The Secret Behind Automotive Sales Leads

The retail automotive industry has been asleep at the wheel.  It is time for car dealerships to wake up before they end up outsourcing their sales strategies to companies that do not have their best interests in mind.

Without much attention in the press, Internet sites like:

	www.edmunds.com	http://autos.yahoo.com
	www.roadandtrack.com	www.autoweb.com
	www.automotive.com	www.motortrend.com
	www.caranddriver.com	www.autobytel.com
	www.cars.com	www.cardirect.com

have become the elite of the few dozen major Internet sites that are capturing page one and two listings from the major search engines when consumers search for new and used car information.  These sites are even coming up on Google page one when you include a local city name in your area.  In many cases, local car dealership websites are not coming up on page one or two  for local search terms.  The absence of local dealership sites is leading consumers to believe that third party car sites are the best place to get information on new and used cars.

I bet that local car dealership sales managers would disagree.  Internet sales teams within the dealership want "local" sales lead flow to increase from their website(s) so they have the opportunity to respond and win new business in a timely manner.

The Sales Lead Paradox

 

Why are car dealerships giving up a large part of their local sales channel to partner(s) they can't control? Most car dealerships are paying "car enthusiast" sites $20-$25 per lead every time a person asks for a quote on a new/used car in their zip code area. These third party leads normally have a conversion rate between 5-10% and cost dealerships on average $350 per car sale in lead costs and hundreds of additional dollars in labor pursuing non-productive leads.  Imagine the impact on your bottom line if you could create better quality leads at a much lower price and also increase overall sales lead volume.

When dealing with  third party lead providers, there is no way to easily verify if these purchased leads have been sold to other local dealers. There is also no way to validate what percentage of the leads are bogus. If you ever have purchased automotive sales leads , which convert on average no better than 10%, you know that many leads can have email addresses that never reply when you send out a quote.

With the auto industry margins under pressure, dealers need to create a sustainable and cost effective Internet lead generation solution which they can control. The "little known secret" is that most dealership sites, if properly designed and edited, would attract many of the same local automotive leads that they are buying from third parties. No one is telling the dealers because it is a multi-million dollar gravy train for these automotive websites.

Automotive Website Optimization

 

Fixing dealership sites can take as little as 30-60 days, but not too many people are talking about this opportunity for dealers to win back their Internet sales channel. The implementation of "organic search engine optimization" applies to auto dealers perfectly. We have the case studies to back up these claims and the proof that you can take back ownership of your lead traffic.

Simple steps like utilizing Google Maps for free organic automotive listings are one way to gain better Internet visibility.

Automotive Pay-Per-Click Advertising

 

Many car dealerships are simply ignorant about search engine marketing (SEM) and Internet Lead Generation (ILG). This is not an attack on car dealership management; it is just an observation that I have made from my work with my clients in the auto industry. Automotive dealers are coming to realize that full page weekly newspaper advertising is becoming too expensive for the amount of sales generated by the financial investment. Many dealerships have cut down their print advertising budget, but they are unschooled on how to spend their money on the Internet.

Car dealers are spending money on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. We have found that dealers can be wasting 50-70% of their PPC budget without their direct knowledge. PPC works to sell cars. Throwing money at PPC for the sake of spending a "dollar budget" is just pure insanity. It is not how much you spend on PPC but rather what is your cost per conversion (cost per car sale via PPC advertising)! If you are using PPC and have not created a comprehensive strategy for tracking PPC page views, phone calls, clicks and the resulting sales you should investigate how to improve your PPC cost-per-sale measurements.

Buying Automotive Sales Leads

 

Many car dealers have been suckered into believing that they have to buy leads from third party vendors in order to be successful on the Internet. Buying leads is NOT bad; actually, if you can control costs, third party leads can be effective. However, before you start spending money on third party leads, you need to look at how to improve your own website. Why? Once you fix your own website, your cost per lead significantly drops as new leads come from your "fixed" company website month after month. You also will have a sustainable mechanism for future lead flow that can be supplemented with third party leads, as your budget permits.

My suggestion is that car dealership owners take back control of their businesses. That they employ the same design and marketing strategies of the third party lead providers to gain back their local Internet shoppers. If you own a car dealership or are a GM/GSM, the sooner you take action the better control you will have on your sales future.

You can also see my automotive lead generation case studies at: www.seonj.com/autos

Brian Pasch

Pasch Consulting Group

 

brian@seonj.com

 

732-842-4720