SO NOT TRUE 

Dimenished but not Dead 

Thanks for sharing Frank-- 

I agree, as I mentioned in my post, there will likely always be a place for static lead forms somewhere on every website. Some people, in the final stages of shopping for a vehicle will always be fine submitting a request for a sales person to reach out.

I still stand behind recommending dealers stive to create something interactive over a basic lead form when it comes to their lead generation strategy. 

Overall it sounds like we're on the same page though, lead forms have definitely diminished. But, for the increasing amount of the younger population that is much more tech savvy, is used to a "now" society, and prefers to be in control, meaning lead forms are indeed dying.  And, even those that did fill them out would probably have preferred to engage with something that was a little more interactive. 

I would encourage you to try taking one of your best or worst lead forms on you inventory pages and use an interactive experience in place of it to pick up more leads. You'll likely see a higher conversion and the leads that come with 3-5x the consumer data than you were receiving with a static form. 

I could have been pushing the envelope a bit by saying "lead forms are dead" but "lead forms have deminished" just didn't seem compelling enough :)

@Dealer Guy 

I sense a little sarcasm lol.

In my post above I said- "take a look at all of the best independent websites (Edmunds, KBB, CarGurus, ect.) and check out how much interactive content they offer visitors."

If we're defining interactive the same way Google is (allowing a two-way flow of information between a computer and a computer-user; responding to a user's input) then I would have to respectfully disagree. All of the examples you mentioned are leveraging very interactive expereinces over static lead forms where they can.

Does that mean they've completely eliminated the use of a static form? Definitely not. A small percentage of people are always going to still feel comfortable utilizing a static form, especially if there is no alternative available. 

The message I'm trying to convey, is that when offering customers the choice between a static lead form and an interactive alternative, the majority of people will choose the interactive option. I'm not trying to say there is its impossible to capture a lead with a static form, I mention that several times in my post.

The point is that if clearly consumers prefer an interactive alternative over a static lead form, AND it actually increases performance, wouldn't you lead your strategy with interactive lead conversion over static lead forms?

I don't agree with your assessment Russ, though I appreciate your input.  We are almost exclusively lead forms and have seen our leads grow from about 300 leads per month to about 1200 form fills last month. Our BDC has increased from 30transactions to 100-120 consistently per month.   We will continue down this path and couple that with  strong outbound call and email campaigns to maintain high customer loyalty and retention.  

Hi Mike, thanks for sharing. 

I'm happy to hear you've found success in lead forms and I think it speaks to the last section of my post. If your only using static forms and have a strategy built around optimizing your use of static forms without making them interactive, then your likely to see some level of production that is successful. But compared to what? Compared to do using nothing on your website? Compared to using something interactive? 

My challenge to you would be to take your best or worst static form, make it interactive and test the results. If you look at just the results of static forms, I competely agree, there are successes. But if you compare the results to static forms to the results of interactive alternatives, the results are significantly better. This is trend that has been gaining momentum both in our industry and in others. If you saw a major difference in results, making you noticiably more successful, a statement like "static lead forms are dead" wouldn't seem so far fetched. 

I think another good indicator that interactive is preferred over static lead forms by consumers, is by looking at all the new product categories on the market. Digital retaling, personalization, behavioral targeting, advanced online chat, market research tools, compariosn tools, assessments, calculators, ect ect. All of these products are leading the way in lead generation and conversion right now.

All of these are great examples of very interactive alternatives of engaging and capturing customers online that has evolved from static lead forms. My belief is that even the most straight forward static lead forms on your site like E-Price, Test Drive, Check Availability, special offers, promotions, ect, will continoue to become more and more interactive. 

i guess I'm not sure what an interactive form/contact/communication really is...  I'm new here and trying to learn from all the great articles.  We have static forms all over our Dealerfire based site.  What changes are recommended?

Thanks for your question Stacey! 

Here are a couple of other posts on DrivingSales that will help:

What is Interactive Lead Capture?-http://www.drivingsales.com/russ-chandler/blog/20160226-what-is-interactive-lead-capture 

Why does interactive lead capture work?-http://www.drivingsales.com/russ-chandler/blog/20160304-why-does-interactive-lead-capture-work

3 Types of interactive experiences your dealership should leverage- http://www.drivingsales.com/russ-chandler/blog/3-types-of-interactive-experiences-your-dealership-should-leverage

List your current CTA's out from all your buttons and banners that link to a static form. Then ask yourself, "what would live conversation sound like with a customer about this CTA?". What would you say to them about you, your dealership, your product, your process and your competitive edge? 

Then think about how you could turn that static form into something that better represences that converation online. How can you give more instant gratification to consumers instead of just "thank you for submitting your information"? 

Work with your current providers or find new ones that can help use technology to get this done. Animation, high quality design, images, assessments, calculators, quizes, personalization, multi-step consumer experiencs (using multi-stage conversion), are all examples of the technology available to you at an affordable cost. 

Typical dealer goals when upgrading to ineractive lead capture- 

-Convert more leads from existing traffic

-Collect more of the right data per lead (so that lead response and conversion increases)

-Take the consumer through an experience online that naturally warms up the customer to actually want to be contacted by the dealership, come into the showroom and buy. 

-Have a deeper, more meaningful engagement online to build direct brand equity and gain a competitive edge over other dealers in your market 

I hope some of this helps, feel free to reach out to me directly for any other help or more a more specifi to your website type of question. 

Russ, I would have to agree with all the others as well. Your examples of interactive forms are still static forms. I agree that more dealers should use trade-in forms as a good lead capture form.

However, most of them are still static forms. I have created some very cool dynamic forms for dealers that change future questions with the customers input. This will dramatically improve the lead quality. Personalizing these static forms into dynamic forms are key and give the customers a better user experience.  A+ for coming up with a great topic for discussion. Thanks, Jeremy

Hi Jeremy, thanks for sharing.

I think the technicality folks are getting hung up on is in the interpratation of what I mean by "static lead forms". I completely agree, to capture someones information, your going to have to have a few fields displaying for a consumer to enter information. One could argue that inside any interactive or dynamic alternative there is still a "lead form". But because it's being utilzed dynmaically and is responsive to the user's input, it's not static, it's interactive. 

A static form wouldn't be personalized to the individual user, it wouldn't respond to their engagement and input. It would dynamically collect information or direct the user based on behavior. A static lead form is a box with a few free-form text fields to enter information and click submit. In which after your served up a "Thanks for submitting your information" message and your done.

Here are a couple of examples-

The message I'm trying to convey is that consumers want so much more that a transactional engagement with your website. YES, lead forms are still very useful tools online and in your lead generation strategy. But not "static lead forms", which is what the average dealer website is loaded with. I'm suggesting that static lead forms that dealers are leading off with on inventory pages would be significantly more valuable to consumers AND to dealers if they were interactive. Consumers want instant access to information and tools that help them discover, shop, research and buy. I think everyone can agree on that. 

My Form submission rate has almost doubled in the last 2 years. I hover around 4.5 to 5% when I take into acount trade-in and finance forms. If I include chat its even higher. Not sure where you are getting your data from. Overall conversion rate is 15+% with 18K uniques a month. Sounds like you have been working some really crappy dealers.

Thats awesome John!

I think we're saying the same thing. Chat, trade in tools and credit apps are all very interactive lead forms. It's the "static lead forms" I'm calling out as dead. 

If your using any personalization or dynamic features on pages of your site that incorpate lead forms, thats a start to making them interactive. 

Lead forms will always be used to input information, but they won't always be static. The best converting features of any website right now are the most interactive and personalized pieces. 

For the sake of not turning this forum into an advertisement, if you decide you want to see an interactive version of a typical E-Price static form, shoot me a message. 

I'll stick up for Russ on this one. While it's true that forms can and will create great sales opportunities for dealerships, it's a poor form of communication, crying out for an upgrade. 

Ask yourself, would you rather have a customer send you a lead via a form or call you on the phone...(Your answer should be the phone.) For every reason that you would choose the phone you are reinforcing the message Russ is trying to convey. It's time for the demise of the static form. 

Maybe the most important point he makes is the low value a static form provides a customer and a dealership. It's just not an ideal way to start a positive relationship. 

Look at CarNow. They are attempting to improve customer/dealer communication channels. (I have no affiliation with CarNow, just using them as an example.) I'm sure there are others out there as well that are trying to provide a better communication experience.

Last thing - Just because cars.com, autotrader.com, trucar, etc. are doing something, it doesn't automatically make it the right thing to do. Be open to the idea of improving on the status quo. 

Thanks for the support Gayle! 

I loved your example with the phone, its all about having conversations with people on your website, just like you would on the phone. 

A classic example is the trade-in calculator, which has become almost standard among dealer websites. Years ago, dealers would collect appraisal data via a basic static form, which evolved to a calculator. It's still one of the best conversion tools out there and much of that credit goes to its ability to interact with consumers based on their input. It offers immediate gratification in return for information that is calculated using the users input. 

It worked well for the trade-in static form, it's likely following the same interactive strategy with otherstatic forms, would result in similar gains. 

Russ - It seems the challenge is understanding what you mean by "interactive lead forms". I went to your website, watched the examples you have on YouTube for "Trade" and "Price" and all I saw was a form that included radio buttons and checkboxes along with the usual text boxes.  But I'm not certain I would call that "interactive". It's just a nicer looking form. Or maybe I'm just missing something. 

I would certainly agree that getting the lead involved more and interacting with them as much as possible is better than just a simple form that asks for a name and email address. I know dealers that have found great success in form solutions form Wufoo or JotForm and built far nicer and cleaner forms than what their website provider gives them. They have definitely found that cleaner, simpler forms that ask pertinent questions convert better than just generic ones.

And of course, any form that can truly be interactive and respond to requests from users and give them the information they need immediately is going to convert better. Trade in forms that give a range of values based on user input is a good example. But there are so many times where the info that user wants can't be provided immediately and that's where the good ol' lead form is still the best way to gather that info from the user.

Thanks for sharing Mark, 

My intention of the post was to challenge the standard static lead form as the leading tool used to convert existing website traffic. Although dealers are increasingly adding interactive tools to their website for consumers, the static lead form is still the leading tool used by the average dealership. 

My strong opinion on the topic is definitely driven by the experience I've been fortunate to have, in working with dealers to turn their static lead forms into a more premium, interactive alternative. I appreciate that you took the time to take a peek at a few videos of our technology but I do believe this goes far beyond my own solution. The topic of interactive content vs static content, is something other industries are far ahead in leveraging to improve results and I would love to see that brought to the automotive industry as well.

Although a YouTube video can give a peek into what we offer, because your not actually interacting with the technology, its obviously tough to see how it responds to your interaction. So yes, your missing something. We utilize a combination of a consumers on-site website behavior, lead data points and digital engagement, to individually personalize CTA's in real time, that then leads to an interactive experience to increase website conversion. The benefits for our dealer clients has been as much as a 200% increase in conversion, 5x lead data collected, and significant increase in lead quality. Meaning a significant number of more leads are turning into live conversations with the dealership, converting to showroom traffic and making a purchase. 

Your right, not every form can result in an immediate result like the trade-in form. However, I think its common knowledge that consumers don't find a "static lead from" attractive. Therefore where an immediate result of some kind can be acheived vs a "thank you for submitting your information" page, I definitely recommend it. There are more options for this then before with so many options for independent data that cen be leveraged, assessment, calculators and website intergration. Where its not applicable, there are still signficant benefits to the consumer and dealership to apply interactive elements such as responsiveness, personalization, animation and video, to their lead forms. Naturally, this is more appealing to consumers than a static form.

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