Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Abrams on February 10, 2010 at 9:37am

Please don't take this as a solicitation, but I'm working with a company that has come up with something you might want to see. However, this lead producer is designed around total transparancy, meaning that invoice and all incentives relating to any particular new vehicle is shown. I would say that it is specifically designed for 'one price'' dealerships. Let me know if you want to have a chance to see what is being produced. 205-967-9405.

I know that the lead generating world has recently centered on used vehicles, unlike the early days of AutoWeb, Stoneage and Autobytel. Vehicle specific seems to be where it has gone as a result of how people shop for cars.

Permalink Reply by Charley Pompey on February 10, 2010 at 11:08am

Instead of buying leads, in my opinion, an inefficient use of your time and effort, look at it this way.

1) If the vast majority of your customers are using the web to research (some studies say over 90%!) their purchase...you need to be where they are looking...the search engines.

2) As you can only sell to a limited geographic area (customers won't drive more than 50 miles or so) focus on that area. Your web search efforts need to be local.

3) Do the basics such as make sure your web site is optimized for the search engines (SEO), has proper keywords, page titles and all that stuff. But, you also have to look at the efficiency of your web site. For example, if you have 1000 unique visitors how many contacts and credit applications do you recieve and how many cars do you sell. Most web sites are very wastefull of their visitors. This costs you lotttttts of money in lost sales.

4) Adjust your advertising and merchandising to drive traffic to YOUR web site. In some ads do not even put a phone number or address. Just use the web site address (url) and the town. Sounds scary, but it will get your URL out there.

5) Up to this point, nothing I've suggested is very expensive, and neither is this suggestion. Use a PPC (pay per click) program like Google Adwords to advertise WHERE your customers are looking. It will give immediate results, is cost effective (actually cheap), and can be adjusted and budgets set daily.

Why buy leads of unknown origin and value, these suggestions will get you, YOUR customers who are looking for you, for your product and save you lots of money.
My thoughts.

Charley Pompey, for free BHPH web site info, www.digapsblog.com

Permalink Reply by Gregg Hall on February 10, 2010 at 11:10am

We have had great success from our inventory feeds going out to Auto Trader and Cars.com but we also
just hooked up with a company that makes SEO optimized pages for your inventory, builds blogs, ties in everything with your social media accounts and also has a Google Adwords management program that can
automatically create ads for you for ALL of your inventory and get you the lowest PPC rates possible.

They ONLY work with ONE dealer in a specific city area with population over 100,000 people.

Let me know if you are interested and I will give you their info.

Gregg

Used Cars Pensacola

Permalink Reply by John Douglas on February 10, 2010 at 11:35am

Great website, Gregg.
But I couldn't find a tab to email you. I'd like some info on this company.
Thanks,
John

Permalink Reply by Albert Dewey on February 10, 2010 at 11:55am

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but I went to your website at frontiermotorsinc.com and you have already shot yourself in the foot in so far as the Google rank of your inventory pages are concerned. You are making a HUGE mistake by depending on a company that frames your inventory content instead of having it hosted under your own domain name. Doing a Google search for all pages under your domain, Google sees no cars for sale at all coming from your domain name. This is because all your cars that you have for sale are all listed under another domain (vinmanagersites.com in this case) and all you are accomplishing by doing this is improving the rank of vinmanagersites.com to the expense of your own domain frontiermotorsinc.com.

The logic behind this is as follows: I can easily create a site and put a frame in it that contains the contents of any site on the web that I choose. For example, I can frame the entire website microsoft.com in my personal homepage. Google looks at only the content that comes from my own domain in determining my rank. They are smart enough to know that the content that comes from microsoft.com does not belong to me and I get absolutely no credit for it at all.

I know that this has strayed from the initial topic here but I felt obliged to bring it up because I see many dealers making this mistake and since all dealers want to get the best Google rank possible (which does have to do with the initial topic here) I thought I would pass along this important bit of useful information.

Albert Dewey
AutoCorner
www.auto-corner.com

Permalink Reply by Gregg Hall on February 10, 2010 at 12:37pm

You are preaching to the choir. I just took over the internet department and the comments you made are the same that I told the owner - it just takes time to get the changes made. I already have a plan in place to make those changes - just waiting on our site redesign etc.

Like I said, I have been marketing online for over 14 years and I have written books on SEO , SEM, and internet marketing.

Google me!

My best bet until I can get the changes done is using this other company which DOES create indexable inventory pages on domains we control.

Thanks

Gregg

Permalink Reply by Erick Kirks on February 10, 2010 at 12:10pm

Like Michael said I hope this isn't seen as a solicitation although it looks like one! I suggest every ISM thoroughly research all the 3rd party lead providers before simply doing the same thing as the guy next door. I have worked for CarsDirect.com for over 10 years and have seen the ups and downs of the 3rd partly lead generation world first hand. We offer a vast selection of programs for dealers with new car leads, used car advertising and special finance leads. Many of our programs are also designed with links to dealers' websites. I will agree with the folks below that the best lead you can get is an organic lead from your own website. We have all experienced a decline in quality of leads over the years as the industry got saturated with "lead exchanges". At the end of the day there is a finite number of true buyers at any given time and with so much competition among lead providers everyone tried to chase volume. We are out of that "chasing volume" game and are focusing our efforts on creating more of our own organic traffic so we can ensure our dealers a higher closing ratio. (back in 2002 when most of our traffic was organic JD Powers had us ranked #1 in closing ratio with 15%) The conversation about 3rd party leads needs to shift from cost per lead to cost per sale. I can sell you $15 leads all day long but you know what you will get - some car sales, some duplicates and some junk. While we still offer the PPL "volume" model, we have some other programs in place as well to provide you with customers further down the buying funnel. I invite you to take a look at our automotive network of automotive websites that we own exclusively to get an idea of how we build our own organic traffic. http://www.internetbrands.com/ib/autonetwork
If you are interested in speaking with someone about how our lead programs work please visit:
https://connect.carsdirect.com
I apologize if I offend anyone in here by putting in my two cents. Again, I simply wanted to share my thoughts as someone who "sits on the other side of the fence". Good luck to each of you as you wade through these admittedly murky waters to search out the best companies to partner with.

Permalink Reply by Tom Gorham on February 10, 2010 at 3:12pm

First I want to thank everyone who responded. I am in total agreement about the best leads coming from your own website and I make good use of SEO and SEM, Social Media, and more. You are right that search is the most powerful medium.

I am still looking for more good new car leads that are qualified and exclusive. OEM leads are good but the "third party leads" that GM is buying from others are not the same quality as OEM and GM is micromanaging these leads. I've been in Automotive Internet Sales and Marketing management for 12 years and never put all my eggs in one basket. My past experience with new car lead generators was that the leads proved good at first but then quality began to falter as time went by, until I dropped the companies in question.

Pay per sale seems like a good idea. Any other ideas?

Permalink Reply by Gregg Hall on February 10, 2010 at 4:12pm

If you can get hooked up with ZAG they are a good pay per sale source - they are affiliated with companies like USAA, Progressive, American Express, etc

Gregg

Permalink Reply by Tom Gorham on February 10, 2010 at 7:00pm

Thanks Greg, I'll check them out at NADA...

Permalink Reply by Michael Abrams on February 11, 2010 at 9:18am

Tom: Edifice Group (Lawrenceville, GA, Skip Soucie, CEO) offers a true pay for sale program that they have been running successfully for over 5 years. Since most of their marketing is done using a proprietary permission based database, handraisers are driven to the dealer's site and the onus is more on the internet department to harvest the deals than is true of most direct marketing. I helped them create some derivatives of this program as well. I am planning spend some time in their hospitality suite at the Westin Hotel over the weekend (suite 832) if you would like to talk about it. The methodology is that of 'hunter' as opposed to the 'gatherer' which is true of almost all lead generating services.

I agree with just about all comments being made here. Your own website is where you want the traffic. A pay for click option can be a pandora's box for many who have traveled that route.

Permalink Reply by Tom Gorham on February 11, 2010 at 10:50am

Thanks Michael, They are now on my list. Maybe I'll meet you there.

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