Writing a response (kinda venting..sorry about that) to a few comments I've read. I worked for Autotrader.com for ten years. (Don't now) Edmunds was the third largest site to link into ATC, only second to Google and Yahoo. One down fall for Edmunds previous to 2012 was ATC fueled the used car search that was on their home page. Consumers would search for a vehicle many times mistakenly searching for a new car...but really were searching for a used. They were instantly sent to ATC (of course not realizing they were not on Edmunds anymore) Edmunds ended the Contract I believe some time last year around August. ATC results have gone down severely since then. From my experience with what dealers told me, ATC had a higher conversation rate when they were partnered with Edmunds. Many sourcing studies were done and Edmunds.com consistently sent used car sales to dealers...however ATC took the credit. It's my humble opinion that Edmunds is launching a direct sales team to get that used car revenue and TMV is really no different than ATC's partnership with V-Auto and the trade in center or KBB. ALL in one now, right? To all 3rd parties defense it has become virtually impossible to perfectly track where all your sales are directly coming from. Every major study is showing that around 71% of consumers have NO prior contact with the dealer before coming in to the dealership. That was in 2010. I saw a huge decrease in emails and phone calls in the last three years nationally by two thirds while maps to dealerships increased by the same. This backs up the studies that show there is less contact the dealer prior to the visit.
One major merchandising issue is the custom comments and 1-800 numbers in your ads. Many listings end up with three numbers including your sales people requesting a text to their cell etc. Tracking becomes impossible. (on a funny note...make up a sheet with logos of companies like Cars, ATC, etc and put one on the page on the top left that you don't use to advertise. (hopefully that's your local paper) Have your sales people/customer each circle where their customer said they came from online. I did this for one dealership and had a good laugh when 41 sales were attributed to some random company the dealer was not using nor had I even heard of.) Anyway, always amazes me when a dealer has his IT guy show conversion and they only base it on phone calls/emails. With that percentage being such a small amount of all sales it seems like an inaccurate way to determine where sales are coming from. I believe your data is being mined no matter who/what you are using. Including v-auto, auto trader, cars, etc. Your data has paved the way for 3rd parties to keep growing their business in other ways like this site...(found from google) and partnerships with companies like Reach Local, Yellow Pages.com etc... Not just from your dms. It's really no different then me being on match.com and my profile pic showing up on someone's cell in another state considering to sign on.
Merchandising is going to have the largest effect on sites working for you. Edmunds/ATC/Cars are all similar in results, they just show them to you differently and some of them rip you off. If you have started to take a look at your srp/vdp counts and are comparing results, keep in mind how srp's are based on showing up and things like how many vehics show up on the page can double the results. For instance ATC has like 25 vehics and Cars has like 50 per page. So automatically you would think that cars has more views if you were simply comparing srp's to srp's. The layout matters too. More info shows up on ATC's srp(custom comment) so less people are likely to click through to the vdp vs they almost have to on sites like edmunds and cars. So vdp's should be more. Keeping your vehicle facing the left side of the screen in a corner position where you can see the front two lights and the back rear light on driver's side is the most appealing to the consumer eye. A simple thin banner around your pic is better than trying to fit the car in front of your building sign. And a custom comment starting with why I would want your car vs the next one priced low...like LOW miles, THIRD seat, DVD, LEATHER, AWD, ONE owner, etc...will get you a VDP. VDP's are a virtual test drive. Make sure you have videos of your dealership and a great response to negative reviews.
There's a reason why ATC lowered all their prices including going from an A market to a C or D market in many large areas as of Feb 2010. ....it's because dealers were over paying for results that had gone down.(If you are still paying the same rate as you were previously to Feb 2010 and are not paying less I'd be angry and requesting a credit with results and pricing for the last two years) Sellers were allowed to sell you the new contract but there was about a $500 area where they could charge you more or less based on whatever they wanted to do. It felt like a lot of pressure for a sales person because if I was your rep and your partnership went from $6200 down to $4200 I had the option to take you to the new contract with a better product for less money but I would have to try to sell enough to another dealer to make up for the $2,000 loss in addition to meeting my quota. If I didn't sell enough to make up for the loss it would impact my income for three months. Having integrity really hurt my bank account and in the end resulted in a not meeting my standard because I had so many contracts I needed to lower the price on or else I would have felt like I was ripping off all my dealers who I consider my friends/family. With a standard of only $1200 a month to sell, one contract going down by $2,000 was very difficult to replace in a market that already saturated and over priced for the small dealers left to sell to. If I sold you alpha and it was $4,000 only 1/12th of the $4,000 would count towards meeting my standard, but if I lost the alpha from your dealership I would be negative $4,000 that month and that would be calculated into a three month rolling average for standard/pay. So basically sales reps were paid to over sell their dealers and pray to god not to lose your business or they couldn't pay their mortgage for three months.
I'm happy for Edmunds now that they parted. Glad I quit ATC before the parting because it was one of my selling points. Edmunds does send qualified buyers who have been researching what car they want for over two months on average. I saw the results while with ATC. Happy selling and much love. <3
