First and foremost, I’m an Internet marketing guy who likes cars, not a seasoned car guy by any means. I’ve been involved with Internet marketing since 1999 and have piloted new technology with MBUSA back in the day when the Internet was just supposed to be a fad.

I do have a unique perspective in the sense that I’ve experienced the full spectrum and life-cycle of a lead by working with a couple of local dealers and analyzing leads and data at the BDC level and from writing ad-copy for nearly 1 million keywords to generate the app.

I think there is plenty of blame to go around and this is why I lament on some days about lead generation at http://leadinreview.com – Auto dealers and lead generators have created the monster that is third-party lead generation today.

Here are some of the things “pure” lead generators deal with on a daily basis:

- PPC fraud on all the major search engines
- PPC abuse from competitors
- Un-predictable traffic spikes from major search engines.
- Form fraud
- Server attacks
- Brokers & lead aggregators post rejecting and stealing our data.
- Never ending criteria changes for leads
- Bogus or phony lead returns
- Non payment from lead brokers and aggregators
- Non payment from retail customers or direct auto dealers
- Complaints from customers because dealers never call

For every lead we generate that gets submitted across the network, that same lead can be offered to the same aggregator 100 times in a matter of seconds due to lead overlap or coverage overlap. There are just too many entities trying to get in the middle of the process. This is why we are looking to work directly with auto dealers as an arm or extension of their lead generation and marketing.

Why are third party lead generators still needed? Because for “real” or “pure” lead generators – companies that actually generate the lead and not simply try to resell, we can generate the lead more cost effectively and efficiently than an auto dealer.

Lead generation is hard work and extremely competitive if you are going to use any type of PPC.

As mentioned in a previous post above, I believe dealers need to start looking at ROI as it is the primary indicator as to how effective a particular lead source might be.

Lead providers that cannot demonstrate some measurable ROI for a dealership should be dropped.

Got a question on third party lead generation? Drop me a line and I’ll be happy to answer as best I can.

One of the best ways to market your website outside of search engines is to promote your site to your existing customer base via email campaigns and POS material in the store.

Make sure all employees are collecting email addresses at all times. A great way to email using a soft sell approach is through regular newsletters such as IMN Loyalty Driver. Hopefully, this helps…

As to Autotrader, that’s a dog and pony show that has run it’s course. Cars.com is still doing well on our ROI reports because of it’s much lower cost.

Our own website is the mainstay of our business development center and we are working on situations that convert to hits on our own website. It seems like the more we market the website via TV, newspapers, the better we do.

I am open to any suggestions for marketing our website.

Steve from NJ

You have points but you need to understand that looking at this is an “inherently lazy” approach and “they can do all” look at it.

Custom video? slideshows are not video! and looks still like crap and DOES NOT SELL ANYTHING but can entertain and “maybe” get to the next step of calling for more info or to test drive.

Secure apps? be real about that one because this is not a buy it now checkout for a pair of sunglasses and credit leads are what they are mostly GMD’s or the deal was made and now its time to apply securely for the loan online(fax the app still works as well)

Detail your cars? when did porters/detailers becomes part of advertising or lead providing?

Giving away cars? happens everyday…price leaders

Anyway you cut it the only stat I count is if the rep has spoken to the client after the lead. Is there a deal to be worked or appoint to come in and demo? Until then any correspondence is still a hello how are you I was e-driving by and not a customer yet.

Cars, Autotrader and others are not by my definition lead providers in the primary, they are a marketplace to display your vehicle in a collective virtual setting and the lead is a by-product that you get sold the “sizzle” not the steak by cars.com and autotrader.

When is the last time you invited someone to cook your dinner in your own home. It’s kind of expensive and that is my point and do agree it may not become totally free but a lot cheaper when someone does offer a much better service that truly is an ad content provider of your merchandise.

Why do you think Cars.com is getting into the website business?

I apologize in advance if this is a bit of a fragmented opinion/response…
Pete

“If you take a real hard look at third party lead provider’s I think you might agree that we are competing for the same leads on the web as the providers we purchase from. So what happens here is we perform SEO and SEM then we turn around and purchase leads from providers that have advertised our products for less money than we want to sell them for such as carsbelowinvoice.com who buys those leads? I know, do you? Try this, type the name of your dealership into Yahoo such as Jim Glover Chevrolet. You should not see Jim Glovers name being used although I am having a hard time with Nextag.com they sell those leads to? So what is happening is these lead providers are using our names of our dealerships to entice consumers to their websites right next to ours. Then we pay them up to how much a lead, (better if it is scrubbed right) So what I want from third party lead providers is to stop advertising on the same plat form as I am advertising on, but with no wakeup call from all dealerships I do not see that happening. Think about it, why pay for someone else to advertise right next to us on the same venue? Makes no sense does it? But we have all been doing it for years, yet who has woke up to the facts?”

Amen. Another reason why I don’t and haven’t used them for awhile. Put this in any other venue and you would say that it doesn’t make any sense. So why do we support them? Afraid of missing the market on something?

Either way, well put Frank.

One-

Lead providers are those that provide leads. I would usually define that as a purchased lead, including but not limited to; Dealix, Carsdirect and Cars.com’s NewLeadsplus. These leads are supposed to be scrubbed, proprietary leads from some unknown source in Leadland.

What I want from them is along the lines of what Jeff said. I want what you are claiming to be selling to me. I want real leads with a chance of conversion. “Scrubbed” has to be the most abused, subjective word in our business. I want one company (or more) to step up and deliver (yes, like the good ole fax days).

Problem is; I think this model is going to be obsolete soon. People don’t just hit one source. So even though they might apply for something and it isn’t being sold by another lead provider, doesn’t mean that they haven’t or won’t fill out more inquiries elsewhere. Too many unique lead providers means none of them are unique anymore. I could be wrong, but I think this is going away.

Two-

Leads that are derived off of our inventory. I have been doing a lot of thinking on this lately and still stick with my first comment. However, I would like to add a bit more clarification.

Yes, seeing page views is neat and could provide some point of reference. I still firmly believe it is not indicative of true performance; both internally and externally.

I believe that there is still no way to track all the people that simply walk in, view a map, or don’t get tracked at a showroom level. Therefore, it should be treated just other advertising and not held to a completely different standard.

I think a fix would be change the format completely. Maybe make the browsing only available by creating an account. Integrate RSS feeds for vehicles they want. Do targeted marketing and allow Dealers to buy specific ads. Send a summary of people who actually clicked on your ads for the month or create a neutral tool that will cross reference it with your DMS sold vehicles. Give premium placement to the dealers with the most photos, prices and custom comments. Allow the good dealers to shine.

You know what they say, “The definition of Insanity…”

Thanks