posted by admin on Aug 13
Today I received a call from one of our lead buyers. He had an auto dealer that was angry because he received a lead that had purchased a car the day before. Let’s look at what happened:
A car shopper hit our site at 9AM in the morning. When we pinged our network with the lead everyone turned the lead down because apparently all the auto dealers in this specific zip code where capped for the day. We offered the lead several other times during the day and still the lead was not accepted.
At our last offering for the day, one of our buyers accepted. Why did they accept the lead? The dealership cap had been lifted because they were an hour ahead of us and it was now 12AM on the east coast.
Auto dealers, think about this; if you had six customers standing outside your front door, would you let five come in and then turn customer number six away and tell them to come back tomorrow? No, you’d make adjustments to take care of the customer no matter how long it took.
Why should leads be any different? Fixed daily caps only hurt auto dealers. We understand the need for a monthly budget, but auto dealers and lead providers need to start thinking about putting adjustable caps in place. Allow for an overage of 5-10% of your normal daily lead volume. This will allow dealers to get that extra lead that might close vs. having it hold over till the next day and loose it to another competitor.
A last thought on caps; lead generation is a random service. No one can predict exactly how many folks will fill out online applications on any given day, but yet auto dealers and lead providers treat leads like a predictable commodity. Be flexible with an adjustable cap on your leads and you may get an extra lead or two that will turn into a sale. Timing is everything with respect to Internet leads.
Tags: 9am | Adjustable Cap | Auto Dealer | Auto Dealers | Budget Auto | Caps | Car Shopper | Coast Auto | Commodity | Competitor | Customer Number | East Coast | Last Thought | Lead Generation | Monthly Budget | Number Six | Random Service | Zip Code
August 14th, 2008 at 10:21 am
In responce to this article I would have to say that this is a nieve answer to this problem. Because of the ever changing market, certain areas have seen a tremendous increase in lead volume. Having a dealer network we have seen these increases to be a blessing as well as a problem. Daily as well as monthly caps are in place because of budjet concerns but also due to follow up constraints. If some of these dealers had no daily caps I could supply them with 25 to 50 + leads a day. Only dealers with agressive BDC departments would be able to handel that type of volume. I hope you understand our concerns.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:54 am
First off, thanks for you comment! Lead Dispatch wants to encourage open and constructive discussion of the internet lead industry because that is how we will create a better lead for the dealer and a better experience for the customer.
In response to the above comment. We understand your thoughts that some dealers are not set up to handle a large volume of leads. One problem we see with the industry is the lack of education for the dealer. A low volume dealer need to be educated a couple of points as to how leads are generated:
Now that we understand that internet leads are not generated in a random manner and that the caps only effect the delivery of the leads. We can better educate the dealer with the following:
Hopefully this will help dealers understand why caps are not in their best interest. If dealers insist on caps they will then understand why some leads have already purchased a car.