Well, having been less than 30 days since returning as an ISM, some things are very apparent. Online classifieds do not bring in the volume of leads to justify the cost in my case nor do third party lead providers provide quality leads. It has always been my opinion that auto dealers need to stop relying on third party sources and take more control of their online advertising destiny. Online marketing is just that marketing. No different than newspapers, radio or television except it is more easily measured and the cost should be less.

The apathy and BS displayed by vendors in the automotive industry is absolutely amazing if not comical. The problem is that dealers do not know the difference in good and bad unless it is quantified in a spreadsheet or P & L. Some of the things that are accepted and deemed to be cutting edge in the industry are still way behind the times in the grand scheme of things in Internet marketing.

Some things I am cutting out asap are:

• Overpriced Automotive Classifieds
• Third Party Leads
• Outside Inventory Management

It actually looks like I am increasing my workload immensely and that is true, however I am replacing each of these items with some very cost effective alternatives and the possible addition of an employee.

I have never been a fan of the big online classified providers cars.com and autotrader.com. They overcharge dealers to provide them with content to their sites to push affiliate offers and to sell cpm banner advertising to your competitors on your inventory displays. (Online Classified Leaks - Previous Post) Now the ROI does not justify the investment. Lead flow is down. When it is slow on the ground is also slow on the net. It could also be my current inventory mix, however until that changes there is no reason to keep throwing good money after bad. I will maintain my relationship with some of the more cost effective third party sites because of the immense amount of advertising being done in my local market as well as two large metros less than an hour away. Plus they are giving me better more targeted leads with a better closing ratio.

The third party leads are a joke for the most part. With me being in a smaller market surrounded by two major metros and the majority of the leads coming out of the Majors it really just does not make sense. I have realized some decent ROI but the cost is astronomical compared to what I know that it cost to generate bad credit leads and price whores. I have a few sites that are generating leads for third party providers to the tune of 5-10 per day. I can use those same talents to generate my own leads from search engine traffic and them not be shared with several other dealers. What is amazing is that as an affiliate I make $10.25 per lead even after the companies shave the numbers and they resell them 1 to 3 times for around $20 per pop. My cost for these affiliate sites that I own is around $25 per month plus $71.50 per year for the domains. My efforts have been almost nil since they were erected and they still pump out $50 to $100 per day to me in affiliate commissions for leads not to mention adsense. The difference is it targets nationwide and not local so my results may be different for dealership leads but easier to optimize.

My goal is to go back to building a network of sites and landing pages for SEO value, personal / store branding and lead generation. Maybe not in that order. I will take the money I am spending on third party leads and high end classified sites to devote to PPC, directory submissions and content creation. While I will perform most of the content creation and manage the PPC campaigns I will definitely hire out directory submissions and link building. While I have scripts that I use for blackhat link building that I will use too. At the same time building a portfolio of landing pages for specific brand cars, new and used.