LotVantage
Saving Money is Often a Matter of Saving Time
In the car business, we often look to increase sales while decreasing spend. We're a budget-conscious industry, so that normally means spending less money and doing things manually. In many cases, that's fine. In some instances, the money saved by doing things manually actually costs a dealership more in the way of time spent.
Time is money. We've all heard the idiom. It's very true, particularly when it comes to automotive digital marketing. It's very easy for dealers to fall into the trap of cutting costs for the sake of cutting costs, but when does the cost savings actually start costing you money?
In our segment of the industry, the easy example is to look at Craigslist, eBay Motors, and social media as places where dealers can post inventory manually. It's not hard but it does take time. Obviously, we like those examples because they fall in line with our inventory posting tools, but they're just a handful amongst dozens of examples of tasks that dealers can do on their own but probably shouldn't.
There's an easy way of calculating the true cost of time. It's not just a matter of taking an hourly wage times the amount of time spent. You have to take into account the loss of productivity that can be spent on more lucrative tasks other than uploading photos and putting together text for an eBay Motors ad.
Once you understand how much time-money is being spent on a service, it's important to consider the other factors as well. Consistency can be an issue, particularly with repetitive and constant endeavors like posting to Craigslist. It's not a matter of feeding in the inventory like you would with AutoTrader. On Craigslist, adding vehicles manually can be a tedious process, one that internet managers can often push to the wayside when they get busy.
Another issue to consider is that quality can deteriorate over time, particularly on the tedious tasks that we've discussed. Humans have a tendency to rush through things they don't enjoy doing and posting to these third-party sites definitely qualifies as something that people don't enjoy. Tools, on the other hand, never get bored. They stay consistent with the posting style and keep the quality level steadily high.
It's important to be aware of the ROI on all of your services and products, but don't forget about the time factor when replacing them with in-house activities.
LotVantage
Saving Money is Often a Matter of Saving Time
In the car business, we often look to increase sales while decreasing spend. We're a budget-conscious industry, so that normally means spending less money and doing things manually. In many cases, that's fine. In some instances, the money saved by doing things manually actually costs a dealership more in the way of time spent.
Time is money. We've all heard the idiom. It's very true, particularly when it comes to automotive digital marketing. It's very easy for dealers to fall into the trap of cutting costs for the sake of cutting costs, but when does the cost savings actually start costing you money?
In our segment of the industry, the easy example is to look at Craigslist, eBay Motors, and social media as places where dealers can post inventory manually. It's not hard but it does take time. Obviously, we like those examples because they fall in line with our inventory posting tools, but they're just a handful amongst dozens of examples of tasks that dealers can do on their own but probably shouldn't.
There's an easy way of calculating the true cost of time. It's not just a matter of taking an hourly wage times the amount of time spent. You have to take into account the loss of productivity that can be spent on more lucrative tasks other than uploading photos and putting together text for an eBay Motors ad.
Once you understand how much time-money is being spent on a service, it's important to consider the other factors as well. Consistency can be an issue, particularly with repetitive and constant endeavors like posting to Craigslist. It's not a matter of feeding in the inventory like you would with AutoTrader. On Craigslist, adding vehicles manually can be a tedious process, one that internet managers can often push to the wayside when they get busy.
Another issue to consider is that quality can deteriorate over time, particularly on the tedious tasks that we've discussed. Humans have a tendency to rush through things they don't enjoy doing and posting to these third-party sites definitely qualifies as something that people don't enjoy. Tools, on the other hand, never get bored. They stay consistent with the posting style and keep the quality level steadily high.
It's important to be aware of the ROI on all of your services and products, but don't forget about the time factor when replacing them with in-house activities.
No Comments
LotVantage
Dealers Shouldn’t Abandon Third-Party Sites Just Yet
If you've been following the trends for the last year in the automotive industry, you’ll note that there are some dealers that are pushing all of their advertising dollars towards driving traffic to their websites. It’s a strategy that was made popular when a large dealer group declared that they were going to focus on generating their own leads and wrote an interesting piece about why they were doing it.
Unfortunately, the strategy that they’re adopting has been misunderstood by many. The idea is that they wouldn't be buying leads from other sites anymore. They never declared that their inventory wouldn't be available on other sites. It’s a concept that makes sense – generate your own leads, whether they’re coming from third-party sites or the dealership’s website.
In an article titled, Why Car Dealers Should Adopt a Modern Digital Merchandising Strategy, we went into detail about why many consumers prefer to shop on third-party sites rather than on a dealership’s own website. The perception of competition and choice has made many consumers today skeptical of the isolation that happens on a company’s own website. The diversity they get on the third-party sites is ideal for many modern shoppers.
This modern strategy translates into companies doing what they can to have their merchandise show up on Amazon and Newegg. It’s why airlines and hotels work with Priceline and Expedia. It’s why dealers should have their inventory on Craigslist and Autotrader.
We all know that the best leads are the ones that come directly from your own website, but you can’t force people to go there. You can put all of your marketing budget into promoting your own website and you’ll still miss out on a good percentage of people who simply won’t go there, at least not initially.
A best practice is to cast the widest net possible. Get your inventory in front of more people regardless of where they’re searching. Whether they go to Google, eBay Motors, or Backpage, you want your inventory to be in front of them. Posting to other sites will increase the number of people who then visit your website for more information on the cars they find.
We aren’t going to argue against the concept of pulling back on buying third-party leads, but we want to make sure that everyone knows that the strategy being discussed is not one that abandons the use of third-party sites altogether. Regardless of whether you’re buying leads or not, you want to have your inventory visible to as many people as possible.
Even CarMax, one of the first large companies to completely abandon posting inventory to third-party websites, has recently began adding their inventory back into the mix. There is simply more reach available to dealerships and dealer groups when they cast a wider net.
Put your inventory in front of more people on or off your website and you’ll generate more leads for yourself. That’s the modern strategy.
10 Comments
Kijiji, an eBay Company
In Canada, by and large we do not have "3rd Party Lead Buying". Companies have attempted, numerous times to no avail. Autobytel originally in US & Canada at the same time, but quickly moved out of the great white north due to poor ROI. It is one of the small differences between the two markets, and I'm very happy to be on this side of the fence.
Remarkable Marketing
@Robert I think Jim is referring more to the "Kijiji's" and "Autocatch's" of our market. Not so much actually "buying" leads. There are companies like Autobytel where you can actually BUY the name, phone number and email from. Don't think that's what Jim was referring to... That being said, our entire group of 35 dealers has pulled away from listing on 3rd party listing sites as well. @Jim I do not disagree that getting your inventory in front of eyeballs is a correct strategy. Our data proved against the strategy in a very large way! Remember, thats in OUR market. I believe every market is very different. We simply did not see leads, calls or referral clicks from the 3rd party listing sites we were using. Although we do still use AutoTrader quite heavily because it works in OUR market. In some situations we use Kijiji (Compares to Craigslist in Canada) The other 5 or 6 listing sites that are at our disposal were not working at all for reasons mentioned above. So we pulled out. My prognosis on this theory is very similar to the points you made above Jim. Spending money on driving traffic to our own VDP's through value ad to the consumer and not just a few pics and a price, makes much more sense. Not only talking about Adwords... Content, SEO, Social Advertising and many other traffic generation tools are all part of our strategy. Instead of spending money on a third party listing sites, in an over saturated market with little value to the consumer, we decided to capitalize on the sites that work (Trader/Kijiji) and leave the rest to our internal team.
Anderson Auto Group
I would like to see a greater degree of separation between the definition of "3rd Party Sites" in stories like this. Listing inventory on 3rd party sites vs. Buying leads from 3rd party sites are pretty different. Without having to rehash the entire story, look at our 3rd party lead experience with our Mazda store at http://www.drivingsales.com/forums/busted-manufacturer-conquest-lead-reselling-caught
Mercedes-Benz of Princeton
I agree with Dan 3rd party inventory sites are not 3rd party leads sites..... But that being said I have got rid of most of both & have not seen a drop off especially in used car leads. Spending $5,000 a month on other site to promote your inventory & your competitors is ludicrous. Remember the days when the "inventory sites" sold you on that they could track your leads, calls & click thrus. over the Newspapers.....funny how they gave up on that pitch....
Overtake
eyeballs is the name of the game... even on a higher level I believe on building a brand relationship with the consumer even before they are in the buying process. Good content creates awareness. A brand connection earns a repeat customer. Buying a lead has less of chance at getting you that. Chip Perry asked a group of us in Overland Park, KS what it costs a dealer to list cars on Autotrader.com. I believe the person beside me said, "anywhere between 1500-10000. Chip said, no, "it's free." "we've never charged to list inventory online and to this day dealers still have that option." I think the autobytel's and the dealix model is busted. At some point just listing your cars on Autotrader may work for the eyeballs. At what point though are you buying leads by overspending to be featured, or spotlighted or 1000 other things? You can certainly do that on Autotrader. Their model goes way beyond simply listing inventory these days. How long that will last? Don't know, Cox has distanced their software companies from Autotrader.com. And rebranded the companies as Cox Automotive. Chip Perry is no longer at the helm. They're smart though, they will think of something.
Steering Innovation
This is a very, very poor example -> "They will never go to Asus.com to buy an Asus computer. They’ll only buy it from Newegg, Amazon, or any of the other third-party sites that work through competitive comparison rather than product isolation." First, you can't purchase a computer from Asus.com. So duh, you can't go to asus.com to purchase an Asus computer. Secondly, Asus is a manufacturer, just like Ford, Kia, Mazda, GM, etc. A consumer would never go to Ford.com to purchase or test drive a Ford, but would be directed to do so at a dealership, much like asus.com pushes consumers to sites like B&H, newegg, or Tiger Direct.
Seelye Auto Group
Although I agree dealers need to cast a wide net to get eyeballs on their inventory I disagree with the price some third party sites charge to get those eyeballs. Let's face it. Customers will find your vehicles if you are doing enough right things to get them to you. If you are working all of the angles like PPC/SEO/Retargeting/Video/etc. your cars will find their way to a host of "free" third party sites and also in search engines like Google & Bing. When they are found on search engines they are directed to the place you want them to be which is your website. Here's the kicker about some of the classified listing sites. It's pay to play. On some it doesn't matter if you have the best price, pictures and your vehicle perfectly matches a customers criteria if you are not paying the big bucks your car won't be found (unless you call being on page 17 being found). This makes me pause and ask the bigger question about sites like these. Are they customer or dealer centric? They are not providing the customer with a clear picture of the best vehicle for them and they are not truly providing the dealer with a platform that puts their cars in front of "all" buyers. Third party sites are necessary. However the dealers are necessary for the third party sites to exist. Without a dealers inventory they are a dot com with nothing to offer. It's not the third party site that's this issue it's the cost of doing business that becomes the talking point. If they were free and provided a benefit we'd all be on them. It comes down to bang for the buck. If your store is getting a great ROI (and you can track it) stay with it. If all you get is a lot of SRP/VDP/Map View talk and cannot put a hard number on dollars spent vs. dollars gained then you need to reevaluate the site. Yes, third party sites can be a value to any marketing strategy but it's important for every dealer to continually evaluate the true ROI of every site. Just because they are putting eyeballs on your inventory doesn't make them cost effective.
Wikimotive
A larger concern too is the type of ethics being employed by the companies that are capturing those eyeballs. The simple reality is that dealers pay 3rd parties to be seen by those eyeballs, but most 3rd parties utilize those dollars to run marketing campaigns to disparage the image of the dealer by perpetuating negative stereotypes. Its the only industry I've seen where the client pays to get bad mouthed for the purpose of strengthening the market-share of the vendor they're paying which in turn allows that vendor to continue to charge more to further erode the dealers natural market-share. All things aren't equal here. We can't just look at data in a bubble and say its in the dealers best interest to continue to support 3rd party vendors -- be it lead aggregators or 3rd party listing sites. Its a bad investment any way you slice it. Selling your future for the quick fix of today will continue to lead to declining profits for dealers. Period.
Skutch Henks Training LLC
Great points and insight here, I'm also looking into 3rd party leads and 3rd party websites meaning classified sites. I love how the nomenclature can be so confusing in the Automotive world, and misunderstanding's can be such a lucrative method of manipulation among some vendors in proving their package value. Anyway some of the difference I've found on classified sites (Autotrader, Cars, Cargurus, Edmunds, KBB) is that profit per vehicle sold for the given leads should be separated by new and used vehicles. For example Edmunds and KBB seem to be more new car oriented, and AT, Cars, Cargurus more used car oriented. So exposure of inventory value in relation to the packaging costs per each site can be determined. AT was the only site that had numerous options for packaging and prices that were troubling to figure out or understand. As for 3rd party lead vendors, like Dealix, Autobytel, and many others, I've discovered most get their leads through numerous microsites with quote forms promising the moon to shoppers. What's most shocking is they advertise these quote sites per market based on the dealers they have signed up, by placing search engine text ads in those areas. Most of the dealers I'm analyzing also spend healthy amounts on search engine text ads (SEM/PPC) as well for new inventory - some on used inventory too, so why would you pay $10-30 per lead on top of having your inventory already exposed to shoppers in your market area? That's ridiculous. I'm not sure if the GM's know this though, most of the stores doing this ridiculousness have heavy input from Internet Managers which are paid on per lead metrics, so they don't care how many types of leads they get nor the quality, in their world it's the more the better for their paycheck. I'm also looking into Truecar leads and not sure how to classify them, from the initial perspective it seems like a 3rd party lead vendor, but they also use mass media heavily to drive shoppers to their website. Again though I feel like after I spend a lot of time digging into this, the amount of overlap will not be worth the cost difference of incremental exposure value for their new inventory. It's like their business model is let's get in between these shoppers in a given marketplace who are already going to submit leads to these dealers anyway, but once we have the shopper lead information we can charge them $250 per sale because we'll have direct DMS dealer data. It's actually genius on their part, but again no real exposure of inventory value.
Automotive Internet Media
Dealers can put their inventory free on many 3rd party sites and only pay when someone is interested in their vehicle. Automotive Internet Media's CarClicks only charges $1.88 a for each customer driven directly to the dealership website's VDP. You can set your own budget and see the results in your Google Analytics. It's a great value and being adopted by many of the country's largest dealer groups. And yes I work for AIM. Let me know if you have any questions.
LotVantage
Dealers Shouldn’t Abandon Third-Party Sites Just Yet
If you've been following the trends for the last year in the automotive industry, you’ll note that there are some dealers that are pushing all of their advertising dollars towards driving traffic to their websites. It’s a strategy that was made popular when a large dealer group declared that they were going to focus on generating their own leads and wrote an interesting piece about why they were doing it.
Unfortunately, the strategy that they’re adopting has been misunderstood by many. The idea is that they wouldn't be buying leads from other sites anymore. They never declared that their inventory wouldn't be available on other sites. It’s a concept that makes sense – generate your own leads, whether they’re coming from third-party sites or the dealership’s website.
In an article titled, Why Car Dealers Should Adopt a Modern Digital Merchandising Strategy, we went into detail about why many consumers prefer to shop on third-party sites rather than on a dealership’s own website. The perception of competition and choice has made many consumers today skeptical of the isolation that happens on a company’s own website. The diversity they get on the third-party sites is ideal for many modern shoppers.
This modern strategy translates into companies doing what they can to have their merchandise show up on Amazon and Newegg. It’s why airlines and hotels work with Priceline and Expedia. It’s why dealers should have their inventory on Craigslist and Autotrader.
We all know that the best leads are the ones that come directly from your own website, but you can’t force people to go there. You can put all of your marketing budget into promoting your own website and you’ll still miss out on a good percentage of people who simply won’t go there, at least not initially.
A best practice is to cast the widest net possible. Get your inventory in front of more people regardless of where they’re searching. Whether they go to Google, eBay Motors, or Backpage, you want your inventory to be in front of them. Posting to other sites will increase the number of people who then visit your website for more information on the cars they find.
We aren’t going to argue against the concept of pulling back on buying third-party leads, but we want to make sure that everyone knows that the strategy being discussed is not one that abandons the use of third-party sites altogether. Regardless of whether you’re buying leads or not, you want to have your inventory visible to as many people as possible.
Even CarMax, one of the first large companies to completely abandon posting inventory to third-party websites, has recently began adding their inventory back into the mix. There is simply more reach available to dealerships and dealer groups when they cast a wider net.
Put your inventory in front of more people on or off your website and you’ll generate more leads for yourself. That’s the modern strategy.
10 Comments
Kijiji, an eBay Company
In Canada, by and large we do not have "3rd Party Lead Buying". Companies have attempted, numerous times to no avail. Autobytel originally in US & Canada at the same time, but quickly moved out of the great white north due to poor ROI. It is one of the small differences between the two markets, and I'm very happy to be on this side of the fence.
Remarkable Marketing
@Robert I think Jim is referring more to the "Kijiji's" and "Autocatch's" of our market. Not so much actually "buying" leads. There are companies like Autobytel where you can actually BUY the name, phone number and email from. Don't think that's what Jim was referring to... That being said, our entire group of 35 dealers has pulled away from listing on 3rd party listing sites as well. @Jim I do not disagree that getting your inventory in front of eyeballs is a correct strategy. Our data proved against the strategy in a very large way! Remember, thats in OUR market. I believe every market is very different. We simply did not see leads, calls or referral clicks from the 3rd party listing sites we were using. Although we do still use AutoTrader quite heavily because it works in OUR market. In some situations we use Kijiji (Compares to Craigslist in Canada) The other 5 or 6 listing sites that are at our disposal were not working at all for reasons mentioned above. So we pulled out. My prognosis on this theory is very similar to the points you made above Jim. Spending money on driving traffic to our own VDP's through value ad to the consumer and not just a few pics and a price, makes much more sense. Not only talking about Adwords... Content, SEO, Social Advertising and many other traffic generation tools are all part of our strategy. Instead of spending money on a third party listing sites, in an over saturated market with little value to the consumer, we decided to capitalize on the sites that work (Trader/Kijiji) and leave the rest to our internal team.
Anderson Auto Group
I would like to see a greater degree of separation between the definition of "3rd Party Sites" in stories like this. Listing inventory on 3rd party sites vs. Buying leads from 3rd party sites are pretty different. Without having to rehash the entire story, look at our 3rd party lead experience with our Mazda store at http://www.drivingsales.com/forums/busted-manufacturer-conquest-lead-reselling-caught
Mercedes-Benz of Princeton
I agree with Dan 3rd party inventory sites are not 3rd party leads sites..... But that being said I have got rid of most of both & have not seen a drop off especially in used car leads. Spending $5,000 a month on other site to promote your inventory & your competitors is ludicrous. Remember the days when the "inventory sites" sold you on that they could track your leads, calls & click thrus. over the Newspapers.....funny how they gave up on that pitch....
Overtake
eyeballs is the name of the game... even on a higher level I believe on building a brand relationship with the consumer even before they are in the buying process. Good content creates awareness. A brand connection earns a repeat customer. Buying a lead has less of chance at getting you that. Chip Perry asked a group of us in Overland Park, KS what it costs a dealer to list cars on Autotrader.com. I believe the person beside me said, "anywhere between 1500-10000. Chip said, no, "it's free." "we've never charged to list inventory online and to this day dealers still have that option." I think the autobytel's and the dealix model is busted. At some point just listing your cars on Autotrader may work for the eyeballs. At what point though are you buying leads by overspending to be featured, or spotlighted or 1000 other things? You can certainly do that on Autotrader. Their model goes way beyond simply listing inventory these days. How long that will last? Don't know, Cox has distanced their software companies from Autotrader.com. And rebranded the companies as Cox Automotive. Chip Perry is no longer at the helm. They're smart though, they will think of something.
Steering Innovation
This is a very, very poor example -> "They will never go to Asus.com to buy an Asus computer. They’ll only buy it from Newegg, Amazon, or any of the other third-party sites that work through competitive comparison rather than product isolation." First, you can't purchase a computer from Asus.com. So duh, you can't go to asus.com to purchase an Asus computer. Secondly, Asus is a manufacturer, just like Ford, Kia, Mazda, GM, etc. A consumer would never go to Ford.com to purchase or test drive a Ford, but would be directed to do so at a dealership, much like asus.com pushes consumers to sites like B&H, newegg, or Tiger Direct.
Seelye Auto Group
Although I agree dealers need to cast a wide net to get eyeballs on their inventory I disagree with the price some third party sites charge to get those eyeballs. Let's face it. Customers will find your vehicles if you are doing enough right things to get them to you. If you are working all of the angles like PPC/SEO/Retargeting/Video/etc. your cars will find their way to a host of "free" third party sites and also in search engines like Google & Bing. When they are found on search engines they are directed to the place you want them to be which is your website. Here's the kicker about some of the classified listing sites. It's pay to play. On some it doesn't matter if you have the best price, pictures and your vehicle perfectly matches a customers criteria if you are not paying the big bucks your car won't be found (unless you call being on page 17 being found). This makes me pause and ask the bigger question about sites like these. Are they customer or dealer centric? They are not providing the customer with a clear picture of the best vehicle for them and they are not truly providing the dealer with a platform that puts their cars in front of "all" buyers. Third party sites are necessary. However the dealers are necessary for the third party sites to exist. Without a dealers inventory they are a dot com with nothing to offer. It's not the third party site that's this issue it's the cost of doing business that becomes the talking point. If they were free and provided a benefit we'd all be on them. It comes down to bang for the buck. If your store is getting a great ROI (and you can track it) stay with it. If all you get is a lot of SRP/VDP/Map View talk and cannot put a hard number on dollars spent vs. dollars gained then you need to reevaluate the site. Yes, third party sites can be a value to any marketing strategy but it's important for every dealer to continually evaluate the true ROI of every site. Just because they are putting eyeballs on your inventory doesn't make them cost effective.
Wikimotive
A larger concern too is the type of ethics being employed by the companies that are capturing those eyeballs. The simple reality is that dealers pay 3rd parties to be seen by those eyeballs, but most 3rd parties utilize those dollars to run marketing campaigns to disparage the image of the dealer by perpetuating negative stereotypes. Its the only industry I've seen where the client pays to get bad mouthed for the purpose of strengthening the market-share of the vendor they're paying which in turn allows that vendor to continue to charge more to further erode the dealers natural market-share. All things aren't equal here. We can't just look at data in a bubble and say its in the dealers best interest to continue to support 3rd party vendors -- be it lead aggregators or 3rd party listing sites. Its a bad investment any way you slice it. Selling your future for the quick fix of today will continue to lead to declining profits for dealers. Period.
Skutch Henks Training LLC
Great points and insight here, I'm also looking into 3rd party leads and 3rd party websites meaning classified sites. I love how the nomenclature can be so confusing in the Automotive world, and misunderstanding's can be such a lucrative method of manipulation among some vendors in proving their package value. Anyway some of the difference I've found on classified sites (Autotrader, Cars, Cargurus, Edmunds, KBB) is that profit per vehicle sold for the given leads should be separated by new and used vehicles. For example Edmunds and KBB seem to be more new car oriented, and AT, Cars, Cargurus more used car oriented. So exposure of inventory value in relation to the packaging costs per each site can be determined. AT was the only site that had numerous options for packaging and prices that were troubling to figure out or understand. As for 3rd party lead vendors, like Dealix, Autobytel, and many others, I've discovered most get their leads through numerous microsites with quote forms promising the moon to shoppers. What's most shocking is they advertise these quote sites per market based on the dealers they have signed up, by placing search engine text ads in those areas. Most of the dealers I'm analyzing also spend healthy amounts on search engine text ads (SEM/PPC) as well for new inventory - some on used inventory too, so why would you pay $10-30 per lead on top of having your inventory already exposed to shoppers in your market area? That's ridiculous. I'm not sure if the GM's know this though, most of the stores doing this ridiculousness have heavy input from Internet Managers which are paid on per lead metrics, so they don't care how many types of leads they get nor the quality, in their world it's the more the better for their paycheck. I'm also looking into Truecar leads and not sure how to classify them, from the initial perspective it seems like a 3rd party lead vendor, but they also use mass media heavily to drive shoppers to their website. Again though I feel like after I spend a lot of time digging into this, the amount of overlap will not be worth the cost difference of incremental exposure value for their new inventory. It's like their business model is let's get in between these shoppers in a given marketplace who are already going to submit leads to these dealers anyway, but once we have the shopper lead information we can charge them $250 per sale because we'll have direct DMS dealer data. It's actually genius on their part, but again no real exposure of inventory value.
Automotive Internet Media
Dealers can put their inventory free on many 3rd party sites and only pay when someone is interested in their vehicle. Automotive Internet Media's CarClicks only charges $1.88 a for each customer driven directly to the dealership website's VDP. You can set your own budget and see the results in your Google Analytics. It's a great value and being adopted by many of the country's largest dealer groups. And yes I work for AIM. Let me know if you have any questions.
LotVantage
The One Time that it’s Okay to Automate Social Media
When social media started picking up steam in the automotive industry in 2008, the idea was that since more people were getting social and communicating on these public arenas, it would be a great medium through which to get more customers. Fast forward to today and we’ve found that it can be more challenging than most expected.
The lack of social media ROI has prompted many dealers to abandon social media in general. Sure, they’ll post every now and then on their Facebook page or put out a Tweet before a big sale, but for the most part the broken promise of social media delivering the masses to the showroom has many dealers pulling back. This can be a mistake.
Whether people are using social media to buy cars or not can be debated, but what cannot be debated is its influence on perceptions. Page views on social media pages, particularly Facebook and Twitter, are going up. Some of this can be attributed to more dealer websites linking to their social profiles. Another reason for this, which can be clearly seen through Facebook Insights, is that people click from search to check out what a dealership is doing on social media.
They are looking at dealerships’ social pages for a reason. They want to know more about your dealership. What are they seeing when they look at your profiles?
In general, most experts would agree that it can be a bad idea to automate your social media. You want to express the personality of the dealership and share content that is meaningful to your customers. For the most part, this is not achievable with automation tools, but there’s one instant when it’s okay.
Our philosophy regarding social media is simple: personalize easily. We know that it can be a challenge for dealers to find the time and content necessary to make a strong social media presence, so having the ability to control the content that’s being syndicated to Facebook and Twitter is the only way to automate without having a robotic page. There are tools like Hootsuite and Buffer that do part of the job, but they do not make it easy to post dealership-relevant content like inventory and industry articles.
We will be posting best practices about social media in the coming weeks, but for now we encourage you to check out our post about why a social media presence is important even if you don’t believe ...
1 Comment
AutoStride
"The lack of social media ROI has prompted many dealers to abandon social media in general. Sure, they’ll post every now and then on their Facebook page or put out a Tweet before a big sale, but for the most part the broken promise of social media delivering the masses to the showroom has many dealers pulling back. This can be a mistake." It's pay to play, everyone that doesn't know, better wake up and fast. I just spent $400.00 @ FB and have measured 7 conversions, which is a massive ROI (haven't calculated it yet). The $400.00 helped my client reach over 100,000 people in the Allentown, Bethlehem and Harrisburg, PA demographic.
LotVantage
The One Time that it’s Okay to Automate Social Media
When social media started picking up steam in the automotive industry in 2008, the idea was that since more people were getting social and communicating on these public arenas, it would be a great medium through which to get more customers. Fast forward to today and we’ve found that it can be more challenging than most expected.
The lack of social media ROI has prompted many dealers to abandon social media in general. Sure, they’ll post every now and then on their Facebook page or put out a Tweet before a big sale, but for the most part the broken promise of social media delivering the masses to the showroom has many dealers pulling back. This can be a mistake.
Whether people are using social media to buy cars or not can be debated, but what cannot be debated is its influence on perceptions. Page views on social media pages, particularly Facebook and Twitter, are going up. Some of this can be attributed to more dealer websites linking to their social profiles. Another reason for this, which can be clearly seen through Facebook Insights, is that people click from search to check out what a dealership is doing on social media.
They are looking at dealerships’ social pages for a reason. They want to know more about your dealership. What are they seeing when they look at your profiles?
In general, most experts would agree that it can be a bad idea to automate your social media. You want to express the personality of the dealership and share content that is meaningful to your customers. For the most part, this is not achievable with automation tools, but there’s one instant when it’s okay.
Our philosophy regarding social media is simple: personalize easily. We know that it can be a challenge for dealers to find the time and content necessary to make a strong social media presence, so having the ability to control the content that’s being syndicated to Facebook and Twitter is the only way to automate without having a robotic page. There are tools like Hootsuite and Buffer that do part of the job, but they do not make it easy to post dealership-relevant content like inventory and industry articles.
We will be posting best practices about social media in the coming weeks, but for now we encourage you to check out our post about why a social media presence is important even if you don’t believe ...
1 Comment
AutoStride
"The lack of social media ROI has prompted many dealers to abandon social media in general. Sure, they’ll post every now and then on their Facebook page or put out a Tweet before a big sale, but for the most part the broken promise of social media delivering the masses to the showroom has many dealers pulling back. This can be a mistake." It's pay to play, everyone that doesn't know, better wake up and fast. I just spent $400.00 @ FB and have measured 7 conversions, which is a massive ROI (haven't calculated it yet). The $400.00 helped my client reach over 100,000 people in the Allentown, Bethlehem and Harrisburg, PA demographic.
LotVantage
How Social Media Can Help Sell More Cars
Savvy dealers are turning to low cost alternatives like Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets as their alternative. Not only is it free, but it can help you interact with your future and existing customers in real-time. It's no secret that Dealers will do just about anything to gain new customers by any means necessary. Radio, Print and TV ads can all have tremendous results but at what cost? Those traditional marketing mediums and budgets are dying.
As we know, today’s consumer researches their next purchase online and wants to share their thoughts online to get their friends opinions before making the purchase. Why not help them by giving them all the information they are looking for and a way to communicate with you at the same time.
Social Media Grows Followers
This starts with your own staff. Do they follow the dealership themselves? Do they ask their friends to like their company? Encourage the staff to talk about the company and tag the organization on Facebook and Twitter. This is free advertising for the dealership.
Engage your Audience
This starts with posting relevant information to your Facebook fans and twitter followers. Let them know about the upcoming specials or just reduced inventory. What better way to do this then with photos and descriptions of the inventory? Make the posts likeable, sharable, clickable and able to post comments. When a consumer clicks on the inventory, bring them to your landing page inside the Facebook application. Furthermore, utilizing the Inventory applet to display all dealership inventory on Facebook.
Convert
Once a consumer is interested in the vehicle, what are you doing to convert them into a lead? Make sure your landing pages give multiple options to gather more information about the consumer including credit applications and appointment setting. Connecting all of this back to your CRM gives you the ability to manage everything from start to finish.
4 Comments
Remarkable Marketing
Thanks Jason for sharing these points on social! Just wanted to add to the post. A great aspect of Facebook is that you can actually upload your entire DMS and invite everyone to Facebook! We all know 80 - 90% will have an account. Once you upload the CSV file, watch the likes grow... even better, they are all your customers, so engagement is great!
AutoStride
This tool is a lovely little demon, that will help you convert customers easier @ http://www.tweetattackspro.com along with https://app.needtagger.com/get-started. http://i.imgur.com/CnkunWN.jpg ATTACK YOUR CUSTOMERS, DO NOT SIT BACK AND WAIT FOR THEM TO COME TO YOUR BORING POSTS. DON'T SPEND MONEY ON TWITTER ADS IF YOU CAN FIND CUSTOMERS IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD.
AutoStride
^ How To Find Auto Leads on Twitter http://www.needtagger.com/how-to-find-auto-leads-on-twitter
LotVantage
How Social Media Can Help Sell More Cars
Savvy dealers are turning to low cost alternatives like Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets as their alternative. Not only is it free, but it can help you interact with your future and existing customers in real-time. It's no secret that Dealers will do just about anything to gain new customers by any means necessary. Radio, Print and TV ads can all have tremendous results but at what cost? Those traditional marketing mediums and budgets are dying.
As we know, today’s consumer researches their next purchase online and wants to share their thoughts online to get their friends opinions before making the purchase. Why not help them by giving them all the information they are looking for and a way to communicate with you at the same time.
Social Media Grows Followers
This starts with your own staff. Do they follow the dealership themselves? Do they ask their friends to like their company? Encourage the staff to talk about the company and tag the organization on Facebook and Twitter. This is free advertising for the dealership.
Engage your Audience
This starts with posting relevant information to your Facebook fans and twitter followers. Let them know about the upcoming specials or just reduced inventory. What better way to do this then with photos and descriptions of the inventory? Make the posts likeable, sharable, clickable and able to post comments. When a consumer clicks on the inventory, bring them to your landing page inside the Facebook application. Furthermore, utilizing the Inventory applet to display all dealership inventory on Facebook.
Convert
Once a consumer is interested in the vehicle, what are you doing to convert them into a lead? Make sure your landing pages give multiple options to gather more information about the consumer including credit applications and appointment setting. Connecting all of this back to your CRM gives you the ability to manage everything from start to finish.
4 Comments
Remarkable Marketing
Thanks Jason for sharing these points on social! Just wanted to add to the post. A great aspect of Facebook is that you can actually upload your entire DMS and invite everyone to Facebook! We all know 80 - 90% will have an account. Once you upload the CSV file, watch the likes grow... even better, they are all your customers, so engagement is great!
AutoStride
This tool is a lovely little demon, that will help you convert customers easier @ http://www.tweetattackspro.com along with https://app.needtagger.com/get-started. http://i.imgur.com/CnkunWN.jpg ATTACK YOUR CUSTOMERS, DO NOT SIT BACK AND WAIT FOR THEM TO COME TO YOUR BORING POSTS. DON'T SPEND MONEY ON TWITTER ADS IF YOU CAN FIND CUSTOMERS IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD.
AutoStride
^ How To Find Auto Leads on Twitter http://www.needtagger.com/how-to-find-auto-leads-on-twitter
LotVantage
YouTube Helps Dealerships Sell More Inventory
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s the case, what is a video worth? 46% of people say they’d be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video. As an RV dealer, are you leveraging the use of video to help sell more vehicles each month and engage your customers? Video marketing and YouTube in particular, can help bring your dealership to the next level in getting more customers and ultimately selling more inventory. According to Alexa.com, YouTube is the #3 ranked website in the world. The average user spends 18 minutes on the site. It’s 20% easier to rank #1 with a video result as compared to a website. Video is a major influence on consumers making a purchase decision.
Drive More Traffic
If you want to drive more traffic to your dealership, utilize a software company that can take your dealership’s data, stitch together photos and descriptions while adding a Human Voiceover all in one video. Taking it to the next level and creating a YouTube channel with consistent brand imaging, a video library, and dealership information will give you even more exposure.
Capture the lead!
YouTube videos should engage the consumer to want more information.
Providing the consumer with an embedded phone number in the video and a link to a landing page with all the details about each vehicle will only increase the customer interaction. Each landing page should also contain additional calls-to-action ranging from financing options to trade in forms along with the dealership’s contact information.
Next Level
Taking it to the next level means ensuring everything you do is mobile. 40% of YouTube views are by mobile users. Are you utilizing a mobile strategy to engage your customers or are you giving them a poor experience from their phone?
There are many ways to spend an advertising budget today and a multitude of websites to advertise your inventory. Making an investment into a video product should be one of these discussions for your dealership to give yourself the opportunity to convert more ads into leads and sell more vehicles.
4 Comments
M10 Marketing Firm
Very nice article Jason. I agree that web video is so important to dealers that want to stay ahead of the game. It is so much better than just a picture and a price, and by using YouTube you can really help drive more traffic to your store by optimizing your videos. And while showing off the inventory through videos is very important, because obviously that is what we are selling, I highly recommend having video introductions of the sales staff to start building relationships with the customers while they are shopping online to help them to decide to do business with you. By having videos of both the inventory as well as the salesperson, it gives your store credibility and immediately builds trust and rapport.
Remarkable Marketing
Video is great if the Sales Team will jump on it! Over time this will become the norm and we will say to ourselves "Ha! Can you believe we used to ONLY send emails?"
HomeNet Automotive
Great article Jason! It makes perfect sense. We, as consumers, no matter which industry, do our research online most of the time prior to purchasing. Although reading about the vehicle does provide some great insight, video provides the ability to engage shoppers through sight and sound. Seeing the vehicle on Youtube as though the shopper is right there on the lot really appeals to the emotional aspect of buying and can help foster a relationship between shopper and salesperson before they even shake hands.
AutoStride
It definitely does, in that it occupies web equity. Regardless of the lack of vocal quality (robot), these videos occupy web equity and create a phone number entry and backlink to inventory. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuhkjOb9REE-TqphJ4f2eOg/videos
LotVantage
YouTube Helps Dealerships Sell More Inventory
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s the case, what is a video worth? 46% of people say they’d be more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video. As an RV dealer, are you leveraging the use of video to help sell more vehicles each month and engage your customers? Video marketing and YouTube in particular, can help bring your dealership to the next level in getting more customers and ultimately selling more inventory. According to Alexa.com, YouTube is the #3 ranked website in the world. The average user spends 18 minutes on the site. It’s 20% easier to rank #1 with a video result as compared to a website. Video is a major influence on consumers making a purchase decision.
Drive More Traffic
If you want to drive more traffic to your dealership, utilize a software company that can take your dealership’s data, stitch together photos and descriptions while adding a Human Voiceover all in one video. Taking it to the next level and creating a YouTube channel with consistent brand imaging, a video library, and dealership information will give you even more exposure.
Capture the lead!
YouTube videos should engage the consumer to want more information.
Providing the consumer with an embedded phone number in the video and a link to a landing page with all the details about each vehicle will only increase the customer interaction. Each landing page should also contain additional calls-to-action ranging from financing options to trade in forms along with the dealership’s contact information.
Next Level
Taking it to the next level means ensuring everything you do is mobile. 40% of YouTube views are by mobile users. Are you utilizing a mobile strategy to engage your customers or are you giving them a poor experience from their phone?
There are many ways to spend an advertising budget today and a multitude of websites to advertise your inventory. Making an investment into a video product should be one of these discussions for your dealership to give yourself the opportunity to convert more ads into leads and sell more vehicles.
4 Comments
M10 Marketing Firm
Very nice article Jason. I agree that web video is so important to dealers that want to stay ahead of the game. It is so much better than just a picture and a price, and by using YouTube you can really help drive more traffic to your store by optimizing your videos. And while showing off the inventory through videos is very important, because obviously that is what we are selling, I highly recommend having video introductions of the sales staff to start building relationships with the customers while they are shopping online to help them to decide to do business with you. By having videos of both the inventory as well as the salesperson, it gives your store credibility and immediately builds trust and rapport.
Remarkable Marketing
Video is great if the Sales Team will jump on it! Over time this will become the norm and we will say to ourselves "Ha! Can you believe we used to ONLY send emails?"
HomeNet Automotive
Great article Jason! It makes perfect sense. We, as consumers, no matter which industry, do our research online most of the time prior to purchasing. Although reading about the vehicle does provide some great insight, video provides the ability to engage shoppers through sight and sound. Seeing the vehicle on Youtube as though the shopper is right there on the lot really appeals to the emotional aspect of buying and can help foster a relationship between shopper and salesperson before they even shake hands.
AutoStride
It definitely does, in that it occupies web equity. Regardless of the lack of vocal quality (robot), these videos occupy web equity and create a phone number entry and backlink to inventory. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuhkjOb9REE-TqphJ4f2eOg/videos
No Comments