Autotrader's New Car Solution
Has anyone had success with Autotrader’s NEW car solution provided you’re merchandising the vehicles correctly (eg Competitive Price, Pictures, Video, and Seller’s Notes)? Have you seen an increase in new and used car activity with their new car program?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Gould on
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I would love to hear some feedback on this as well. We were averaging less than 75 VDP views/mo at our Chevy store for a 100 car inventory. Is this normal?
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Permalink Reply by Adam Barish on
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We started listing New Chevy's on there only one month ago. We have not had a ton of traffic, only modest interest. We have one confirmed sale of a 2012 Camaro ZL1 which was found on AT New car listings.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Irwin on
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Are you taking quality pics along with a video? Seller's notes? Aggressive price (especially not MSRP)?
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Yes. We use Vauto with all the bells and whistles. We upload about 10 good photos, use the description generator and showed a $1000 discount.
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Permalink Reply by Doug Davis on
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Adam, you are using the vAuto description writer for new cars?
Think of your display advertising the same way that you would build a newspaper ad.
When a customer is looking down the SRP, they are looking at what sets your car apart from the rest. Understand, they have probably sorted by model and price.
One of the biggest mistakes is to not have the vehicles styled properly. Yesterday, I saw a Corvette styled as "Corvette LT2" and it was a convertible. That is a mistake that will cost you sales.
Pick one of your base new vehicles. Go to Autotrader and look for one, then sort by price. Where is your car? If you are on the third page, nobody is going to find it. Unless you are in a small market, it is all or nothing, with AutoTrader. If you are a Featured dealer, in a metro market, and there are several Premium dealers, they probably will not find your cars.
I discount the vehicle to put it on the top. I use any incentives, to further discount it, then note it in the disclosure. Price lead a couple like you would in the newspaper.
In your description, nothing about the dealership belongs there. You only have several lines and they need to be about the vehicle. Put the major options first. Example: AWD, NAVIGATION, POWER TILT AND SLIDING MOONROOF, LEATHER INTERIOR etc.. Put the most important, first.
I encourage you to build a description library, preferably in WordPad (it doesn't have formatting which will show up like Chinese looking characters), for each of your new vehicles. Have a list of option packages and their contents then cut and paste as you edit them in your back-end tool. It is time consuming but it pays dividends.
We have been able to track consumers, as they move through the internet, doing their research. We can see where customers leave AutoTrader and Cars.com and come directly to our websites, days later. With Big Data, this has become even more clear. You underestimate display advertising's importance, if you are only looking at leads that come directly from them.
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Great advice. Big Data - are you using Vinsolution or Dataium for tracking? Are you pricing via Vauto and does that flow to just Cars.com and AT or do you price the same on your website? Thanks! Anyone else monitoring this thread - please contribute.
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Actually, I'm using neither but the dataium/cars.com study is something that everyone should be looking at. There are a lot of emerging companies that are into Big Data. It will change the way that we think about the internet. I promise that many preconceived ideas will be changing. We will know when customers enter, leave and re-enter the market.
I look at new and used cars as "iron". When I was working as an Internet Director, I put the same level of effort in both new and used cars. I was using vAuto but have a new preference. Because of incentives, you are going to have to watch your new car pricing the hard way. You will have to go on the sites and sort the individual models. PITA! I also shopped my competition regularly. I want my website and third party display advertising to be identical. If done properly, you could see sales to lead ratios above 20 percent. Transparency sells cars and there are no secrets with the internet.
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Permalink Reply by Rich Thompson on
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I have a couple questions....Is your showroom "one price" or "limited haggle"?? When the customer sits down to work numbers do the salepeople show the customer the online price? If no, why not? Should the showroom customer have a different price experience than the online customer?
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Permalink Reply by Robb McCalmon on
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Signed up with their new car program and did not have much success with it, I have since cancelled my contract with AutoTrader for new cars. I priced my inventory had great pictures and kept everthing updated. Did not move the needle in my overall new cars sales, did not see alot of leads, sure AutoTrader showed lots of clicks, etc...but in the end my money spent did not produce any new cars sold.
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Robb...
Im curious, how long did you stay on the new car pgm? I asked a few questions before your reply (see above) and I'm interested in your input also...
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I was on for a little over 6 months, we are not a one price store, how ever we use a great program "shopper stopper" which is full disclosure pricing fora customer. Normally when I adjusted the price on AT I would also have hange tag on the vehicle to match the price. The AT program just did not bring me in a good amount of leads, and the few leads we did get, did not turn into sales. Now my pre owned department uses AT and they have good success with the program. Rich email me if you have any further questions.
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