Comments on: Cox’s Autotrader.com – Biggest Buffoons Ever

By: Bill Roberts

Bill Roberts — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:01:27 +0000

craigslist is the best lead generator. We are very careful not to use a posting service. We had a company posting oue cars on craigslist and our attourney pointed out the liability so we went with a software that allows us to do it easy.

We are getting 4 times the leads that autotrader could provide.

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By: Dave Johnson

Dave Johnson — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:25:25 +0000

First, I want to say I find you blog very informative and honest, albeit a little abrupt at times. I will also say that I am a Cars.com employee and blogger (nccarguy.com). I would like to add that the following response to your post is my opinion and not that of the company I represent.
As this seems like an open forum, I would like to respectfully disagree with your assertion that the days are numbered for companies that offer online advertising platforms for car dealer such as AT and Cars.com. In fact, if you are willing, I will bet you that both companies experience steady growth for the next 3.8 years because of the quality of their suite of products and the value they offer partner dealers. Additionally, dealers are starting to realize that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results really is insane like investing heavily in venues that really are experiencing a drastic decrease in audience like newspaper and radio. I have had the good fortune of servicing car dealers as a representative of many venues including radio, cable television, newspaper and, now, Internet. Nothing else provides the same value that AT and Cars.com
The free sites you mention are lacking a main ingredient which will prevent them from obtaining the critical mass that AT and Cars.com have achieved; a substantial marketing budget. Cars.com’s allocation of their marketing budget produces 10 million unique visitors each month. And as Joel the car dealer stated…these are people active in the car buying process. With the exception of Craigslist, I doubt the traffic of all the other sites you mentioned added together equals 25% of the traffic AT and Cars.com command. In other words, AT and Cars.com are “target rich environments” for car dealer. And to say the other sites are free, is naive at best. Posting to Craigslist is cumbersome at best and a poor use of time at worst. T en there are the reliability issues and the listings are quickly relegated down the list as others post. And, because Craigslist is free, it is rife with scams and misrepresentations.
Although the letter from the lawyer may seem inane, when your brand has the level of equity that AT’s has, one wants to make sure that it is associated with venues that enhance or grow the credibility of said brand. I assure you, Nike, Coke, Pepsi, Ben & Jerry’s and any other brand that has a tremendous amount of equity would do the same thing. Being an ISM that is obviously as knowledgeable as you are, I am certain you would do something similar in managing your dealership’s reputation. Certainly your friend could have accomplished the same thing without using AT’s logo.
To address the cost of AT & Cars.com I would like to ask you about your sourcing procedures. Are you suggesting you are capable of doing something that no one else in the history of advertising has done; accurately source all your sales? If you can, I would suggest selling your knowledge to every marketer in the world and quickly becoming a gazillionaire. For those who go to great lengths to source their sales (and most of them are less than 50% accurate) the resulting ROI is so substantial (the operative word being investment)enough so they would never think of cancelling AT or Cars.com. From personal experience, I can tell you that 90% of my clients that have cancelled have resigned within 90 days (it takes about 90 days for the momentum to run its course). And, if you are a savvy business person and you consider the Lifetime Value of a Customer (NADA suggests a customer is worth $350,000 to a dealership over their lifetime)one sale per year more than pays for both Cars.com and AT. If you are a manage-by-the-numbers type, the reporting information is worth 10 times the price of admission. Of course, this is just my opinion and, as I stated, I am a Cars.com employee. But notice, I did not say anything negative about AT. In fact, I recommend to all my dealers that they invest in both Cars.com and AT and those that do, while stocking the right inventory at the right price, merchandising the cars correctly and making sure each vehicle is priced competitively while making a concerted effort to source each sale as accurately as possible (arguably the most important factor)will, without exception, experience a much higher than average return on their advertising investment.

By: Josh Hixon

Josh Hixon — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:04:10 +0000

It seems that the bad publicity is finally catching up with them (AT). There have been multiple postings on various sites discussing the way they are conducting business and this just seems to be the last nail in the coffin. They must be losing dealers at a larger rate than I was originally aware of. If they are stooping to this level they are losing customers (and money). Searching for frivolous lawsuits like this is actually kind of funny.

And Joel MUST be working for one of the companies listed above (don’t want to name them cause I’ll be sued). Leads are down across the board from both services. At my store (which I don’t want to name due to the possible issues) Has only had 3 leads from C###.com in each of the last 3 months…. $1000s of dollars for 3 leads? I don’t have access to how many people looked at a map of the location. But seriously?

We should sell at least 2 cars per $1000 spent on advertising AT LEAST…

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:00:45 +0000

Paul,
As the new Ad Director for a weekly newspaper, I am interested in partnering with a credible online source of automotive offerings in my DMA. The major daily offers cars.com. What organization do you recommend I contact? Thanks.

By: dmiami

dmiami — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:49:21 +0000

Paul, just so you know, sending 100 or even a thousand midgets at a gorilla won’t send the gorilla into submission. In Cambodia, I believe it was, 50 martial arts midgets took on a tiger and what did you end up with, a bunch of dead midgets. You’re sending a younger, stonger, faster gorilla at an older one.

By: Paul Rushing

Paul Rushing — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:14:45 +0000

You are right Matt if they change their business model they will survive, but in it’s current form they will not.

These other sites with free distribution that are being scoffed at are like sending 100 midgets to attack a 800 lb gorilla.

They will force the gorilla into submission, with a few bloody midgets, and then they will have to change their models or die.

By: Matt Watson

Matt Watson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:06:15 +0000

The key to this is there are now a lot of websites that have vehicle listings. Back in the day AutoTrader.com, cars.com and maybe a couple others were the only places to look and see all the listings available in an area.

Now there are large aggregators like Oodle, Vast, Google Base and others that pool all the listings together and then republish them everywhere… for free!

Not to mention sites like Craigslist, Backpage, Kijiji, Lemonfree.com, cartango.com, everycarlisted.com and many others that are completely free.

There is also a new company started every week out of someone’s basement who has the dream to be the next AutoTrader.com

I don’t think AutoTrader.com is going anywhere, but I think they may have to radically change their business model.

By: Paul Rushing

Paul Rushing — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:06:44 +0000

Joel I appreciate your feedback. Seeing how you posted your reply from a cell phone with no last name or dealership url I would say you are not are not what you claim to be, a dealer, more likely than not you work for either cars.com or autotrader.com…

Feel free to contact me so that way my readers can give your comments any credence.

By: Joel

Joel — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:27:30 +0000

I’m a dealer and a customer of autotrader and cars.com. And I have to say that they aren’t cheap but let me point something out. Those sites are specific to car shoppers, not someone looking for a used camera. The statement that dealers are canceling? Doesn’t look like it to me, I got just as much competition as before. As for poor leads…I don’t count emails- I count callers and live people.
So please folks, leave cars & trader and start using craigslist. I can use your customers business!