Generate Automotive Leads

I have an opportunity to generate leads for a company that sends leads to automotive dealerships on their behalf and get paid per lead sent. They would require a minimum of 10 per day to be submitted.

Guess my questions is around using PPC to send potential interested buyers to a landing page and having them fill out a form. Obviously a numbers game - but would it be possible to build leads based on X per click while getting paid X per lead generated?

 

So this is actually right up my alley... I've worked in the automotive and marketing industry for over a decade. I've built landing pages and used Adwords to generate leads for dealerships.

Most of the dealerships I've had as a client would pay $2,500-$6,000 per month for SEM. On a very clever landing page I was able to convert 1 out of 8 clicks in to a lead. You are paying anywheres between $1.50 up to $9 per click. The cost per lead ranged from $15 to $45. Now these are exclusive hot leads. Out of 100 leads worked properly internally (not in your control) there should be a 15-20% closing rate (conversion to sale). My main focus was Subprime auto leads (bad credit) because those people will fill out anything. Taking 3 random clients (dealers) only 1 of them would work the leads properly to see a profit to continue service with my company.

In the above scenario I sold a service NOT leads. The reason I did it this way was because I could NEVER turn a profit selling a lead directly to a dealer. If you add in yet another party there is NO WAY you can produce a lead to profit from if they are buying "wholesale" to sell that lead "retail". Keep in mind a retail lead is between $10 to $35. Lead Providers that purchase leads want to pay between $3-$12 depending on your volume and the lead quality.

If you need to produce 10 leads per day you would need a $300/day SEM budget and converting at a rate that I have NEVER seen in my 10 years of experience in this industry.

Here's a little info on Lead Providers that buy 3rd party leads. They don't care if you send them 10 leads a day or a couple. They only want leads they can sell. If you are looking in to breaking in to selling leads the best is to do it direct or offer a service to a dealership. Skip the middle man...they are brokers who are the only ones that will yield a profit.

 

Thanks for the great reply - do you have experience going directly to dealers with leads? I have heard about these third parties that provide leads as not always the best - big difference between a name and a qualified lead. Sub prime is tough... sure can get leads but dealers don't work.

You are in the park with price per lead for the provider, but not familiar enough with actually having a way to generate the leads, so needless to say it sounds like the math doesn't add up very well.

When offering leads to dealers - best to focus on make / model or geographic location?

 

Yes. I'm actually working directly with a marketing company that handles SEM/SEO for dealers as well as Social Media services. I'm also fully employed by one of the largest vendors for Auto Dealerships. If you type in "autos" in google we are on the main first page.

Subprime is the BEST lead. However, most dealerships have no idea how to structure a subprime deal and what banks to submit it to. I've set up a special finance web site for a dealership that had a very talented special finance manager and he was able to get 20 deals bought a month from 150 leads. The same set up at another dealership yielded 0 sales.

Autobytel charges $16.95-$19.95 for New Car Lead. Same with Dealix. Both vendors also charge $24.95 per used car lead. They generate their leads through their "referral network" (ie. sites like yours and mine) as well as their internal sites (Dealix owns usedcars.com).

The ONLY way you will EVER yield a profit selling a lead to a 3rd party is to produce those leads organically. You will NOT profit from SEM. It's far too costly. I could fine tune an SEM account on a limited budget and produce leads to resell for a profit but the amount of traffic will be MINIMAL. All major keywords to target traffic in a specific territory will have a CPC of at least $3.50. We've spent over $500k producing special finance leads for clients to know you can't resell them individually this way.

Both. Dealers want local leads on the brand they are selling. Unless you have a high traffic site producing Toyota leads with in 20 miles of a Toyota dealership you're going to be in trouble.

I actually advise you NOT to waste your time trying to resell leads. The real money is either providing a service OR product directly to a dealership.

Or...just walk in to a dealer and become their Internet Manager or Business Development Manager and make $80-$150k.

 

Thanks again for the reply! I actually have recently started an automated marketing platform specific to the automotive industry - looking to gain some traction and clients, but was approached by a lead company looking to generate leads, so got my wheels spinning if it was possible to gain traffic to generate the leads and in turn sell them - making a few bucks in the process. But by the sound of it getting the traffic to get the leads is tough enough... then the price per lead doesn't make it worth it.

So with that being said offering the platform to dealers and getting some traction but gaining more by doing it for them - as I am sure you know they like things simple and easy for them.

Perhaps I will drop you a message and we can discuss the best way in selling services to dealers - always looking for advice.

Thanks!

 

I'd be interested in hearing more about your platform.