Category Archives: Newsletter

Case Studies:

In this study, I’m going to show information for dealers on the daily posting method and the monthly posting method.

DAILY POSTING METHOD

The daily method, is posting a set number of vehicles every single day. This can be any number, though I think at least 5 per day would be best at minimum. Best when paired with an initial upload so that the dealer’s inventory is immediately available and then augmented every day.

PROS:
– Inventory Up Every Day
– Some inventory always at or near the top of the search
– No drop-off (expiration) day for entire inventory.

CONS:
– It can be cost prohibitive
– If not paired with initial upload, it can take a week or more to get a dealer’s entire inventory posted.

MONTHLY POSTING METHOD

The monthly method is setup so that all the cars post at the beginning of the month (or when the dealer signs up) and as new inventory arrives in the dealers feed, that inventory is posted to CL.

PROS:
– Easier to manage Cost.
– Inventory up immediately without build-up budget

CONS:
– Majority of inventory could drop off and be off of CL until reposted.
– Could go days or more in between fresh postings.

MONTHLY POSTING METHOD ——————————————

Independent dealer metro area
– 54 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Monthly Posting Method
– 8 Calls
– 0 Emails
– $33.75 per lead

An easily identifiable pattern is that leads occur, when fresh inventory is posted. Today, we posted 4 vehicles. We got 2 new calls.
The last time leads were received for this dealer was Jan 8th & 9th, not coincidently we also posted vehicles on both of those days.
These guys are a prime candidate for a daily posting total.

Hyundai dealer metro area-
160 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Monthly Posting Method
– 16 Calls
– 0 Emails
– $50 per lead

The last time a lead was received was Jan 11th, a day fin which we posted fresh inventory. Prior to that they received leads on Jan 8, Jan7, Jan 6, Jan 2 & Jan 1. All of those dates are either the same day or day after we post fresh inventory.
This is another example of a dealer that could benefit from daily posting.

Ford dealer metro area
– 174 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Monthly Posting Method
– 94 Calls
– 2 Emails
– $8.28 per lead

This is a good example of a dealer that gets fantastic results on the monthly option. A quick look at their chart in the dealer interface points to the reasoning. They have fresh inventory posted on 16 out of the last 30 days (almost every other day). So while they aren’t on the daily posting method, they are getting fresh inventory on CL very frequently.

DAILY POSTING METHOD ——————————————

Franchised dealer metro area
– 210 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Daily Posting Method
– 33 Calls
– 8 Emails
– $25.61 per lead

This is the 2nd dealer we put on the daily posting method. From 12/21 – 1/12 they received 24 leads while being on the monthly posting method. Since switching to the daily method (8 days ago) on 1/13 they have received 17 leads. So, prior to switching, they were averaging a lead or less a day. Now they’re averaging just over two leads per day.

Chevy dealer outside metro area
– 81 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Daily Posting Method
– 10 Calls
– 0 Emails
– $40.50 per lead

This is another dealer we recently put on the daily posting method as a trial. Of their 10 leads, 7 have come since switching to the daily method. While their lead total isn’t good, it was far worse prior to being put on the daily method.

Independent in metro area
– 420 Vehicles Posted 12/21 – 1/20
– Daily Posting Method
– 93 Calls
– 2 Emails
– $21.32 per lead

This dealer has been on the daily method for the entirety of the last 30 days. They consistently get leads. There has only been 7 of the past 30 days in which they did not get a single lead.

– Dustin Moore Development
Operations Manager , ACS
T: 425.379.0483 x115 | F: 425.357.0796
[email protected] | autoclassifiedsolutions.com

We are now able to post dual price structures in Craigslist (notice 2 prices same as their website in the body of the ad).

We are now able to post dual price structures in Craigslist (notice 2 prices same as their website in the body of the ad).

On top of the daily report we have created a reporting system where you can access all the lead information (calls and emails) from CraigsList as well as daily reports on ad spending and updates.

For more information go to autoclassifiedsolutions.com or email Dustin for user name and password to your account.

Introducing a brand new way to drive traffic directly to your Vehicle Detail Pages. This is the most advanced, integrated pay per click system on the market today.

Dynamic, inventory specific, Google Ads are here! We have been working hard on a system that creates unique Google ads for the specific used cars that you have in stock.

Here’s how it works.

1) Someone searches for a car in Google
2) If the search is a match for the Year, Make, Model car you have in stock an ad matching their search is shown
3) The searcher clicks on the ad and goes directly to the VDP

The reporting data comes directly from your Google Adwords account. You have full transparency into cost per click, total spend per car, even conversions from your PPC ads.

This is the most targeted, cost effective, transparent way to get your cars in front of searchers. The best part is that all of the data is in your existing DealerLab.com dashboard. One log-in to see every click, conversion and dollar spent.

To Your Success,

Nick Gorton
General Manager
Integrated PPC
Questions? 206.484.2895 Call or text

We are glad to announce a brand new integration with Google.

DealerLab websites now will display in the back end all the results from your PPC and retargeting campaigns.

This is not a “dealerlab” reporting tool, this is the information straight from Google.

For more information about this integration contact:

Nick Gorton
General Manager
Integrated PPC
Questions? 206.484.2895 Call or text

I wanted to gather a few thoughts about the 1st week in Craig’s List for the dealers.

This is a near-perfect ad:

2010 Acura MDX

1) Up to 24 photos per vehicle.

2) No HTML (so no links, color text, etc)

3) Formatted text is available (lists, bold, larger font, etc)

What would make this ad perfect (which we are working on as we speak):

Adding the state disclaimer (DOC fee, etc).

Adding a URL (can’t hotlink, so I have doubts about the value of this)

Inventory view:

http://bellingham.craigslist.org/search/ctd?userid=10808959

Notice that in the inventory view Craig’s List now identifies your dealer with an unique ID, in this case 10808959

Be careful having 2 companies or even an employee postings ads if you already have the entire inventory posted. Several dealers have called stating that their ads got put on hold for having the same VIN posted several times. The accounts (you as a dealer since they have your tax ID number) will be on hold for one year (this is the time that they have always used in the past to put an account on hold).

Make sure you don’t have employees posting ads in the by owner section. Craig’s List could just delete those ads but they could also identify the VIN or the name of the dealership and put it on hold. So far we don’t have news of this happening but the ‘by owner’ section has an exponential larger number of postings so I think there is a backlash coming.

Some of the people at PGI believe that based on current policies you can post a vehicle and re-post it (pay again the $5) 48 hours after the first posting. The advantage of this is that your new posting will make it to the top of the listings. First of all we don’t know if this is correct, Craig’s List may see your cars posted 8 times for the month and chose to delete your account. But secondly and most important the volume of postings is much less than half of what it was before deeming-in my opinion-the extra posting useless. If someone wants to push the envelope a little bit I would renew the ads on the 15th day mark.

New features:

Craig’s List just added yesterday the “see my other postings” feature (see the add above again and look at the top right corner). This feature indicates that they now feel about your cars as an “account” while before each posting was its own. This also shows the they are not done with changes and more updates to the system could be coming soon.

Steven Warren went as far as saying “Craig’s List is looking more and more like Backpage and adding all its features”. Only if Backpage had the same traffic Craig’s List has.

The cost of this:

$5 per ad and we charge $395/month flat to take care of everything (postings, deleting ads, updating ads, etc).

If you have 100 cars remember that you need to load all of them at once making the first month a little bit more expensive. After that we just post new cars as they renew or a new units come to the system on a daily basis.

If I was the new car manager I would put a $500/month budget towards new (we don’t charge more for managing that) and I will have at 100 units as a presence at all times.

Dealing with the CL account:

We can take care of the Craig’s List account for you or you can open the account yourself, manage the money (pre-load the account) and we will take it from there.

Call Steven or Jim today at 425.379.0483 today to get started.

The change is finally here, today is the first day of CraigsList charging for postings in the automotive by dealer section.

You have several choices for posting;

Post one car at a time; build the template, add the car, pay the $5. For this you don’t need one of the new accounts with Craigslist, you can post with the old accounts. The only change is that at the end of the process you need to pay the $5 fee.

PGI Auto offers a tool that will automate the ad creation and data pushing making the manual process as easy as possible. Our tool is $200/month and you can post as many cars as you want (still have to pay CL the $5 per car).

Your second option is to have a posting account with CraigsList. For this you will need to set up a credit card with them, add your tax ID number, address, etc and buy a bulk group of ads (lets say 100 ads for $500).

With this type of account we can semi-automate the process so for $395 PGI Auto will post your inventory and delete the vehicles as they get sold.

Recomendations:

I have seen several companies claim that they can post an ad for $5 and then use that ad as a car gets sold to update the photos and content therefore having a second car advertised without paying another fee to CraigsList.

I don’t know how much money you can save if this is possible (a couple hundred dollars) but at this point in time when CraigsList is identifying who post, how much, etc I wouldn’t risk getting my dealership blocked.

If there is one thing I can tell you about CraigsList is that they will not care that you are blocked, as a matter of fact there will be no one to talk to about it.

If budget allows, post your new cars too. 100 ads for $500 is cheap. We don’t intend to charge more for more ads, your $395 fee covers everything (counting that CL is not IP sensitive anymore).

Call Steven or Jim today at 425.379.0483 today to get started.

For how we understand the world a “charge” a tax or any new form of payment can’t be hardly justified as positive but I think we need to look at where is CraigsList today and what could possibly happen once the change is implemented.

The fact that CraigsList didn’t charge for postings made the flow of cars into their system a race for volume of postings. The dealers willing to invest the most time and or money seemed to have an advantage over the rest as their vehicles will show on the first 100 ads or they will take over a search. That race brought two problems; first it forced the rest of the dealers to either leave or also escalate their posting efforts. Dealers had to post more to remain relevant. But the resulting and second problem brought by this was that searches became less relevant and frustrating to consumers as a search for an “Audi A6″ will bring the same car from the sale dealer 45 times.

Escalation of postings created a problem for customers-poor search results, a problem for CraigsList-system overload, a problem for the dealers-increased cost to post volume, and a problem for companies building the systems to post-hard to keep up with volume of postings required.

In this case, for the most part, free access resulted in creating problems that only helped one person in this equation: A dealer willing to over spend.

The $5 fee will do a few very positive things right off the bat:

1) It will limit 3rd party lead companies from posting “fake” cars to create leads then sell them to you indirectly. It will limit 3rd party lead companies from posting your own cars (yeas, your own cars) to create leads then sell them to you directly.
2) It will limit low cost systems that for example were automatically posting one low quality ads (just one image). If you are going to pay $5 you better put a relevant ad.
3) It will stop systems posting on 24h cycles (easier to post at 4am for example) which only purpose was to show dealers that they had hundreds of ads. If you are going to pay, post during a relevant search time (business hours for example).
4) It will stop dealers from posting their inventory multiple times per day (this stops excavation of volume).
5) ++

What we are going to see on December is a leaner, easier to search, and more useful for customers CraigsList system.

A few things dealers should consider:

Positives:
Craislist still a great alternative or complement to Autotrader and Cars. I’m not saying is better or worse, each market is different for that. What I’m saying is that if you are already on Autotrader and Cars, where else can you advertise that has 50 million users?

This change will effectively eliminate half of the ads and make a better site, the customers remain the same. The dealers left advertising on CraigsList may see a vast increase in leads.

The cost will remain very affordable. For what I understand with the information we have today this is going to be $5 per car per month. 100 cars will cost $500 a month. You still have to pay (or invest the time/effort) posting the vehicles, but you have to post a lot less to be relevant. I believe the increase of cost on one end will offset the decrease of cost on the other end.

Negatives:
CraigsList now needs to be managed. If the cars remain posted for 30 days as the information they have released suggests, the cars need to be manually marked as sold from their site.

Cars may be reposted after 48 hours, so a dealer willing to spend some money could potentially still hog the system.

Ads don’t have links anymore which to me was a great value based on the traffic that I saw from CraigsList to the dealer’s websites. I hope they will reconsider this as the ads are now very HTML limited and car buyers want to see as much information as possible.

A note about payment:
In order to ay for the ads you need to use a credit card with CraigsList. You can buy one ad at a time or pre-pay bulk. This change makes this system similar to Google’s Pay-per-click. You pay for the ads and a management fee to the company managing this for you. One difference is that Google provides a great system to manage the ads, for CraigsList a vendor has to build a system and maintain it to do this. Be careful to whom you give your credit card to out ads on CraigsList and that the company you do so is registered in your state to do business.

I hope this helps with all the unknowns but we will know a lot more in a few weeks. Last here is some information that CraigsList has released about the changes:

$5 fee for “Cars/Trucks by Dealer” ads starting 12/3 – FAQ

Q. What is happening on 12/3?
A. Ads posted to “cars/trucks by dealer” for CL sites in the US will be charged $5 per ad.
Q. How long will paid car/truck ads last? Can they be edited? Renewed? Reposted?
A. 30 days. Live ads can be edited. No renewals. Reposts are $5.
Q. What forms of payments will be accepted?
A. VISA, Mastercard, Amex will be accepted as part of the posting process for car/truck ads.
Q. Are volume discounts, flat rate, or monthly “all you can eat” plans available?
A. No. $5 per posting. One vehicle per ad.
Q. Can I purchase a block of postings in advance?
A. Yes – blocks can be purchased by paid account holders. Sign up here
Q. Is monthly invoicing available?
A. Not at this time.
Q. Will a bulk posting interface be available?
A. Yes. Large volume posters can request bulk access ($5 per ad) at [email protected] (please include name and phone number)
Q. Is a paid posting account required?
A. No, but they can be helpful for volume posters. Sign up here.
Q. Can ads include hyper links, templates, and external images?
A. No. Please include all relevant information for the specific vehicle being sold in your craigslist ad.
Q. Will paid ads be subject to flagging?
A. Yes, but ads will be reviewed before any removals take place. TOU violations will not be refunded.
Q. What happens if a dealer posts in “by owner” to avoid the fee.
A. They will be subject to ad removal and other remedial actions. Please flag dealer ads you see in “by owner.”
Q. What will happen to ads in this category posted before 12/3?
A. Ads posted prior to 12/3 won’t be renewable (and will be subject to removal) after 12/3. Reposts will cost $5.
Q. What if I have additional questions or want to comment?
A. Please send questions and comments to [email protected]

Yago Paramo
CEO
PGIAuto.com / DealerLab.com
[email protected]

Virtual Credit Consultant Complimentary 60 Day Trial on DealerLab websites.

Virtual Credit Consultant is a one-of-a-kind software developed specifically for auto dealers looking to pre-qualify customers utilizing TransUnion credit scores without credit impacting the consumer’s credit score or history. This application is 100% mobile adaptive!

For your complimentary 60 day trial of Virtual Credit Consultant (VCC), you will receive the Lite version of the software. The Lite version of VCC is used as a lead based application. With the Lite VCC, you will receive the contact information for each visitor who fills out the application, however, there is not a soft credit pull and therefore you will not receive any credit scores. As well as their contact information, VCC is customizable, and you can choose to require many additional fields such as Date of Birth, SSN, Down Payment, and many more.

First – DealerLab/PGI will be integrating this technology onto your website starting November 1st, 2013, free of charge for 60 days.

The Virtyal Credit Consulatant will be replacing our standard finance application on your website. All links that previously directed the visitor to the Finance Application will now link to the Virtual Credit Consultant.

Next – Enjoy the convenience and ease of the Virtual Credit Consultant application.

If you do not want to participate in this program, please contact 425-379-0483 EXT 118 or e-mail [email protected].

We will be attending Digital Dealer Conference on October 15th, 16th, and 17th.

Booth information:

PGI booth #232 under the name DealerLab
DealerEProcess booth #609

Speaker information:

Dave Page: 3:00pm – 3:50pm TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2013

You may find a complete agenda: Conference agenda

Party information:

Following what is now a tradition we will host 2 small parties/gatherings in the tower suite on the nights of the 15th and the 16th for those of you not willing to go clubbing, waiting in the lines, and bumping elbows with the young bucks in Las Vegas night.

We have an invitation but we never get the tower suite number until we arrive so text Nick, Geoff, or me or find us at the booth and we will get you set up. The suite towers usually require card access so make sure you find us.