Auto Dealers and Online Marketing
According to a recent data from the National Automotive Dealers Association (NADA) indicate that of the $7.8 billion spent on advertising by auto dealers in 2006, 11.5% was spend on online marketing and competition is on the rise! Although dealer sites received more visitors in 2006 then in 2005 (320 per month in ‘06 versus 228 per month in ‘05), conversion rates to sales dropped (from 26.4% in 2005 to 19.2% in 2006 for both unqualified and qualified leads). The most common customer gripes were slow dealer response rates and the poor quality of information
Improving conversion rates continues to be one of the most important topics facing auto dealers and online sellers alike. In the next couple of days, I will try and share some pointers on how you can improve your conversion rates using vFlyer!
June 20th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Consumers like to see the vehicle Carfax and knowing a vehicle is a 1 Owner. I would suggest integrating Carfax into vflyer and somehow emphasizing 1 owner vehicle with a small graphic. -Jeff
June 25th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
[...] A couple of days ago I talked about the importance of high conversion rates and promised to share some points on improving your conversion rate in general and more specifically using flyers. [...]
July 7th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Dealers websites are expanding beyond the ability of their internet team to cover. Many dealers do not have a process set up for handling their leads beyond the first day. A lot of them take the lead, judge it for its merits, work the promising ones, then send an email that probably hits a spam blocker just to get it off their lead tracker.
I’ve seen some tenacious follow-up. Nelson Mazda in Tulsa refuses to give up until they make contact. Jeff’s team, while I’ve never tested them myself, have a reputation for making the most out of their leads.
Still, they are the exception. There are still dealerships out their who hand out leads to floor salespeople to call in between ups.