So Many Listing Sites, So Little Time/Money...

There is an overwhelming number of sites for listing your inventory and more showing up everyday.  The problem is you don't have an overwhelming amount of time and money to use them all.  So where should you spend?

A few of the big dogs always come to mind (AutoTrader, Cars, eBay, Edmunds) just to name a few, but lets break it down from a dealers point of view.  AutoTrader says their #1 and brag that they have 3.5 million listings; Cars makes a lot of those same claims.  Let's look at the facts from your customers viewpoint - we'll call them the BUYER.  Here's where the Buyers shopped in April 2010; http://tinyurl.com/26q2gdn.

          57% eBay Motors,    13% AutoTrader,    5% Cars.com

Buyers for used cars overwhelmingly shopped on eBay Motors.  Sellers (that's the dealers) overwhelmingly listed on AutoTrader.

As a dealer ask yourself this; do you want your cars listed among 3.5 million other cars on a site that buyers visit less frequently or do you want to list your cars on a site with only 50K cars to compete against, and 4X's more buyers?

I talked to a single point domestic dealer last week that confessed he was paying over $15K a month to AT.  To stand out he had to buy all the extras, highlighting and placement - you know the drill.  He signed up for eBay Motors for $1K, didn't have to buy extras to stand out and got just as many leads.  He said the only difference was the leads were stronger because the eBay shoppers were ready to buy, not just researching.  He still uses all 3 listings sites, but he's cut out all the extras.  Once he has several months of good analytics he's going to re-evaluate.

The other site that's gaining traction with dealers is Craiglist but we haven't seem them hit the Top 10 sites for buyers yet.  But we'll keep you posted.

So choose wisely, do the research.  Go to the different sites and search for a car, check out how many other cars you're competing against in your zip code.  You may find you have less competition on a site you're not even using.  Make a change, you could sell more cars!