I’ve heard it over and over; we’re in the era of a changing of the guards. Out with the old and ushering in the new. We can all agree on the old way isn’t going to work in the here and now. Never has their been a major shift in the way dealers gather data, convert leads, and make that bottom dollar. Five years ago about 90% of dealers had never heard the terms SEO or SEM. The majority of us thought the Internet was only for sending email and surfing sites we wish we could erase from our memory. Now that you’ve got a beautiful website, the marketing taken care of, advertising dollars spent, and software that runs all of it, the time to capitalize off that spending is here & now!
Leads are your bread & butter.
Up until recently, there were 3 basic types of leads for your dealership: Walk Ins, Phone Calls, and Email. Since things tend to progress, we can now add a fourth. Chat.
Chat falls into 2 different areas of the lead spectrum quite nicely. For the customer, it’s not as intimidating as a phone call or as time consuming as driving to the dealership. The chat lead is hotter than an email because the information is delivered in real time and does not sit on a server for hours before the sales person finally gets back to them. Sometimes, it’s better than a phone call because all the information is recorded. From the vehicles & pages they were looking at on your site, to the entire conversation your sales person had with the lead is right there in black & white, ready for you to deliver the service your customer requires.
After months of research we’re finding that about 2% of your website’s unique traffic will engage in chat. Even more amazing is that some brands can see up to 5% of the unique web traffic interested in chatting about your business. This same research is also showing that dealerships are only answering about 20% of the incoming chats, leaving a HUGE margin unanswered and ultimately, unconverted.
The bottom line is that you spend the money getting people to look at your inventory and visit your site. You can look at your Google Analytics all day long and see what numbers your website is pulling in, but if you aren’t converting that traffic into real leads and sales, then what good is that colorful graph you’re staring at?
As I mentioned earlier, dealerships are trying to capitalize on this by offering chat to their visitors. Trying is the key word here. Trying, but not trying too hard. Even the most dedicated dealerships that have their BDC or inside staff answer these incoming chats are hitting at most 34% (most are hovering below the 20% mark). Why? Because your website never closes and your staff aren’t dedicated to the one job of answering incoming chats! When you go home at night, do you turn off your website? Why turn off the leads your website generates? eCarList offers an incredible solution with Managed SmartChat™. Our chat team works around the clock converting those leads and offering great customer service.
Get in touch with me today at 214.722.8208 or merritt@ecarlist.com and we’ll “chat” about turning on eCarList Managed SmartChat™ and increase the sales and customer service for your dealership.
The post To Chat or Not to Chat, Is There Really a Question? appeared first on Dealertrack Interactive and Inventory Blog.
