4 Reasons for Quoting a Price to an Internet Customer

I don't know how many times a customer has asked for the "bottom line" price for a vehicle and I have heard the Sales Manager say, "Just get them in, we can't quote price over the phone or through email." Just get them in? And how do you expect the salesman to do that?  Maybe offer the customer a free Apple Watch!  I mean, seriously!  Here's 4 reasons what you should quote price to an internet customer whether they are emailing you or calling you on the phone.

1. They already know the price of the vehicle - With today's technology the customer can go to Kelly Blue Book and price out a new vehicle and get the MSRP, the Invoice and what others in the area have been paying for the vehicle.  Also what incentives they qualify for.  There are no secrets anymore.  Just ask Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley (Sneakers, Too Many Secrets Marty).
2. They are looking to eliminate you - A customer has two reasons to contact a dealer and ask for the price of the vehicle. To either say this is the type of person I want to deal with or this is a person I want to cross off my list.  They aren't looking for someone who can coax them in to visiting the dealership.  So if you give them a price they will be much happier with you than the dealer who won't give a price until they "Show up at the dealership."  By the way, if you do tell them to stop in so you can see what incentives they qualify for or because they will get their best deal when they're at the dealership.  Make sure they ask for Blue Boy!
3. They already have a range as to what their trade is worth - again, Kelly Blue Book (I know, you hate those guys right?) will give them a range for a trade-in.  So they know that they can get a price from the lowest to the highest dealers have ACVed a vehicle for.  They are, most likely, looking for a little more than average.  Let's take a look at a 2010 Toyota RAV 4.  Mind you, I selected Good Condition.  But as you can see, we have an average price of $12057.  Now with KBB's showing what most customers select (54% select Good Condition), hopefully they have eliminated the customer who thinks their car is EXCELLENT (Why do they have that option anyway?  That's just stupid!) 

4. Most customers are not shopping for the best price but the best person - An article written by the research by AutoTrader, 2015 Car Buyer of the Future Study, said this:
   
   Myth #3: Lowest price will always win. While price is important to consumers, the dealership experience can trump lowest price: 54 percent say that they would buy from a dealership that offered their preferred experience over lowest price. Additionally, 73 percent report that they are willing to drive farther for a great salesperson, versus 65 percent who are willing to drive to get the lowest price.
   
   Read the whole article here
   
   So, yeah, some customers are getting a shopping number.  More, though, are looking for a great salesperson, not the lowest price.  If the customer "connects" with your sales person than they are more likely to spend a couple buck more to work with a professional that they like.  So teaching your sales staff how to connect with the customer is vital to you selling more cars to the internet customer (which, let's face it, practically all consumers are internet customers today!)

Bottom line, customers are educated and aware of the price.  They are just looking for a dealer that's not going to play games and BS them but is going to give them their price.  It doesn't help you to try to be slick.  You're not tricking the customer in to visiting your showroom.  If they need a price on their trade, go to KBB and give them the spread.  No matter what, you still can't appraise a car sight unseen but you can give them a rough ballpark.  Also, give them your best price on the new car.  No use trying to hold some gross, they already know anyway.  So make it easier on yourself and the customer.  Just be honest.  Hopefully you'll make up the difference in F&I!

SEM - It's Not Rocket Science - Part 2

So last week we talked about paying for your name and the "whys" and "why nots".  I may have confused some people last week when I said that paid services may not have your best interest in mind and then at the end said that you should use a paid service to do your SEM.  Just to verify, you don't have the personnel to monitor your SEM like the paid services do.  But you should track monthly what you're paying for.  So use paid services if you're going to do SEM but inspect what you expect.

This week we are going to go in to the back end of our web hosting service (ours is dealer.com) and pull some keyword reports.  If you don't know how to do this I would suggest that you get some training by the company you use.  These reports are the nucleus of good SEM/SEO.  The nice thing about pulling these reports is you can download them as a csv file and then sort them how ever you want.  This way we can track what's working and what is not.  In the picture below I sorted the keywords buy the number of visitors and then buy pages viewed.  If there was only one visitor and one page view then they weren't interested in staying on your page after they got there so it wasn't relevant to the search that they ran (you can click the picture to see the larger view).

You can see Scat Packs and Columbiana (who's our sister store) as well as just Jeep didn't do well.  But your SEM company doesn't tell you this so they may have you paying for searches that are getting bounced right back out.  You don't want that, which brings me to the second sort.  Bounce Rate.  If the bounce rate is 50% or more you shouldn't be paying for those searches either.  I changed the cell format to percentage on the bounce rate.  See below.

Looks fairly similar to the last report because it's showing all of the pages that had 100% bounce rate.  But if we look at the spreadsheet below where we scanned down a little more it will show the searches at 50% and less.

Our goal is, of course, 0% bounce rate.  As you can see, many of the 50% bounce rates have our cities name in them (if you remember from Part 1, we may not want to pay for those clicks).  Some of the others are nearby cities and zip codes.  Again, may not be the best investment if visitors are going to your site and leaving immediately.  That's like paying for a ad that get people to drive on your lot, circle, and leave.

What is interesting is there are some companies that bid on long tailed searches such as 2015 Chrysler 200. Let me tell you something interesting from my research.  In the year 2014 we had 984 terms searched that we could track.  Of those term an amazing 226 of them were long tailed searches.  That means that 23% of our searches were long tailed!  So do I really know what I'm talking about when I say it doesn't make sense to pay for these?  23% seems like a large amount of searches.  And if that's the only way you monitor it then it would make sense to pay for those.

Let's dig a little deeper though.  Wouldn't you agree that it would make sense to use the search terms that the most customers use? YES (you're supposed to say yes!).  Well then let's take a look and see how many unique visitors we had in 2014.  According to our spreadsheet we had 29255 unique visitors last year.  While we're at it let's check the average time that our visitors stayed on our site.  The average time was 4 minutes and 51 seconds.  

Now let's compare that to our long tailed searches.  

The unique visitors for long tailed searches for the year was 243.  WHAT?!  243?! 243 out of 29255!  What percentage is that? That is 8 tenths of a percent of all unique visitors.  Big difference between 23% and 8 tenths isn't it?  YES (again, you're suppose to say yes! Keep up will ya?).  Now let's check the time on site for the long tailed search.  Huh!  It's 2 minutes and 51 seconds.  A whole 2 minutes below the average.  So not only are we not getting that many unique visitors but they're not spending that much time on the site either.

So the next time someone tries to present you a package that gets its results from long tailed searches (such as SEM or video) you can tell them, I read the article SEM - It's Not Rocket Science - Part 2 and I'm not buying it, Literally!!

Please share with all of your friends in the auto industry and join my blog.  Next week we'll take a break from SEM and discuss the thing that will make or break your dealership.

SEM - It's Not Rocket Science - Part 1

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - It's Not Rocket Science.  Rocket Science is pretty consistent and doesn't change just because you're logged on to Google+.  You can use some of the codes that were used years ago with Rocket Science and they will still apply today.  When you learn Rocket Science, what you learn won't be obsolete 3 months from now.  Most importantly, you can test Rocket Science by seeing if the rocket reaches its goal safely.  SEM, not so much.

The problem with having a company handle your SEM is that the only thing they are really interested in is showing that you're getting plenty of clicks and conversions for what people are clicking on.  But here's the key question, could you get the same results with SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? And how many clicks are you paying for that aren't beneficial at all?

Let me give you an example.  The name of one of my dealerships is Salem Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram.  We had about 6 or 7 campaigns including Salem Chrysler, Salem Jeep ..... you get the idea.  With our paid ads (SEM) we were showing up right at the top of the Google search. AWESOME!  Guess who showed up first in the organic (organic is your SEO) search.  Yep, you guessed it.  We did.

Now let's act like an average consumer who knows nothing about SEM.  I type in Salem Chrysler and the first one that comes up is the one I'm looking for, I click on it.  Do I know or care if  it costs the dealership money for that click?  NO!  It got me to what I wanted and that's good enough for me.  So what are we doing?  Paying eight dollars a click for something we could be getting for free.

Some times it does make sense to pay for your city and make.  Let's say, for example you are a dealership in Champion, Ohio that sells Chevrolet (which there is). But your billing address is Warren, Ohio.  Well, you better be doing some awesome SEO to get to the top of that search because you are competing with some other dealerships to get that spot.  As a matter of fact, there is no Warren Chevrolet so everyone is competing for that spot.  If I run that search in Google here's what I get.

Well we don't see the dealership in Champion, Ohio but we do see that Diane Sauer Chevrolet is dominating the page.  That's because Diane Sauer is in downtown Warren Ohio (I said there's no Warren Chevrolet, this is Diane Sauer Chevrolet) and the only Chevrolet dealer in Warren.  The other ones are in cities outside of Warren.  Cole Valley, for example, is in Newton Falls Ohio.  At least they are giving the consumer a chance to click on their paid ad.  Do you think that our Champion store might be missing some business because they are not paying for Warren Ohio?  Very well might be.

But here is the other question.  Does Diane Sauer Chevrolet need to pay for an ad when she is showing up all over the page from the beginning?  Maybe, if she really wants to dominate the page.  But she should be informed that she's going to be paying for clicks that she didn't have to (I've never heard that from a SEM/SEO company).

Ok now search your dealership city and make and see where you show up.  Are you surprised or not?  Now I know we are only using Google to do our searches but, at this point, they are the engine that most people use.  They are the search engine you're going to want to dominate.

If you are going to do SEM I would suggest using a company that specializes in it other than trying to do it by yourself.  You just don't have the time or the people to do it correctly.  One person is just not enough no matter how good they think they are.  But I would suggest to have a person in place that can monitor the results.  Set up a Google Analytics and monitor your results.  Use the back end tools with your web hosting and check your reports to see the results you are getting.

Next week we will continue with SEM and why you may want to cancel out some of the long tailed searches as well as some make and model searches where you're competing with your OEM.  Look for SEM - It's Not Rocket Science - Part 2!

Internet Marketing for the Automobile Industry - About Me

This blog will be about advertising online.  Specifically, advertising your automobiles online.  Now I can guess what you're thinking, "Not another person that's going to try to sell me something like a service or their online advertising."  Here's what I want to explain, I have no agenda.  I'm not trying to sell you anything.  I just want to share my years of experience to try to help you save some money on things that are not beneficial to your dealership as well as ideas to help you be more successful.  You're probably wondering what I bring to the table.  Well, here is some information about myself.

I have been in the computer industry in one way or another since the 1980s.  Programming was my major interests but, growing up in sales (my father owned a lawn and garden business) I always enjoyed working with the public. I started selling cars and motorcycles in the mid 80s and became familiar with the auto industry.  I decided to get out of the auto industry and get a degree in computer technology while working at a distribution center.  Shortly after I obtained my degree I went back to work in the auto industry in 2002 as an Internet Manager as well as the New Car Manager at a Lincoln Mercury Jeep dealership in Pennsylvania.  It's amazing how far the Internet has come since 2002.  Many dealers didn't even have a website.  I know we didn't.  I designed the website, signed up with AutoTrader.com as well as DealerSpecialties for pictures.  I think back then we got New cars listed for free on AutoTrader.com.  I worked with my brother at that dealership for about a year and a half before we moved to a Buick GMC Nissan dealership in Ohio.  I was still the Internet Manager but I had come up with a few other thing to help me be successful.  One thing I did was have the my email notify my cell phone when I got an internet lead through text.  I also set up an autoresponder.  The great thing was if I wasn't with a customer and I got a lead I was calling them right after they submitted the lead.  Customers weren't used to that.  Sometimes I even caught them off guard.  There weren't many quality CRMs back then and this worked out great.  Shortly after I used my programming skills to create a CRM for the automobile industry called INetDealer.com.  My brother and I brainstormed to come up with a system that worked best for the dealership.  I did all of the programming but the sales was never there to support us even though the system worked great so we had to close it down after about 2 1/2 years.  At that point I worked for AutoTrader.com as an Advertising Consultant for 6 1/2 years, did a short stint with Cars.com and am now back as an Internet Coordinator for a dealership group.

My experience with computers and the internet started before the internet caught on with the public.  When we were using 14400 modems (you know, the ones that worked through the phone line and screamed at you) I ran a BBS out of my house so people could share files, play games and communicate with each other.  I am an entertainer and I was one of the first to hard code in HTML to design my own website to promote my ventriloquism and magic.  I remember doing a search one time on AOL and there were only a few ventriloquist websites including me, Jeff Dunham and a website that taught ventriloquism.  Now if you type ventriloquist in Google there are about 745,000 results.  I have been studying the internet since before most people even knew what it was.  I remember using AOL when it was called PC Link while my Uncles used to get on the internet with Compuserve and Prodigy.  That was back when 64 and 128k was a big deal and if you had a 40 meg hard drive you were rich! 

It's been a fun ride.  It's been an experience and it's been an eye opener.  I can still learn something new at every internet training I go to.  I don't know it all by any means but I do know the internet has change the car industry by leaps and bounds.  Gone are the days where you knew more than the customer both about the new car and their trade.  Now the dealership has to be transparent.  When a customer calls today and asks for your best price you'd better give it to them.  Chances are they just called 3 other dealers and they already have Invoice minus Hold Back plus all the incentives.  You want to make sure they don't come in?  Don't give them a price or try to schedule an appointment without a price.  They may make the appointment but make sure you tell them to ask for Blue Boy because you'll be holding your breath waiting for them to come in.

All this to say I have studied and done a lot of research online as well as in life itself with my job and I want to give you the best advice about what works best, how to make it work better and where you might be throwing your money away.  Well, I really wanted to get in to internet advertising but I've gone on long enough for today.  Next time I'll discuss SEO/SEM.