Friday with about 30 vehicles.  I see my website traffic go up significantly when I post.  People are looking for that $10,000 vehicle that is a cherry.  We have a tool within our website provider that will generate code for us and all I have to do is cut and copy to the appropriate fields.  Click here to see an example of a Craigslist ad that we have. 

When you click on the vehicle presentation, it takes you to our dealership website.  Just by posting about 30 vehicles a week generated 348 unique visitors and 2312 page views in January.  We had some customers walking in with print outs of the ads.  We had 16 phone calls, and we had 12 email inquiries.  I know that I can account for 18 sales that we know of that they saw the vehicle on Craigslist in January.  Of those sales, that generated $42,966 of gross profit for the store.  Not a bad return on investment since all it cost was time. 

The question is are you posting there and how are you doing it?  Are you linking back to your dealership website?  Are you posting with pictures?  Do you have a tracking number within the ad so you can track the effectiveness?  Are you willing to step outside the box and post with personal ads, ads for ‘junk items’?  Maybe you will think it is a better idea to post there with that other stuff that is on there and dominate your market.  Good luck with your postings.