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While living in Thousand Oaks, CA I found we had a rat living in our garage.
I setup four beautiful, cheezy bait traps but couldn’t catch it. Defeated, I called in a professional exterminator and proudly showed him all of the cheezy bait I had put out but the rat never took.
The exterminator laughs at me and says:
“Cheese? (chuckles) You put cheese on a trap and thought this rat was dumb enough to just walk into your trap?”.
Me:
“Uh, yeah.”
Exterminator:
“Oh no my friend, rats know better, they’ve seen that trick before and have evolved to know not to take bait setups. Let me show you how we do this now…”
Year 2006: If a dealership took the time to write cheesy or legitimate vehicle descriptions, their vehicles would get more views and clicks than their competitors online. But that was mundane, tedious and repetitive work requiring a thought process and never produced instant, measurable ROI.
Year 2008: The inventory companies heard the whining and complaining about all this extra, repetitive, boring work and thus the…
Year 2009: Cheesy Comment functionality was born, dealer managers rejoiced and eagerly created their instant Cheesy Comments.
Online Car Shoppers Evolved
Much like rats have evolved to know not to take the cheesy bait, your customers have evolved as well.
Quality vehicle descriptions is often a determining factor whether a customer clicks, calls or visits your dealership or clicks, calls or visits your competitors dealerships on a similar vehicle.
Encourage, attract and educate your online car shoppers.
Don’t treat them like a rat.
Return On Investment: Dealership reputation. Look smart and attract the same. Attract more clicks & views on your vehicles vs your competitors. It’s a start.
I have started updating a dealer groups used car descriptions and have already noticed about 30% more clicks and VDP views on those vehicles I updated.
The analysis process is tough because there are many variables as a vehicle ages, mainly price but at the time of this writing these below are my test results.
Update: Merchandising is has been completed and tracked for two months and the results will amaze you.
