I’m sitting at my desk and the phone rings. The gentleman says he calling about a vehicle I have listed on eBay (local). While I’m wondering why the call didn’t go directory to my cell phone the customer informs me that the number I have listed on eBay was forwarding him to a Toyota dealer in Virginia. NICE!!!

In-case you’re not aware, when you sign up for eBay local, you are assigned a phone number. The eBay local qualified vendors have a script that overwrites your phone number even if you have your number listed in the copy of your description, changing every displayed phone number on your eBay local listing.

As soon as we got off the phone I called the number on our eBay local listings to confirm that the calls were indeed forwarding to a dealer in VA. The sales manager told me that he has been getting these calls for awhile now but couldn’t remember when it started. From what I could track, it had been for over a month at least. I was wondering why I was not getting any leads from our eBay local listings. How many sales did I loose?

With a few phone calls I was able to get this fixed. I’m not sure where the fault lays; was it eBay or ebizauto? Who cares at this point, but props to my eBay rep for helping me straighten this out within only an hour’s time. He even cut me a break on a few national listings!! Thanks Derin, awesome customer service.

After this mishap I figured it was time to take inventory of ALL of my online marketing phone numbers. When I completed the spreadsheet, I realized that I had quite a few phone numbers to manage and keep track of.

AutoTrader – 1
Cars.com – 1
Dealer Mercedes OEM site – 1
Dealer site (DriveMB.com) – 1
Other Online Marketing – 2
AutoMediaOne – 1 (sem landing pages)
eBay Local – 1
AutoBytel – 1

Giving me a total of 9 different phone numbers.

The part that sucks about this is; vendors like AutoTrader, Cars.com and even some OEM manufacturers use another vendor for their call tracking and most of the time these vendors won’t allow you to merge 2 admins together. So you find yourself having to log into several different sites and admins to view your reports and listen to the recorded phone conversations. It sure would be nice if there was a system that you could port all of your numbers into so you would only have to log into 1 system.

Needless to say, I now have all my numbers listed in a spreadsheet and all numbers are scheduled to be called once every 2 weeks for verification. If you’re not already doing this, I suggest you do.

Share the wealth!

It is scary to think that the dealer group I work for has been with 4 different site vendors, 5 different SEM vendors, 2 different SEO vendors, and who knows how many Internet click-through campaigns since 1999.   I know there are dealers out there who flip between these companies faster than Paris Hilton hops to the next party.  I like to think we have found a good home with a few of our current programs, but there is always something better on the horizon.  Forget about the next greatest thing and forget about any fancy gadgets one company has; let’s talk about tracking.

Tracking is one of the greatest things the Internet provides us.  It is also one of the hardest things to police.  One company’s 1,000 unique visitors are another company’s 5,000.  Who is correct?  We have a tendency to flock to companies with backing tools such as Google Analytics, but what happens when two Google Analytics companies show differing numbers?  It has happened to me, and I’m sure it has happened to others here.

Let me get back to my company’s vendor jumping…sure, it has been due to a better deal coming along.  Sure, it has been due to a fancier product coming out.  Sure, it has been for many of the same reasons everyone else can state too.  The one thing that seems to be the major shot of death, is a loss in faith due to untrustworthy tracking numbers.

I’m sure most of the DealerRefresh participants watch their own site’s traffic like hawks, but is it truly trustworthy?  Why is there no standard out there that everyone abides by?  Why do I get different numbers from my site provider than I do from what my current banner ad on www.whereBmybannerad.com tells me they sent to me last month?  Why are the differences so huge?

P.S.  To the vendors reading this thread – I’m not attacking anyone in particular.  If this article is taken as an attack, please point it toward the Internet industry in general, and not solely the automotive end.

Share the wealth!