Sheehy sold an additional 414 cars in one month online while decreasing their advertising costs. “We shifted some of our marketing budget to focus on targeting the Internet. Customers are changing where and how they shop so we are changing where we market. We’ve found the Web is a lot less expensive than traditional mass media, and it’s easy to measure the returns,” said Roy Reutter from Sheehy. “Initially we relied heavily on third party providers for our leads and after a short time, we realized that the leads with the highest closing ratio and lowest cost came from our own Web site. We’ve since set up our own regional buying service, and we’re generating more traffic and leads for our people to turn into appointments and sales. The Web has become our primary source of phone traffic,” Reutter said. The Idea Once the Sheehy team realized they needed more than a Web site and a few third party lead providers, they worked to build a complete strategy to market and update their Web site, staff their team, implement a process, establish pricing and more. That was two years ago and since that time they have increased their numbers by over 600 percent and dropped their cost per sale to about $130 per car. The Results After switching to the new provider, Sheehy increased leads from 400 to 1,350 in the first two months and have continued to improve results. Today they are generating more than 2,400 leads a month from their Web site alone. They’re selling more than 400 cars a month online. The Web site Roy Reutter has found there are five keys to a great automotive Web site. They are:
Simple and easy to use
Content that the customer wants
High-impact, engaging multi-media fast to load even on a low-speed connection
Automatic updating for inventory, specials and pricing
Designed to create more Internet, phone and showroom traffic
