How DealerLink is Succeeding with Auto Dealers using Special Finance Leads, Auto Sales Leads and Automotive Direct Mail Marketing Programs
How DealerLink is Succeeding with Auto Dealers using Special Finance Leads
, Auto Sales Leads and Automotive Direct Mail Marketing ProgramsAfter more than 40 years in the car business and in auto sales lead generation, I have been through multiple downturns in our industry. During the last quarter of 2010, I was able to estimate that the industry would begin to see a turn around during and presently, all indicators are certainly pointing in that direction.
A little over a month ago, I had the good fortune of having the opportunity to speak to a group of auto dealers from all over the country at a special finance conference in Indianapolis who were all there looking and hoping for signs that things were starting to turn around for our industry. Also present at this conference were almost all the lenders in the business who were also there to update auto dealers on the state of the industry. In my entire career, I don't think I have ever seen that many lenders specifically focused on our industry's target customer in one place and I absolutely never have seen such a combined consensus of positive outlook on the immediate future of the subprime auto finance business. Some highlights included all of the lenders removing the "looked to booked" penalties, revised underwriting guidelines and additionally an absolute total effort by the lenders to let auto dealers know that they had money available and were looking for ways to make deals.
I was asked by auto dealers to provide them with the top 3 strategies they could use to increase sales, lower advertising expenses and keep their cost of sales down.
The very first stratey at the top of the list was special finance leads (or subprime auto finance leads). Even though it's been a very trying time for the last two and a half years, special finance leads still offer an incredible value for the money. A couple of things pointed out by the lenders at the conference that they were all seeing were: larger down payments, more money being financed and monthly payments increasing not only in dollar amount but in terms as well. It turns out those people with credit scores between 625 and 725 have taken about a 100 point drop in their bureau scores, putting them in unfamiliar territory when it comes to subprime auto finance. These same people still want to drive the nicer cars and are willing to come up with down payments and extend terms to get within budgets.
The second of the three strategies was auto sales leads, which can also fit within the special finance leads category except that because at DealerLink we generate the auto sales leads from over 500 consumer auto finance sites that are listed at the very top of the search engines, we are seeing a wide spectrum of credit scores, which is again a great value for the dealer.
Here are a couple of our most successful consumer auto finance websites:
NationwideAutoLending.com - ranked #2 at Google for the term "auto loans"
CapitalCarLoans.com - ranked #1 at Google for the term "car financing"
AutoLoans.us - ranked #1 at Google for the term "bad credit car loan"
DealerLink.us - ranked #1 at Google for the term "special finance leads"
Since they only asked me for the top 3 strategies that I would recommend, I had a hard time deciding whether to suggest automotive direct mail or automotive trigger leads. Ultimately, I chose to recommend automotive direct mail because more dealers have experience with auto dealer direct mail marketing albeit not always a good experience. I am unaware of any automotive direct mail marketing companies who are willing to guarantee an auto dealer even a 1% response rate, while DealerLink will guarantee a minimum of 2% on any of our direct mail programs. Additionally, with our one of a kind automotive credit card mailer, DealerLink will guarantee 100% of the dealer's investment. In more direct terms, if an auto dealer chooses to participate in our automotive credit card mailer and spends $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 or more, we will guarantee enough sales to cover the dealer's investment, period!
We are also having great success with bankruptcy mailers and other credit score-based direct mail programs that we offer.
There are an incredible number of dealers who have been waiting for good news and I'm proud to say this news has arrived. As an auto dealer, if you have been hesitant about getting back into the special finance leads business don't miss this opportunity to do so! Pick up the phone today and call Tim Parker, President and CEO of DealerLink, at 704-544-9100 or toll-free at 800-890-8850 and I will help you personally. Try to call the other companies and see how many of the Presidents you can talk to!