Are you doing pay-per click advertising? What are the results?
Like most dealerships, we have been marketing heavily through the Internet. Our primary goal was to drive more customers to our market while controlling our marketing/advertising expenses. We have been having success with our efforts of website optimization and search engine marketing.
Our SRP (search results page) views have increased dramatically. We have seen our VDP (vehicle details page) views improve as well. But the telling sign is the conversion rate. After all, ups without conversions into real traffic are worthless.
Just curious as to how you approach this marketing and what kind of results you are getting? Can you share some ideas?
Here's some of our metrics - SRP visits are up 59% and our VDP conversion rate is just over 3%.
Our SRP (search results page) views have increased dramatically. We have seen our VDP (vehicle details page) views improve as well. But the telling sign is the conversion rate. After all, ups without conversions into real traffic are worthless.
Just curious as to how you approach this marketing and what kind of results you are getting? Can you share some ideas?
Here's some of our metrics - SRP visits are up 59% and our VDP conversion rate is just over 3%.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Suzanne Lucas on
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Hi Joe,
You are not alone in trying to improve your floor traffic, because as we know, we got to get them in the door to really have a deal. I have been working with dealers to improve vehicle sales with great results. By marketing to your own customer data base, you can have intellegent communication with your customers, your salespeople are more confident working with previous customers, you increase customer retention and reach out to them before they decide to shop your competition.
The program is based on identifying your "lowest hanging fruit" ...those customers that can purchase today, with no money down, and potentially lower their monthly payment. As you know, lease customers have to make a decision to repurchase a vehicle as their contract nears expiration. With retail customers, we plant the seed by engaging them on the service drive when they are our captive audience if they fit the criteria, and just make the offer. Then identify the customers that are not in the service drive and pass those leads out to the team to call the customer and again, just make the offer.
As Bill said, customers need to speak to a live person. When salespeople know what to say, and know that their outgoing calls are only to the BEST customers, those that can buy today....they are much more willing to call the customer with a viable offer that raises the curiosity of the customer. On average, dealers are selling 15- 40 additional vehicles per month and increasing revenue 60K to 100K per month.
There are all kinds of data mining tools out there, but many focus on mailers only. Letters to the customer that are followed up by a phone call are 80% more effective than a mailer alone.
What would we like to know about the customer before we pick up the phone to call them? The structure of the entire previous deal, including profits and trade info....whether they come to us for service or not, and how much they are spending on repairs be it warranty or customer pay and those amounts....which vehicle in our inventory that matches to the customer and the complete structure of the new deal including incentives, refundables on products purchases on the original sale, payoff, ACV, and a new payment ....Now we can have intellegent conversation with our customer. add to that processes, scripts, and training for your calling team, and WOW...the results are amazing.
The thing that is crucial is a management team that holds the team accountable for the results. Those dealers are making great money every month and taking their sales volumes to the next level.
If you have any interest in taking a look, I would be happy to share with you via webinar...for about 20 minutes.
Feel free to call me if you would like to just talk about this opportunity.
Suzanne Lucas
757-537-8784 -
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Permalink Reply by David G Briand on
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You're on the right track with your focus on conversion. I have been the GM at Lexus, and GM/Partner with Honda and Dodge franchises. I also just finished up my Masters in Internet Marketing via the University of San Francisco and my Board Dissertation in Conversion Rate Optimization thru Market Motive. I am just in the process of transitioning out of my stores and into this full time. I'm basically obsessed witn CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) now. At first I was interested in Internet Marketing for the SEO and SEM (PPC)components and have become highly skilled in both disciplines. I figured that traffic generation was the key online. Then as I was coming to the end of my 2 year course, we started to talk about CRO a little. I was hooked and sought out more education in this area.
It just made sense to me as a car dealer. In my stores of course I am always looking for more floor traffic, but I am more focused on the quality of the traffic and the quality of my sales reps. I can always get more people in the door with lost leader or tricky ads, but it's poor quality traffic. Then once this poor quality traffic arrives ... if I have all new or poorly trained sales reps, it compounds the issue and I end up witn poor conversion rates ( closing %) in my showroom. I have realized through my recent education that I am already an expert in CRO, because in the car biz we are always focused on the steps to the sale and closing. Websites and webpages need to be looked at as remote sales reps, that use the old AIDA principles and ask for the sale every time, at the right time. I use a methodology called O/CO, which stands for Objection/Counter Objection to increase conversion rates. O/CO in conjunction with A/B
Testing, Mulivariant Testing and great segmentation in your web analytics all but guarantees you will absolutely kill it online!!
Just remember ... you have a leaky bucket. 97 - 98% of all the traffic you pour into your bucket leaks out , without a name or contact info (conversion). Why pay for more traffic (PPC or SEO etc) when it's all leaking out the bottom? You probably have enough traffic. The key is to have better quality traffic and more highly skilled web pages. Just like a great honest ad driving quality traffic to highly trained sales people is a guarantee for high closing rates, so will be the effect of this process online.
All the best and keep moving in the direction you are headed ... you're on the right road. -
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Permalink Reply by Joe Clementi on
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David
Thank you, Bill and Suzanne for adding to the discussion. I enjoyed your comments and suggestions and hope that your contribution helped others in the same position.
Davdi, I would be interested in the program that you completed at SF. Can you forward along some information that I might be able to dig into? Thanks for your feedback.
David G Briand said:You're on the right track with your focus on conversion. I have been the GM at Lexus, and GM/Partner with Honda and Dodge franchises. I also just finished up my Masters in Internet Marketing via the University of San Francisco and my Board Dissertation in Conversion Rate Optimization thru Market Motive. I am just in the process of transitioning out of my stores and into this full time. I'm basically obsessed witn CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) now. At first I was interested in Internet Marketing for the SEO and SEM (PPC)components and have become highly skilled in both disciplines. I figured that traffic generation was the key online. Then as I was coming to the end of my 2 year course, we started to talk about CRO a little. I was hooked and sought out more education in this area.
It just made sense to me as a car dealer. In my stores of course I am always looking for more floor traffic, but I am more focused on the quality of the traffic and the quality of my sales reps. I can always get more people in the door with lost leader or tricky ads, but it's poor quality traffic. Then once this poor quality traffic arrives ... if I have all new or poorly trained sales reps, it compounds the issue and I end up witn poor conversion rates ( closing %) in my showroom. I have realized through my recent education that I am already an expert in CRO, because in the car biz we are always focused on the steps to the sale and closing. Websites and webpages need to be looked at as remote sales reps, that use the old AIDA principles and ask for the sale every time, at the right time. I use a methodology called O/CO, which stands for Objection/Counter Objection to increase conversion rates. O/CO in conjunction with A/B
Testing, Mulivariant Testing and great segmentation in your web analytics all but guarantees you will absolutely kill it online!!
Just remember ... you have a leaky bucket. 97 - 98% of all the traffic you pour into your bucket leaks out , without a name or contact info (conversion). Why pay for more traffic (PPC or SEO etc) when it's all leaking out the bottom? You probably have enough traffic. The key is to have better quality traffic and more highly skilled web pages. Just like a great honest ad driving quality traffic to highly trained sales people is a guarantee for high closing rates, so will be the effect of this process online.
All the best and keep moving in the direction you are headed ... you're on the right road. -
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