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Old 03-24-2014, 12:28 PM   #1
Majestic2014
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Default What website do you advertise your cars on?

We just opened our car dealership about 2 months ago and are extremely small and a independent dealer. We have been advertising our cars on Craigslist and have received little to no calls from posting on there.... We price our cars to sell and I just don't think anyone is seeing us on Craigslist. After you post your ad, it's 5 pages down because of all of the other posts. What other websites would you recommend advertising on? There are a lot to choose from.

I already did a search on this topic and couldn't quite find what I was looking for. I would appreciate any help offered.

Thank you.
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Old 03-24-2014, 01:36 PM   #2
XDCX
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Majestic2014 - First post - Welcome to DealershipForum...

When I was working at a new car dealership we used AutoTrader and Cars.com with differing degrees of success. With both services we used a dedicated toll-free phone number so we could track how many phone call we were receiving.

The dealership was in a semi-rural setting that was near a major metro market. The two sites listed above worked best when we had a trade vehicle that wouldn't typically do well with our drive-by traffic. Trucks and SUVs were our hottest used cars and AutoTrader and Cars.com were good tools for us to sell trade ins like Saabs or Subarus that were not very popular in our market.

On the downside, in my opinion AutoTrader really gears their website to their largest clients and it's often difficult for a smaller dealer to compete. Customers in our market that were searching for vehicles we had advertised on AutoTrader would be shown other vehicles from dealers that were 20+ miles away first because the other dealer was a "Premium Dealer."

Hopefully some of our other members will chime in with their experiences. It's been awhile since we've discussed which Internet sites generate the best leads and offer the best ROI.
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Old 03-25-2014, 02:23 AM   #3
adastra
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I have a similar setup, 15-20 cars at a time. Made it 4 years so far.

Post your location, inventory, and prices please. If you are going off of NADA for pricing, don't expect people to pay much more than clean trade-in for things. KBB average private party or trade in. Exceptions for this in my area are 4x4 trucks, Hondas, and Toyotas. They can bring a premium more in line with book, but since they bring so much at auction its really a wash. I dislike having Hondas and Toyotas on the lot because they attract certain foreign customers who will haggle you to death. If you're selling Ford Tauruses, Chevy Impalas, etc... you've got a ton of competition. I don't do those cars either.

More than half of my sales come from craigslist. When the car is desirable and well priced the phone will ring constantly. Most likely its your inventory or price, not craigslist. I relist every Friday at 5-6 and the phone rings constantly through the weekend, tapers off Monday-Tuesday as I sell off the hottest cars and my listings fall further down the pile.

I am having a good month for sales, but my margins are horrible thanks to a few aged units I dumped for $1000 under what I was in them for, bringing my average profit down to $550 a car. My goal is $800 average profit, 15 cars a month, overhead under $4000 a month.

I hate autotrader. Overpriced, never got me any solid leads. Also my toll free number they provided for me was too similar to an American Idol vote number. One night a week my phone would start blazing.

Last edited by adastra; 03-25-2014 at 02:49 AM.
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Old 03-25-2014, 07:29 AM   #4
Majestic2014
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XDCX - Thank you for the reply. I appreciate your help. We are currently waiting on a call back from AutoTrader, so I can get their pricing, but I am concerned it will be too expensive for us, right now. That's why I wanted to see what everyone else is successful with.
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Old 03-25-2014, 07:45 AM   #5
Majestic2014
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Adastra - We are even smaller, with only 2 cars right now and only room for about 9 total. We are located about 20 minutes outside of Kansas City Missouri, in a some what smaller suburb. Our shop is located in a industrial park and doesn't get much traffic back there.

2001 Dodge Stratus SE with 109,697 miles - $3,650.00
2002 Ford Taurus SES with 127,375 miles - $3,199.00

We have been asked by some people when they look at the cars, why are they so cheap? Is there something wrong with them?

We haven't gotten as far as to get a membership with NADA. We want to, but we had to take money from us, personally and our other business to jump start this car dealership. And between buying the cars listed above, insurance and other expenses, we already spent what we had. I priced the cars, by looking at other car dealers in our area to see what they had the same car priced for, the package, mileage, condition, if they finance and warranty. Then I priced ours lower than that. I'm sure that might not be the best way to price a car.
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Old 03-25-2014, 11:13 AM   #6
79LilRedExpress
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Being small is not always a bad thing. Just be sure that your cars are as good as they can be.
Always ask for a referral from your current customers and ask them to spread the word. WOM (word of mouth) is the absolute best advertising tool out there... If you have a web page, and you should, promote that.

As for your inventory, at least until you grow, invest in good sellable unique inventory.
Stay away from the most mast produced models that "everybody" has.

You will be able to sell the cars as "not higher priced cars, but better cars" than offered by your compitition. With some higher profit made, you will be able to increase your inventory.

Good Luck !
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Old 03-25-2014, 05:27 PM   #7
adastra
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Yup, it's the inventory. Nobody is looking for those cars and they are over 100k miles. They will sell at that price, just will take more time because of more competition and less buyers. A ford escape or dodge caravan for under $5000 with around the same miles would sell quickly. Much higher demand for cheap vans and little SUVs. Same goes for a ram of f150 in any condition. For cars, stick with imports. That's what people want.

We call Tauruses Tourtises because they are very slow to sell.

The cheapest autotrader dealer plan is $150 a month for 5 cars.

I'm located in Wichita. In Kansas City right now for the sale tomorrow. Perhaps we will be Bidding against eachother lol.

Just remember: Easy to buy, Hard to sell. Hard to buy, Easy to sell.

Last edited by adastra; 03-25-2014 at 05:38 PM.
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Old 03-25-2014, 08:03 PM   #8
mryan55
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As someone who has done everything from small used car lot operations to metro CDJR stores, I am not an AutoTrader fan. They definitely favor the larger, bigger spenders out there. Cars.com is much more small-guy friendly, in my experience.

Of course, your experience may vary based on location and sales rep.
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Old 03-28-2014, 11:31 AM   #9
XDCX
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adastra View Post
Yup, it's the inventory. Nobody is looking for those cars and they are over 100k miles. They will sell at that price, just will take more time because of more competition and less buyers. A ford escape or dodge caravan for under $5000 with around the same miles would sell quickly. Much higher demand for cheap vans and little SUVs. Same goes for a ram of f150 in any condition. For cars, stick with imports. That's what people want.
Great post.

I agree that there are some vehicles that will likely work better on the Internet (Craigslist, AutoTrader, Cars.com, etc.) than others. There are probably not too many customers searching for a Stratus or Taurus but a lot who end up driving them home once they see what they can afford and what represents a decent value.

Quote:
Originally Posted by adastra View Post

The cheapest autotrader dealer plan is $150 a month for 5 cars.
Thanks for the information - $150/month would probably make sense for a dealer who had vehicles that were in high demand and would generate a lot of traffic but probably wouldn't make sense for Majestic2014's circumstance.

Quote:
Originally Posted by adastra View Post
Just remember: Easy to buy, Hard to sell. Hard to buy, Easy to sell.
That's a great line - very true...
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Old 03-29-2014, 08:56 PM   #10
Flybrian
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As a smaller independent myself, I rely on our website, Craigslist, and Cars.com. Cars.com IMO is more 'fair' because they don't have 'pay for play' advertising tiers like AT that - as others have said - favor big spenders. Half of my inventory is always made up of later-model cars (2010+), so having the 'cheapest' on AT doesn't mean mine will be displayed first as the cheapest. On Cars.com, it will be.
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Old 03-30-2014, 07:38 PM   #11
mryan55
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100% agree. Cars.com is a much more level playing field. I am a new car store, but in the grand scheme of things not a huge one. My buying power is worth a lot less with AutoTrader.com than the mega dealers...
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Old 04-17-2014, 04:49 PM   #12
XDCX
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Default AutoNation is reportedly "stepping away" from third party lead providers

I thought of this thread when I read a report in Automotive News that AutoNation is "stepping away" from third party lead providers. For the full report - click here (Automotive News subscription may be required.)

The reason I put "stepping away" in quotes is because once you read the report you'll see that AutoNation isn't cutting off AutoTrader, Cars.com and TrueCar, they're just putting them on notice that they're tracking each site's ROI and they're looking for pricing concessions.

The one thought that I'm in full agreement with is Mike Jackson's comment that he'd rather be spending his advertising dollars to support his own company's website instead of one of the websites owned by a third party lead provider.
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Old 04-18-2014, 06:29 AM   #13
mryan55
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These days the company website is definitely more important than third party sites. We use almost every co-op dollar on our dealership website, whether it is paid search advertising or SEO or other upgrades to the site.

More and more clients find all of our stores via Google, Bing, etc... not by looking at a third party listing site. Of course, my SEM and SEO whiz mentions that users of the third party sites actually have higher education, higher income, etc. than users that come from Google. So I wouldn't totally shun the third party sites yet!
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