As a personal car has become seen as a necessity rather than a luxury, trading in cars has become a good way to make a living. However, if you’re just about to open up a car dealership or you’ve been in the business for years, you’ll need to be thinking about how to best to hold an online presence.
In the past, customers would head to their local dealership or take a look through classified ads in magazines like AutoTrader. Taking advantage of national publications was a great way to give your business more exposure. Now, though, print media doesn’t have the same kind of reach and looking for cars online has become second nature to many customers.
Typically, selling cars on hosting sites like eBay or AutoTrader meant paying listing fees similar to how you would in a print magazine of old. You have to pay these whether your vehicle sells or not and these can range between £15-£35. If someone decided to list a large number of cars this could significantly add up so the question has been whether this model was worthwhile for a dealer.
There are, however, other ways of selling cars online that might benefit your business. ExchangeandMart are a UK-based company are offering what they call a “pay for results” system. This offers dealers a chance to benefit from the website’s audience of 7.1m potential customers on a cost per enquiry advertising model. You won’t pay any upfront costs to advertise your vehicles, leaving you to list your cars by bulk without worrying about a large amount of listing fees piling up. You’ll only pay a fee when someone calls or emails to inquire about your vehicle.
Benfield Motor Group, who operate thirty-four sites across the North West, North East and Yorkshire have been a recent customer of the company. Mark King, their Digital Sales and Marketing Manager, said, “The cost per enquiry model works well for us. We pride ourselves on getting the most out of our advertising budget and with ExchangeandMart every pound provides a return in the form of an actual lead. We know how many calls and emails we convert to sales so the more leads ExchangeandMart generate for us, the more cars we sell.”
With other online distributors it was about hoping the advantage of the site’s expanded audience outweighed the disadvantage of having to pay for expensive listing fees. This new format, however, seems to be a win-win approach for dealers looking to ramp up their online presence.
In the past, customers would head to their local dealership or take a look through classified ads in magazines like AutoTrader. Taking advantage of national publications was a great way to give your business more exposure. Now, though, print media doesn’t have the same kind of reach and looking for cars online has become second nature to many customers.
Typically, selling cars on hosting sites like eBay or AutoTrader meant paying listing fees similar to how you would in a print magazine of old. You have to pay these whether your vehicle sells or not and these can range between £15-£35. If someone decided to list a large number of cars this could significantly add up so the question has been whether this model was worthwhile for a dealer.
There are, however, other ways of selling cars online that might benefit your business. ExchangeandMart are a UK-based company are offering what they call a “pay for results” system. This offers dealers a chance to benefit from the website’s audience of 7.1m potential customers on a cost per enquiry advertising model. You won’t pay any upfront costs to advertise your vehicles, leaving you to list your cars by bulk without worrying about a large amount of listing fees piling up. You’ll only pay a fee when someone calls or emails to inquire about your vehicle.
Benfield Motor Group, who operate thirty-four sites across the North West, North East and Yorkshire have been a recent customer of the company. Mark King, their Digital Sales and Marketing Manager, said, “The cost per enquiry model works well for us. We pride ourselves on getting the most out of our advertising budget and with ExchangeandMart every pound provides a return in the form of an actual lead. We know how many calls and emails we convert to sales so the more leads ExchangeandMart generate for us, the more cars we sell.”
With other online distributors it was about hoping the advantage of the site’s expanded audience outweighed the disadvantage of having to pay for expensive listing fees. This new format, however, seems to be a win-win approach for dealers looking to ramp up their online presence.