The Truth about Forms

[Carluminati]

We are all still being sold email leads, and is that the best our 3rd party vendors, our OEM and our websites can can do for us in 2017 and beyond? Let's face the facts, and we need to step away from our car business to see the bigger picture and assess the trends and facts. The #1 form of communication right now and in the foreseeable future is messaging.

Go ahead: email your facebook friends;
email your buddy to see if he's ready to be picked up;
email your boss to tell him you are running late for work.
Never happens.

We need more MESSAGING LEADS! (I said what!) It's a whole new opportunity, a real thing, it's your customers PREFERRED method of communication right now and are you in tune? Ready?

 

[TomLaPointe]

some critical factors for new communication tools is to be able to respond within 10 seconds or less, especially during retail hours (until 10 pm) - and ideally 24 hours. with live chat there are numerous critical connection points that can actually create a NEGATIVE experience for the shopper.

also, is the goal to just have chat for customer service or to actually sell more vehicles. and for the record, this is a lot like an AD, even though OP is with a dealer

 

[Carluminati]

I appreciate your valuable insight Tom , and I'll certainly be sure to pay attention to what you got to say, since you are the chat guy, I'm really just a user of the service. You still out rank me, haha! Thanks. We've counted 172 conversations and 47 leads captured since starting 6/5/17. Sales and relationship building is happening. So much more to learn as well, and I'm actually excited again!

Chat & Messaging is new to us, I'm always going to listen to those with experience to learn.

 

[Devorah Wolf]

@TomLaPointe, what are some of the negative experiences you've seen with chat?

 

[Steve Stauning]

Dealers who abandon any lead source just because another has become more popular are foolish.

I think it's fun to sing songs like "forms are dead;" but the reality is that those crusty old forms still move a hell of lot more metal than Messenger.

Will this always be the case? Of course, not; but filling dealers' heads with absolutes gives the wrong impression of where focus should be placed. Track, measure, repeat. Do this always and you'll never chase shiny objects while also never wasting money on a truly outdated medium.

 

[Jason@nabthat]

I think we need to start looking at consumer behavior and the trend in communication tools that are being utilized by today's shoppers.

Breaking down website visitors: We can state with confidence that most dealers are seeing a pretty even split across mobile and desktop traffic 50/50.

Desktop users can then be broken down into consumers that are lower funnel in the buying process, this is just data speaking that we have compiled and the data from KPMG's most recent consumer report that most online purchases are done via Desktop and thus a consumer on desktop may be a more serious "shopper" and positioned lower in the purchasing funnel than a mobile consumer. With that said, Desktop users may prefer a lead form over other various conversion tools and thus we need to make sure we are capitalizing on their intent and can convert that user as efficiently as possible.

Mobile users are what we refer to as "browsers" (which does not mean their intent is any less than their counterpart Desktop user), but they may be positioned slightly above the Desktop user with regard to their position in the purchasing funnel. Mobile users are less inclined to convert via the Desktop user's preferred method, i.e. Lead Form and will look for alternative mobile-friendly call to actions such as "call us" and "find us". Being able to offer mobile users the ability to utilize messaging tools may be a great way to efficiently convert that mobile user into a lead that is answerable. While this is new and the processes of how to handle such a lead still needs to be worked out, it is to everyone's benefit that new conversion tools are tested and tested to see which attracts the "browser" versus the "shopper".

Consumer behavior and psychological attributions with regard to consumer trends are beliefs we hold as a foundation to all products we build for the automotive space.

It should also be noted, that if you start to look at your SEM spend (Google Analytics can display this info), I guarantee more than 60% (most likely closer to 70%) of all your SEM traffic is coming from "browsers" (mobile users) so it is in all of our interests' to wake up and understand that consumers drive the market and we just need to fulfill their needs when it comes to their preferred method of communication.