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Advertising Price As A Web Address...will It Work?
Posted By: I Like That Payment on 6/22/2006 2:46 PM (CST) 1050 Points
I recently quit my job managing an auto dealership, went and purchased over 6,000 domain names, and started my own marketing company based on the following premise.

In a recent study by C.N.W. Marketing Research, 87.4% of car buyers surveyed said that Monthly Payment was one of the most important considerations in determining their decision to purchase a new or used vehicle. Another growing trend was discovered in surveys where over 80% of car buyers said they used the internet as part of their car buying decision. Combining the results of these two surveys inspired me to develop what I feel is the world's simplest and easiest way to bring today's buyers into auto dealerships.

If over 87% of car buyers want a good monthly payment . . . and over 80% of car buyers use the internet . . . then wouldn't it make sense to advertise attractive monthly payments, place a ".com" after them, and if a customer is interested in the offer and wants more information, all they have to do is enter the payment into their computer, and then I bring all those car buyers directly to a webpage featuring the advertised special...and I frame it right into that dealers own website.

I give each dealer exclusive rights to use all my monthly payments with ".com" after them in their own markets where they advertise. What better way to brand yourself as a price leader, and build your own website traffic at the same time!

Am I crazy, or is this a good idea? How would I get advertising agency's to want to use this for their clients?

Posted by: rbauman* Accepted Answer
6/22/2006 3:22 PM (CST)
Getting the first few client is always the hard part. You may have to initially offer the websites on a financial risk-sharing basis by charging the dealerships a percentage of each sale they make through your website. After you have enough clients to get traction in the marketplace you can consider changing to a flat subscription fee to monthly, quarterly or annual subscriptions.
 
Posted by: jcrooks Member Response
6/22/2006 3:45 PM (CST)
Be careful with framing - it's a functionality that's disappearing fast because of the problems and limitations associated with it. We will no longer permit our affiliates to frame in our site.

Also remember that you are asking people to switch mediums, from reading a newspaper to going online. That's a lot tougher than just clicking on a link. Given the ongoing decline of newspaper circulation, you may want to consider alternatives to boost website traffic.

I would be surprised if an agency will go for this. I would probably try to start with a dealership directly first, so that they can tell, not ask, their agency to work with you. Once you've established a successful track record the rest is easy, but as rbauman said, the first clients will be the toughest.

Best wishes on your exciting new venture.
 
Posted by: ShannonD* Member Response
6/22/2006 4:11 PM (CST)
As a former Dealershp Manager myself, I say this sounds like a great idea. Now making it work will be a totally different ballgame. You have two significant probelms.

1. When you start your company, it's very possible that the corporate offices of the dealerships you serve will want to regulate what you are presenting as a monthly payment. While true that most buyers are using the internet, a dealership wants that traffic to visit their website first.

2. You have heavy, similar competiton already online. If you check out cars.com or even edmunds.com, you'll see that they not only do prices, but break downs of brand vs. brand. I think it will be tough to build on online presence unless you get individual dealerships that focus in used cars to back you up. I would assume that this is not focused toward the new car market since you are being monthly payment based and almost all corporate level dealerships have ways online already to calculate that cost.

I think you can be a big profitor if you are backing up the smaller compeitors who don't have websites for themselves. If you target foriegn cars, and local, cheaper cars, then you can help these guys who focus soley on the newspaper for advertisment. They could then include your site into their ads, but the question then leads to if you are going to include pictures of those cars with the prices online, or just give discriptions.

It can be done, but I think you should do a couple test market survey's before you totally invest yourself. Do you have an clients yet? If so, build some base statistics to get the ball rolling for your referal network so that other dealerships can call and talk about what you do for them. It's all ROI for the dealer as well. If you know dealerships like I do, you know they also want to put their hands on somethings and see it before they buy into it. I think if you can prove it works, then you will be able to get more dealerships to buy into it. Remember, car salesmen are built to smell bull****, so you have to make your product have facts that are as concrete as you can make them. Make sure you trademark yourself soon or someone could take your idea and run with it as well.

Good Luck

Shannon D
 
Posted by: stlubahn Accepted Answer
6/22/2006 9:12 PM (CST)
I agree with jcrooks, I would avoid using the frames approach, there are much better design techniques to use that will give you better control over how the content is displayed.

Also, if you are offering this as a service, make sure you provide a way for you customers to measure the traffic they receive as a result of partnering, if they need to do any ROI justification for the promotional expense they will want to know how this is benefiting their website and their business.

Steve
 
Posted by: darcy.moen Member Response
6/23/2006 12:03 AM (CST)
Can I play the naysayer on this one? Having a simple domain name (or thousands of them) may seem like a great idea, but look a little deeper into the sales process.

Live by price, die by price.

Folks already have a simple way to find cheap cars. Google is one heck of a search engine, and I think most folks are skilled enough to type in "mercedes", 'Cars","Regina", "Saskatchewan"....and start drilling down. Not to mention, there is a plethora of car sales websites. I think the price domain name idea is rather weak.

The permutations of 200amonthmercedes.com, then 'Two-hundred-dollars-a-month-mercedes.com', then .....ah fudge...you get my point. To register all these domains names, then point them, and build/administer websites.....heck, the ones who will make out the best are Go-Daddy domain name registrar and your web host company.

A website can be a powerful tool, or it can be limiting. it is just ONE tool amongst many out there. How many folks buy a serious purchase like a car off the web? I mean BUY ONE...not just research for features, price range, etc. I think its an over glorified newspaper ad, and ore of a research tool for the majority of customers. It may steer a few folks into a dealer, but....it most likely wouldn't be cost effective.

It takes a lot of work to promote one website. Multiply that effort by thousands.....and I think you might agree, it becomes a mouse toot in a hurricane.

The real test will be...can you back up your research and numbers with proof to the dealer of :This month I sold XX cars for you with this website...or are you simply going to tell him...here's how many people looked at the page.

Pardon me for being so down, but...

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network
 
Posted by: MANSING Accepted Answer
6/23/2006 6:42 AM (CST)
Hello,

I like your idea and your webpage is giving good sense to understand your business -

http://ilikethatpayment.com/PubIndex.htm (Main Page) and http://ilikethatpayment.com/PubIndex_files/Page457.htm (Clients)

I like your idea and it will be successful. There is nothing which is impossible! Only think you need is Courage, Good Planning, Risk management skills, Consistency and Luck. You need to work hard on this. Every car sellers has there own ideas of marketing. People want to go to the show room and chose the car?

How much commission you will get? I think if you add your client on main page with there details it will bring your customer close to you. And main thing is our wishes will be with you!

I hope this will help!

Regards,

M Bhor

Websites:

http://www.cars.com/go/index.jsp
http://www.autobytel.com/
http://www.carsdirect.com/home
http://www.autotrader.com/
http://www.automotive.com/
 
Posted by: I Like That Payment Author Response
6/23/2006 9:55 AM (CST)
Thank you for your response and encouragement
 
Posted by: I Like That Payment Author Response
6/23/2006 11:43 AM (CST)
For Darcy and Shannon...

Based on your comments, I may not have explained how this works properly, but the auto dealers themselves advertise the payment domains by incorporating them into their existing advertisements that they already do in their local markets. When a customer sees or hears an attractive monthly payment in an advertisement, and wants to know more, they enter the "payment domain" (i.e. 199permonth.com, 249permonth.com, etc.) into their computer, and we build a nice landing page giving them pictures and information to help customers make their buying decision.
For example, we have a Subaru dealer in Yakima, Washington using our service. He advertised on local radio, TV, and in newspapers, a 2006 Subaru Impreza for 199permonth.com. When people in his market territory were exposed to the advertisement and wanted more information, they logged on to 199permonth.com. Try this yourself. Log on to 199permonth.com and enter Yakima, and Washington when prompted, and you will see the dealer web page we designed for him. We track all site activity. The site has click counters, and lead generation forms (also with counters), that automatically are sent to designated email adresses of the dealers.
The whole process is desiged to get the dealers more traffic by allowing consumers to research deals they are interested in without having to search for or remember a dealer or third party website address. Why take the stairs, when you can ride the escalator. My contention is, it's quicker and easier for consumers to remember a payment, than to remember or search for a web address.
 
Posted by: I Like That Payment Author Response
6/23/2006 11:51 AM (CST)
rbaughman,

You're right about the first few clients! I like your risk sharing payment idea. Thanks for the feedback.
 
Posted by: I Like That Payment Author Response
6/23/2006 11:56 AM (CST)
jcrooks and stlubahn,

We only actually frame one page into the Specials section of their website by giving them the link address. What are the risks involved with this?
Thank you for your responses!
 
Posted by: darcy.moen Member Response
6/23/2006 2:14 PM (CST)
A semi-tech savvy dealer could also create a sub domain from his original domain.

For example: www.dilawri.ca
with a propigated sub domain becomes: www.199amonth.dilawri.ca

Add on more, and you have www.299amonth.dilawri.ca , www.399amonth.dilawri.ca etc, etc, etc.

This would also help build brand and name awareness of the dealership, rather than focus just on price.

I get the concept, and a few dealers would buy into it. For the sake of long term planning, I think it makes more sense to build the relationships and traffic around the dealer's brand, not just the dealer's price. Sub domains enables a dealer to do both (and it does not require a TLD).

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network,
 
Posted by: I Like That Payment Author Response
6/23/2006 2:52 PM (CST)
Thanks for the response Darcy......the propagated sub-domain idea is interesting.
I'm not sure I understand how to implement something like that though. We currently have a first landing page that all the payment domains point to, and when the City and State are entered the program knows which dealer webpage to take them to. If I put a sub-domain on 199amonth.com for example, wouldn't that prevent me from using that domain for another dealer to use?
 
Posted by: ShannonD* Accepted Answer
6/23/2006 3:00 PM (CST)
3 more comments bud

1. If I search Washington, I should be able to pull up every 199 deal for the state, instead of just having to know the city. Just my opinion. :)

2. I have a cable modem and your home page loads very slow on picture pages. Maybe you could make them smaller and allow for someone to click on them to make them larger so the page and graphics will load faster. (Sample ads page)

3. I like scrolling marquee, just not on your start up page. That page needs to pop up fast and make it's point, especially if a dealership is doing a broad search and is looking for just good web pages.

I still think a great target wouldl be your smaller dealers as well as you new car dealers.

The overall package is very nice with how you structured it. I think it really does have potential, as long as you marketing well. I think you may need to do a lot of face to face sales or appointment setting though. I'm sure you're already doing great with how you are set up though so keep itup and let me know if I can help!

Shannon D
 
Posted by: I Like That Payment Author Response
6/23/2006 5:14 PM (CST)
Thanks again Shannon.
 
Posted by: darcy.moen Member Response
6/23/2006 6:19 PM (CST)
Depending on the web host server configuration, the dealer himself can add a subdomain to his existing domain name, and they could do it without incurring any additional charges. The point I'm making is, the dealer could bypass you and your concept easily simply by having their own web master set up a subdomain on the domain they already own, fill in the web page with HTML, and configure the server to do a masked redirect.

The dealer then add www.199amonth.dilawri.ca to their advertising and are off.

Darcy Moen
 
Posted by: nmuqbel Accepted Answer
6/25/2006 7:25 AM (CST)
I love the idea... and the website is great...But I have to agree with Darcy on the fact that there's alot of car sales websites... it's easy for dealers to bypass you... and it's gonna take ALOT of work to promote it...
But that doesnt mean that it's not going to work though... You need to promote yourself and it's gonna cost you... you have to put your name out there... and it's very tough to promote a website... but if you want to make money you gotta spend alot of it first... A guy in my country (jordan) brought up the idea of e-shopping recently and he started a website called eshoppingtome.com... the idea was old and simple..but new to this country... He advertised on one of the most popular radio stations called play 99.6 FM. He also advertised on the radio's website, which was smart because he targeted a specific segment (educated young jordanians below 30 and foreigners residing in Jordan) because this radio station only plays english music. He also handed out brochures and giveaways (mousepads...pens..etc.) My point is if you want your website to stand out... you should promote it... and you should do it well.

I hope this helps a little... and I wish you all the best of luck..
Great idea!

Nader
 
Posted by: I Like That Payment Author Response
6/26/2006 7:23 PM (CST)
thank you for all the responses. this was the first time I have used this forum, and it is a great way to get feedback from the marketing community. I'm glad I found it. I hope I can aid others some day the way you have helped me.
 


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