|
ROI…Return on Investment
We hear the
term ROI all the time. It’s one of those overused “buzzwords.”
Every vendor selling any product promises dealers a great return
on investment. To me, that means getting the most back from your
efforts. Those efforts can be economical (revenue), human
capital (enhanced productivity from your employees), or your
time—and most likely all of the above.
I just
attended the 2008 Special Finance Convention in
Texas
and was blown away. Hats off to Auto Dealer Monthly and Special
Finance Insider for putting together such an amazing event. This
event was top-shelf all the way, and it provided great
information for the attendees.
Most dealers
I spoke with, whether they were franchised or independent,
seemed to be behind on their use of technology, whether it was
their Web sites, CRM tools, call monitoring or some other aspect
of their operations.
I was
surprised more progress hasn’t been made by dealers. It’s 2008,
almost 2009, and many operators are still using “Flintstones”
technology. That is, they have no basic customer management
program, lead tracking software or a Web site designed to
convert special finance customers.
Almost
everyone I spoke to at the convention did not have their own special
finance Web site dedicated to credit, credit problems and credit
solutions. They had their main dealership Web site, but for the
most part, it did not have good functionality for special
finance customers. Also, most of them didn’t offer a unique
value-package proposition for customers and prospects. Quite
simply, their Web sites didn’t convert properly and they were
not able to generate viable traffic to their site. Additionally,
the traffic to their site wasn’t converting into leads for the
dealership. So, they were clearly not seeing a good online ROI.
Moderators
Greg Goebel and Kevin Day provided some very good industry
information for benchmark performance. The reported closing
ratios for special finance departments across the
United States were:
-
8 percent conversion ratio on
leads from third-party providers (70 percent of those leads
originate on search engines)p>
-
16 percent conversion ratio
on leads coming from the dealership’s own Web site
These are
about the same ratios for traditional automotive Internet sales
departments. This really surprised me. I would have anticipated
lower ratios for special finance customers.
As someone
who helps dealers leverage visibility in the search engines, I
was also amazed that there is virtually NO presence for “special
finance car loans,” “bad credit car loans” or “no credit car
loans” on the search engines. The convention was in Dallas, Texas.
If you went to Google and typed in “bad credit car loan Dallas,” there are virtually NO dealers on the
first page in the organic
listing. Actually, there was only one at the time of writing
this article. This is a great missed opportunity for dealers to
drive traffic to their sites.
The top
bankruptcy states in the country are
Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama,
but when I enter “bad credit car loans
Nashville” into Google, only one auto
dealer comes up on the first page. Many appear to be third-party
lead provider sites. If you are a dealer in any of these states,
you have a golden opportunity to drive traffic to your special
finance site just by optimizing your site and investing in some
microsites to promote your local special finance programs.
Many dealers
have no idea about the opportunities on vertical search sites.
Vertical search engines focus on specific locations, industries
and other niches and often can provide greater visibility for
targeted companies. Most dealers aren’t set up through Google
Business Applications or the equivalent for MSN, Yahoo! or AOL.
If you contact me, I can e-mail you some links to these vertical
search engines.
Many dealers
and third-party providers are flocking to pay-per-click (PPC)
search engine marketing (SEM). This isn’t the best use of
marketing dollars, and even Google will tell you only 20 percent
of people will click these sponsored links, meaning 80 percent
will skip these PPC links and go straight to organic listings.
Since many
of the dealers I spoke with didn’t have a basic online strategy,
it didn’t surprise me that many dealers did not have a video
search engine optimization (VSEO) campaign. In fact, most didn’t
know what it was. In an ever-growing online video world (think
YouTube), this is one great opportunity for dealers to drive
special finance customers to their stores.
I want to
give a quick wake-up call to the entire special finance dealer
community. Now is the time to invest in your organization and
implement the tools that will help you bring more customers in
the door. I encourage you to focus on getting your message to
these online special finance customers.
The first
step should be to build a simple special finance/credit-builder
site optimized for the search engines. This will drive quality
traffic to your site and help maximize conversion. In other
words, you will sell more cars each month. Remember the closing
ratio for leads to your sites are
double that of the
third-party leads you are buying now.
Once you
have some success in this area, consider a video search engine
optimization campaign as a solution to drive the best search
engine traffic to your site.
|
