DealerInternet101.com

Here is my response in the Autotrader.com Pricing??? thread from DealerRefresh.com.

It’s a shame that far too many dealerships are more concerned with finding sales and service opportunities through 3rd party sources when they have a website that their customers can’t find online. AND…when their customer’s do find them online, they are forced to listen to cheesy jingles or Charlie and Chocolate Factory mini people talk about how great the dealership ‘experience’ is.

Goto Amazon.com, eBay.com, Google.com, BestBuy.com, Walmart.com, etc. and see what the biggest and brightest players online are doing. Try to emulate their Internet presences vs. trying to build a Walt Disney like experience on your website.

Here’s a secret…consumers have better things to do than visit your website to listen your jingles and TV commercials!! They won’t come back daily to ‘check you out’. The WWW has far too many options for your dealership to become the online version of WallyWorld.

Step back for a moment and take your Internet advertising offline…

Do you spend a majority of your offline ad budget on off-site sales?

THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING WHEN YOUR BUDGET IS GOING TO 3RD PARTY PROVIDERS!!!

Invest in yourself before you spend your money elsewhere. If your virtual dealership isn’t the best it can be, why would you concentrate ANY effort on online portals?

Internet Marketing Information AutoTrader.com Pricing

I posted the below message on DealerRefresh.com today.  I’ll never understand why dealers are paying to have their inventory leverage leads for themselves AND other dealerships in their market.  Crazy!!!

The most unfortunate part of this lengthly thread is that a majority of dealerships don’t understand what they are doing by participating in AutoTrader.com.

Without YOUR inventory, the 3rd party lead generating, portal business model doesn’t work!! If every dealership shut off their inventory feeds to Autotrader.com tonight, where would Autotrader.com’s website be tomorrow?

Here’s an exercise…

1. Pick a vehicle from your website and copy it’s VIN number

2. Paste the VIN number into Google, Yahoo!, or MSN

What do you see?????

Does the vehicle show online shoppers that the VIN number is parked at your dealership’s URL (your virtual lot)? Or is your vehicle only visible on the 3rd party sites that you subscribe to?

Web Design 101 isn’t being practiced by a majority of website providers in the Automotive Internet industry when it comes to your most valuable (and expensive) asset, your inventory.

Too many dealerships are 100% reliant on 3rd party lead providers because their inventory has been framed in using another 3rd party solution on their website due to their ‘website’ company not having an inventory module!! If your inventory is framed into a ‘New Inventory’ or ‘Pre-Owned Inventory’ section of your site, the ONLY chance an online consumer will find it is if they manage to stumble and fumble through your pieced together clunky website (very unlikely) or through an online automotive portal.

Here is Google’s take on frames:

‘Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don’t correspond to the conceptual model of the web.’

Until customers in your market are able to discover YOUR inventory on YOUR website through the search engines, sit back and enjoy the price hikes from each of your 3rd Party Lead sources…or do something about it!!!

Make sure your dealership isn’t cruising down the Information Superhighway in a 1972 Ford Pinto! The results are explosive.

Internet Marketing Information AutoTrader.com Pricing