According to a recent study today by J.D. Powers and Compete consumers spend more time on third party websites in the 6 months prior to purchase than manufacturer website. According to a press release issued today:
“In each of the discrete six months preceding vehicle purchase, greater proportions of buyers visit third-party websites, compared with manufacturer websites, although this changes during the actual month of purchase. In the month of purchase, visitation to manufacturer websites increases to match visitation of third-party websites, with 31 percent of all new-vehicle buyers visiting each type of website.”
What is not being said in this press release is why third party sites are so strong? Some answers are obvious like the results of strong traditional advertising campaigns from sites like Cars.com, Autotrader.com, and Edmunds.com.
But the back story is that car dealer websites are being pushed off Google Page One, in their own towns, by larger inventory and content consolidation websites. Car dealers have little knowledge and strategy to compete against these powerful website platforms which increases the competition for local shoppers to be matched with their cars directly.
The fact that consumers are using third party websites means that your digital marketing strategy must include them. The key decision that I see from this report is what are the best third party websites to list your cars that will place your cars in front of active shoppers and generate leads.
The choice of third party websites is critical since many cross sell and collect leads which are sold to your competitors using your own inventory. Other third party sites are over burdened with banner advertising which also impact leads that are routed to dealers. Your cars are a valuable asset so make sure you inspect how they are being presented.
Free Is Not Free
One of the most powerful stories in the automotive industry is the negative impact on car dealer’s business model by participating in “free” inventory advertising on third party websites. Some dealers I have analyzed have their inventory pushed to over 8 different “free” sites.
When I show these dealers that by participating in mass third party marketing their own website no longer appears on Google Page One for a year, make and model search in their own town, they look puzzled. Yes, their own decisions are hurting their Internet search visibility and they are not be rewarded my more leads from each site.
Where Is Your Inventory Posted?
I encourage readers to track down all the places where your inventory is being advertised and check your CRM for lead volume from these third parties. If the lead volume, calls or walk-in traffic cannot identify successful sales from these third party sources, I would terminate their feeds.
Dealers will be surprised to see where their inventory is being pushed and also some will find that their inventory has been scraped and stolen.
To see where your cars are being advertised pick five cars that have been in stock for at least 30 days and search Google for their VIN#. If you see websites listing your cars that you have never authorized, your inventory may have been scraped or pushed out without your permission.
Another fact from the J.D. Powers / Compete.com study was this:
“Among buyers who visit third-party websites, inventory search is the most popular website tool, with 25 percent of buyers accessing this type of information. Among buyers who visit manufacturer websites, vehicle building tools are used most frequently (29%).”
This result from the study should make all car dealers ask how easy is it for consumers to search or build cars on your website. Some websites that I have seen make consumers jump through hoops to get a list of cars that they want to purchase.
Manufacturer Websites Still Popular
According to the press release:
“Among the 77 percent of new-vehicle buyers who use the Internet in the shopping process, more than two-thirds (68%) visit at least one manufacturer website in the six months leading up to purchase, while a larger percentage—nearly eight in 10—visit at least one third-party website. “
To read the entire press release visit this link and then share what your reactions are to this study?
About the Author
Brian Pasch is the CEO of the Pasch Consulting Group and an active writer for the automotive community. You can also reach Brian at 732-450-8200 or by visiting http://www.dealer-seo.com
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Evan Carroll
July 29th, 2010
I believe you’re grossly overestimating the value of inventory data.
Carol Weymouth
July 29th, 2010
I agree with Brian 100%. I was shocked when I started receiving Google Alerts that were generated from third party websites and not our own website. Now I understand why our website doesn’t show up on page one or at least in the top 10. All that hard work I’ve put into trying to promote our dealership/inventory is being overrun by people stealing our inventory so they can promote their website for free! They are “using” us! And one of them is even using craigslist to promote his website by using our inventory without our knowledge. Of coarse I contacted him and asked him to remove it and he did. However, craigslist has yet to ban him from overposting.
Alex Snyder
July 30th, 2010
Quoting Brian: “What is not being said in this press release is why third party sites are so strong?” I’m going to speak to dealers here –
If the goal is to get the consumer to interact with your dealer website earlier in the purchase funnel two things must first occur:
1. Most dealers provide little to no content for a buyer who isn’t in the market RIGHT NOW. Build your site for repeat visitation.
2. To take this a step further, most consumers recognize that dealers only care about them when it is time to buy another car. Yes, ladies and gentlemen that is the perception consumers have of us. We are the stealership because all we’ve ever marketed was buy a car today, buy a car this weekend, buy a car within the next 48 hours. We make it very obvious we’re in it for the money – there ain’t no steeple on our roofs.
If you want to have more customers using your website and service department, adjust your message. Be sure to change your process and the culture of the staff who is lower on the totem poll too.
Bob Lefsetz (music industry) sent this quote around last night:
“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”
Jeff Kershner
July 30th, 2010
I’m guilty, in the past I would be sure my inventory was feeding to every free listing possible. I quit doing that a few years back when I was taking notice to this happening more and more.
Back then, most dealer websites were not indexing inventory to show up for long tail and local keyword searches. Even the free listing sites were just starting to figure it out. At that point there was little harm. Of course forward to present day and many website vendors have now figured out how to get a dealers inventory to index and at the same time so have the free listing sites.
Problem: most dealers wouldn’t know where to begin. Many have signed up for multiple inventory feeds through their inventory services like Homenet, DealerSpecialities and the 100 others. Another avenue – if you’re with Dealix, Autobytel or AutoUSA, these services often sell, for a small fee a used car inventory package that feeds your used inventory to several other listing sites they have relationships with (not nessesarly the free sites).
Unless you have a strong website and a solid strategy for getting your inventory indexed for long tail and local relevant keywords searches, this of course won’t effect you that much. But if you do, and as you should, you might want to take a look at what listing sites your inventory is feeding to and then make a few judgement calls from there.
Brian Pasch
July 30th, 2010
@Evan
If inventory was not important in gaining traffic, leads and revenue for car searches then multi-million dollar advertising models like lemonfree.com, everycarlisted.com, automotive.com, edmunds.com, kbb,.com, etc. would not burden their web servers, hire staff, run PPC ads and manage the processes for no reward.
In the past year for example, kbb.com is showing up on year, make and model searches over car dealers as a matter of fact. Why would they get into the inventory advertising business?
Inventory year, make and model searches is NOT the primary way that consumer shop but the percentage of consumers that are using longer tail keywords is on the rise.
In coming years, the web surfers will be using more specific searches because they are getting smarter and want refined results.
So inventory is part of the way consumers search and shop. Content is a second avenue and both are at the lowest priority for car dealers.
So dealer needs to understand that there are many parts to a successful digital marketing strategy and all need to be understood and a plan created for maximize their benefit.
Layton Judd
July 31st, 2010
Brian,
You make a great point about dealers looking at where their dealership’s inventory is listed and if it is producing any results. The irony in my opinion is that the 3rd party sites are making a great living off the free content the dealers are giving them in the first place.
You have mentioned this in the past that the dealers should look at why they are giving up there inventory so easily as it actually might be hurting their overall SEO strategy by having similar content out in so many places.
I have been preaching for years that content is king, why would pay or give your kingdom away for free? Your content has value to your business and adds value to the 3rd party sites, either collect something in return for your content from the 3rd party sites or just add the value back into your own site by eliminating most of your free/extra inventory feeds.
Torrey Russell
August 1st, 2010
I couldn’t agree more… what the dealers need to focus on is their own “Social Media Hub”. Sure SEO for their site is crucial… but building and linking with media sites to YOUR web site is what counts.
Stop feeding the dragon (3rd party media sites) that charge you to place your car inventory above your competitors… on their site. Put that money into your own SEO campaigns and include feeds to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and now Google Buzz for example. There are a lot of tools out there that cost next to nothing (under $200 per month). Learn more about what a social media hub is… Read more on my blog about Social Media Hubs
http://torreyrussell.blogspot.com/
Brian Pasch
August 2nd, 2010
@Torey
One of the strategies I recommend for clients is to create their own private advertising network in their local market.
This network is created using free social media sites, free blogging tools, as well as creating microsites. Over time, these websites increase in authority (pagerank) and become traffic generators for a lifetime. They also push competitors off Google Page One.
Unfortunately, most dealers do not have the patience to build them but those that wait can see some amazing results.
With so many website building options for dealers today, creating a locally optimized inventory site with their cars online, is very cost effective.
And of course, all of these sites build back-links to their main site. Once they see some examples, dealers normally go “WOW” I never thought I could so that.
Anonymous
August 3rd, 2010
Torry & Brian,
What you are really talking about is branding; which is funny, because most dealerships refuse to do it. Why? Because apparently you cannot track a sale from branding or it’s very difficult to track. Sure Facebook is great, but how many people go there to look for advertisements let alone a car? Not to mention, the time (time is more valuable than money) you spend setting all this up and maintaining, what’s the real return on investment here, it’s free?
So let’s give you the benefit of the doubt, you’ve attracted a customer to your dealership and they get to your website and start searching. Why would they add your website to their favorites? What is so good about your dealership over the next? How many clicks does it take to get to your inventory from one site to another? And if they don’t find a car right away, why should they revisit your site? How can the customer be assured you’re not ripping them off without comparing?
SEO is great, but how specific does a customer need to be for you to own page one? Not to mention, it can take up to six months for SEO to take effect. How many customers would rather use Google search to find a car before going to a third party site? At least by posting your inventory on a traditional third party site you are drastically increasing reach local and otherwise. Whether you received 5 phone-ups 3 emails, I guarantee 5-10k more customers saw your vehicles on a third party site than any one of your other options.
Marketing at the University of Washington has taught me something I will never forget. It’s called STP: Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning. These are the fundamentals of marketing and are very important to your dealership’s advertising health. So before you cut off all your third party sites, ask yourself.
Does Facebook and SEO specifically segment car buyers (I would say no, they are broad channels)? Do they effectively target your car buyers, whether it’s free or not (you can try, but its time consuming)? Finally, are you positioned to attract a customer by simple SEO link or a Facebook page (SEO maybe but why search Google for specifics when you can go to a third party site?)
Whilst, your third party sites are automotive specific and thus draw the large segmented customer you want. Targeting, these are potential car shoppers and if you have what they want then they will look, but buying the right cars and merchandising properly will increase your traffic. Positioning: by being on third party site you are now in a position to receive a semi-qualified phone-up, email, chat request, and even the more elusive walk-up.
Good luck guys!
For everyone else, this is third party listing specific your big three Autotrader.com, Cars.com, Craigslist. I do believe you should limit or eliminate the clutter of information your data providers are sending.
Torrey Russell
August 3rd, 2010
OK I think you are missing the point… by the way we appreciate it if you put your name on your comments… who are you?
The fact is.. as a consumer moves down the sales funnel they refine their search more and more. Studies have indicated that over 80% of all car shoppers start at a search engine and move to other sites from there. As the consumer becomes more knowledgeable about what they want and can afford they do in fact enter the kind of detail (see TimeInc study from 2005 (http://icarsandtrucks.com/dealerprogram/timeinc/timeincpurchaseprocessstudy.pdf ) we are talking about… year/make/model/city (shopping metro area) state…
As to using Facebook, Twitter and other social sites… yes, in fact dealers are learning that their customer really appreciate building a community of users. Maybe not for every Chevrolet owner (OK Corvette owners execption) but for many makes, they group very well, are interested in just their area… how many times have you seen a troupe of Miada owners driving by – they do congregate on FB and other sites. and now they are Twittering each other as they drive around (hopefully not the driver)
Also, there is another effect of building a Social Media Hub. (Disclaimer – this is what we do for Real Estate and Auto Dealers) build and linking an indexable cloud of listings which all point back to the dealer web site (in a White Hat SEO way) creates tremendous page range and does increase your SEO… you can put a dealer on the front page of google in under 3 hours. We do it all the time.
So go to Google (this is today 8/3/10)
“2007 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Fort Myers FL”
or this link
http://tinyurl.com/create.php
the YouTube videos were posted today.. and he is on the front page of Google.
We are not the only ones doing this but this definitely works… there are a few tricks but this type of service costs under $500 bucks in most cases and in some is under $125 a month…. how simple is that?
You can see examples of this in every city in america today… this technique competes very favorably with the 3rd party FREE sites like Everycarlisted or lemonfree, oodle and VAST.
Joe Pistell
August 4th, 2010
Torrey,
Is this your work? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSPS5-CekAM It’s Google Page one for “2007 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Fort Myers FL”
C’mon, that’s old news, SUPER Long tail is easy to pop #1 ranks (especially in smaller markets). On 8/4/2010 it had 1 view… me. Forget the fact that no shopper will suffer thru 2 of those nasty computer voice slide shows, At least you could add local citations to improve the dealers Local SEO position.
Otherwize, Good use of Tags
Torrey Russell
August 4th, 2010
Thanks Joe… not sure – car was gone when i looked at the link (must have sold?) … youtube search autodealermls and you will find our vehicles… fact is this really works… You are right … super long tail … exactly when a consumer is looking for exactly what they want and in a BUYING MODE.
Engagement. Sure machine voice. cost around .80 a listing… you can also buy the same service from others for $7-10 with human voice.
Consumer really doesnt care. And most of the other companies dont get the Social Media Hub concept at all
Read http://torreyrussell.blogspot.com/2010/07/social-media-hubs-feed-into-universal.html
Joe Pistell
August 5th, 2010
Torrey writes: “…Consumer really doesnt care.”
My point, exactly. Re-read the post, you’re missing SEO opportunities.