Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ammar Khan on June 14, 2010 at 2:10pm

Your best leads are always going to come from your own website so if I were you, I would spend all your money on development of your dealership website and since you are primarily concentrating on used cars, Craigslist is probably the best option to expose your inventory. Be happy to help with website setup and SEO.

Permalink Reply by Mike Hastings on August 10, 2010 at 6:52pm

I agree with Ammar's comment about web site leads as the first priority. Secondly, take a look at ZAG, you pay for the lead only when you deliver the vehicle. Other 3rd party lead providers you might consider are AutoUSA & Dealix.

You can easily control your budget by capping the number of leads you contract for and you might consider doing that by a radius rather than simply a lead cap.

Permalink Reply by Tony Mento on October 12, 2010 at 9:51am

For the record, I am an Internet Manager for a independent dealership and I am not looking to sell you any of my services, so my suggestions are from actual job experience. I am new to DE and this question intrigued me, and some of the other responses interested me. I hope I can help just a little bit.
Like you, I started an Internet Department about 2 years ago for a dealership where the owner wasn't totally convinced this was the way to go and limited the initial budget. We are now a 4 person staff with redesigned websites and an ever expanding internet presence. It is definitely a lot of trial and error, but I will attempt to give you one or two of the basic practices I have found worthy regarding lead providers and prospecting.
First of all, assuming you have a website now, I wouldn't suggest burying "all" of your budget in your website right away. That is something that can be done when you reach the additional allotment. Just be sure the content is fresh, inventory up to date and that you have enough "call to actions" to engage your customer in order to obtain contact information. So long as it is presentable and user friendly, I am sure it will get you by for now. Besides, as you grow your internet presence you will want to brand your company and that will start with your website.
And you definitely don't need to spend any of that initial budget on "SEO" or "Pay per Clicks" (the big industry buzz words) right away, no matter who is telling you that you do. I am not saying it doesn't work, I am just saying that based on your very limited budget, you need to do as much low, or no, cost internet marketing as possible. As I said, keep your web site content fresh and you should use some of the free press release sites, along with social media, to get your name out there, and that will give you enough of a start.
As for lead providers, we are a small independent, but we have most of the major players (Autotrader, Cars.com, Autobytel,Every Car Listed, etc). I recommend that unless you can become premier dealership with Autotrader and Cars.com, I don't suggest using them right away. Autobytel on the other hand is a per lead cost, and they seem to be connected everywhere. I will say that their sales support is not the best, but the service they provide and the number of "hot" leads that they provide make it a good investment. As previously mentioned, you can set the number of leads and geographic location for your leads and that helps you to set a maximum expense each month. I am not suggesting only to use Autobytel, I am saying that there are other "pay per lead" companies out there, and I would definitely suggest you work with them first and not commit to any "monthly fees" from the other providers.
One more thing... (sorry to go on and on, but you got me going) is be sure you have a good lead management system. We use HigherGear (which I highly recommend), but there are several less expensive alternatives to get you started. The system and the processes you put in place are definitely most important to achieve success in your department.
One other suggestion is to use email blasts and newsletters to contact all of the customers in your database. Email is still one of the most cost effective and affective means to contact prospective customers. No matter who thinks that it doesn't work, or that consumers are tired of receiving emails, it does work and usually costs nothing but time and a little creativity!
Hope this helps a little bit, and sorry again that I rambled on and on. Good luck with your endeavor. It may be tough in the beginning, but keep fighting and know that it will all be worth it!

Permalink Reply by Robert Camp on October 21, 2010 at 4:17pm

I trained dealers for autobytel for several years and their are some standard rules to follow; reply to inquiries right away, use a sales script with each customer, unlike the showroom floor Internet sales is a scripted sales process, most dealership managers have no experience with scripted sales so you may need to look outside for help if you can't do it yourself, next have the authority to quote a competitive or most competitive price, if you have to take each deal to the sales manager you will not be very successful, I would spend my first $1,000 on training. This next item is a suggestion and please know that I represent this company. Most dealership websites have a long form credit application, Internet customers like quick answers and most bail out of a long form credit application before they complete it. DealerCentric offers a short form credit application which has been successful in improving closed sales on the Internet. Their is a cost to this program but, most dealers sales improvement offsets the cost.

Permalink Reply by Tracey Mitchell on October 21, 2010 at 9:45pm

Once you get the traffic to your site, how much of it are you converting to leads?
Chat is growing at a fast rate, and for good reason. With the right software, process, and people, you can increase your current lead conversion by 60 to 100% without lowering your original conversion. Want to see the results for free? Get 30 days of free 24/7 staffed chat support and leads, its simple to setup, and you can be live in just a few days. Why not try it? Tracey@carchat24.com or call my cell 813-781-9491

Permalink Reply by Vikram Kotnis on October 22, 2010 at 10:46am

To start with automobile business is extremely local, with a limited budget I am assuming you are willing to put in some efforts yourself and the 1000$ is to be spent on paid lead generation,
Do it Yourself:
1. Local yellow pages, city search listings etc
2. Create specific campaigns every month e.g. promote the inventory which you want to move fast
3. For every campaign, create blogs, press releases etc every month make sure you have back links to your site.
4. You can create coupons every month and list it on coupon listing sites
5. Do a simple newsletter and send it out to existing clients and run some promotions for referrals
6. Most important you have to watch analytics and webmaster on regular basis , use keyword research tools to cross compare the data on keyword research and webmaster and see where is the biggest potential to move up on keywords.
7. Run cross promotional campaigns with local businesses e.g. tie up with different restaurant every month and give out their coupon to your customers ask them to reciprocate and give you backlinks.
8. You can create quick videos with your cameras and tag it with campaigns you want to run and upload on you tube and metacafe. If you have additional time get some inventory videos done too and upload them.
9. Upload car images on flickr etc and tag them
10. Do listings on all local directories including Google, Yahoo, bing
11. Create a facebook fan page and share all the content you create ask your colleagues to like it share it comment on it.
12. Craigslist, lemonfree, google base etc whoever allows free inventory listings make sure you keep them updated frequently.
13. Engaging customers extremely important, once a sale is done get a photograph send a thankyou email with pic and encourage them to upload it on fan page and leave a comment etc.
I think I can go on but if you do this I think you will be able to see a decent jump in leads the list can go on

Paid Marketing:
Taking into consideration the limited budget we have a short term and long term strategy needs to be created. For first 3 month spend part of your budget I would say 500$ on PPC on google, if your site is not optimized well this will give you an idea of what keywords you need to concentrate on in your local area. Once you have optimized your site you can drop this budget.
1.Google PPC and Local sponsored - 300-500$
2. Bulk email tools you will find good ones at 50$/month
3. Maybe first month you can spend some money on creating a professional video , this is one time cost around 600-700$
4. As we have limited budget viral marketing should be the strategy, run a campaign on facebook campaign expense 300$ it cannot be selling cars, it has to be a CSR campaign and the trick is to keep the local population involved so the brand spreads virally,
e.g. CSR campaign www.kleinhonda.com
one of the best managed facebook fan pages to keep consumers involved http://www.facebook.com/tituswillcars?v=wall&ref=nf
the advantage of facebook campaign is you have a captive clientèle who you can reach out to immediately at no cost specially very important from a Servicing standpoint and the viral effect helps spread your brand virally.
5. If you can engage a SEO company with a small budget every month for first 3 months at least that will help, if you have in house expertize then this is not required. You can find several companies who will do basic SEO for 200-300$/month they wont have automobile expertize but you will have to drive the strategy and give them pointers on what exactly you want optimized which keywords etc and the companies will be able to take it from there.

I think as I said you will have to keep trying out things every month with a small budget and see whats working for you and what not, tracking and analyzing every 2 weeks is very important.

Permalink Reply by Mr. Natural on October 7, 2011 at 7:00pm

I wish you all the luck in the world, and know exactly where you are coming from Dale...I've got some pretty solid ideas of my own, and one of them is to NEVER talk about the cars on the phone or in email...NEVER. Forget the cars, build a relationship of trust.

Click here and read what I posted just a couple days ago. I have written several things for this blog, and it is all on the subject to which you elude.

If you like, lets talk on the phone someday soon.

 

Sincerely,

Gillon

Permalink Reply by Craig Dawson on April 6, 2012 at 2:36pm

Hi Dale,

Did any of the advice work?  update?

Permalink Reply by Donna L. Bolser on April 11, 2012 at 8:34pm

Try ebay.....  as ebay is getting really big now....