Cars.com Executive Shares Insider Secrets to Outsell Competitors (What Really Works)

One thing that I used to love doing as a dealer is looking for ways to gain the algorithm on the marketplaces. Legitimately, there's a lot of things you can do to improve your performance and beat your competitors. You're in charge of these algorithms. What are the best practices that people can do in order to have their listings show up at the top? Any clever tricks here that you can share with us? Sure. Yeah, we have a thing called a dealer experience report. And so you can basically see kind of like how our consumer is talking about you in the market. How are they rating you? How you treat them in the store? Did you respond to their lead in a timely manner? We factor all that stuff into our algorithm. So it's really easy to kind of say, just drop your price. Look at your competitive set. Look at your inventory and just hit that rock bottom price and you're going to get more leads. There's truth in that. But we've tried to design an algorithm that kind of takes your whole experience and bakes it into the way that you're going to get ranked.

我以前作为一个经销商时特别喜欢的一件事就是寻找如何在市场上的算法中获得优势。实际上，有很多方法可以提高你的表现并击败竞争对手。你可以掌控这些算法。为了让你的商品列表排在前面，有哪些最佳做法？有没有什么聪明的小窍门可以分享？ 当然，我们有一个叫做"经销商体验报告"的东西。这样你基本上可以看到消费者在市场上对你的评价。他们是如何评价你的服务，在店内你是如何对待他们的，你是否及时回复了他们的询问。我们将所有这些因素纳入算法中。所以很容易简单地说，只需降低价格。看看你的竞争对手，查看你的库存，定一个最低价，你就会获得更多的潜在客户。这确实有一定道理。但我们尝试设计一种算法，将你的整体体验考虑在内，从而决定你的排名方式。

At the end of the day, price the vehicle in a fair way. We have price badges on our site. This is a hot car. Is it in demand? You'll be able to know that one of your listing inventory on cars.com. Is it a great deal? Good deal. That's based on dynamic demand index and pricing index that we have on the site. And then the third piece is consumer experience. If you're not treating people well and that comes through in the way that you're showing up on the site, you're going to get penalized for it. And then the fourth thing is like, if you got inventory metal that you need to move, make sure that you're like promoting that as effectively as possible. People don't know what they want. We have a lot of dealers who are kind of like, well, I'm going to put 10 of my cars on the site, but I'm not going to put these other 10 on the site. And at the end of the day, you're presupposing what's going to drive demand and interest or what's not. And a lot of times these consumers, 80% of the time they don't know exactly what they're looking for. New, used, price point, all the things that we presuppose that they do actually don't put as much inventory on the site as you possibly can, which sounds like it's on our self-interest. But basically, consumers are coming to us out of a place of, I want you to be the market equalizer. If you're kind of misrepresenting a piece of the market or only a segment of the market, then they're not going to have that trust and they're going to just keep looking, keep looking, keep looking. And dealers want consumers to make a decision. So a few things that are pretty basic. Again, there's not a silver bullet, but it's pretty basic.

总的来说，要以公平的方式定价车辆。我们的网站上有价格标记。这辆车很热门，是不是有需求？你可以通过cars.com上的列表库存来知道。是不是很划算的交易？好交易？这是基于我们网站上的动态需求指数和定价指数。 第三点是消费者体验。如果你对待顾客不好，并且这种情况在你网站的展示中表现出来，你将会因此受到惩罚。 第四点是，如果你有必需销售的库存车辆，确保有效地推广它们。人们并不知道自己想要什么。很多经销商倾向于只把10辆车放在网站上，而不放其他的10辆。实际上，你在假设什么会驱动需求和兴趣，或者什么不会。很多时候，80%的消费者并不知道他们确切想要什么。新车、二手车、价格点，所有我们假设他们知道的东西，其实并没有让他们明确。 尽可能多地将库存放到网站上，这听起来像是我们的私利，但其实消费者来找我们，是希望我们成为市场的平衡器。如果你错代表市场的一部分或只展示市场的一个片段，他们就不会有信任感，会继续搜索，继续寻找。而经销商希望消费者能够做出决定。 一些基本的事情。再次强调，不是灵丹妙药，但很基本。

What about not basic? Have you seen any dealers do any bad-ass things that you're likely, well, this maybe requires a bit more investment, anything like that? Yeah, there's a couple of things that we think are really impactful whenever dealers do it and embrace it. One is, tout your salespeople and their expertise. So integrate that into the experience. If consumers take a salesperson at the time that they're interested in a vehicle, they're three times more likely to close on a car. So it's like, increases your close rate substantially, but that takes a lot of effort on the dealers' part. So that's one, represent your sales force and their expertise effectively on the marketplace. And then I would say kind of the second thing that is, let's talk about peace is be participating in things like, I want to acquire all the inventory that I can as a dealer that may sound antithetical, but we have a lot of trading capabilities. And a lot of times consumers are just trying to understand like, what's my car worth? And if you can open up that conversation and authenticate with the consumer, if they're getting rid of a vehicle, they need to buy one as well. And if you can be that place that takes that car from that consumer, your ability to then engage in a conversation about a sale goes up exponentially. And I think those are two things that are a little bit untapped in the market right now because it does require more effort. Yeah, it expands your surface area as well, because you're able, like you said, to get in front of more consumers.

那不一样的呢？你有没有看到过哪些经销商做过特别酷的事情，让你觉得可能需要更多的投入，类似的事情？是的，我们认为有几件事是非常有影响力的，只要经销商去做并接受它。首先是展示你的销售人员和他们的专业知识，把这一点融入到用户体验中。如果消费者在感兴趣的车辆时选择一位销售人员，他们购买汽车的可能性会增加三倍。所以这会显著提高你的成交率，但这需要经销商付出很多努力。所以第一点是要有效地在市场上展示你的销售团队和他们的专业知识。 然后我会说第二点，我们可以谈一谈参与诸如“我想尽可能多地获取库存”这样的事情。这听起来可能有点矛盾，但我们有很多交易能力。很多时候，消费者只是想知道他们的车值多少钱。如果你能打开这个话题并与消费者进行真实的对话，如果他们要卖车，就也需要买车。如果你能成为那个从消费者手中接过车的人，你就有更多机会开展销售对话。我认为这是目前市场上还未完全开发的两个因素，因为它们确实需要更多的努力。是的，这也会扩大你的接触面，因为正如你所说，你能接触到更多的消费者。

I just had this obsession with studying VDPs. So for anyone that's not from over the term, like a vehicle detail page, just pretty much fancy term for the page where you actually see a vehicle on a marketplace or a dealer's website. I remember when I saw Carvanna start adding those cards every like three or four cars. Do you know what I'm talking about? We're like on pictures, they would put like suddenly an ad. And I was like, these guys are slick. I like that. Give such a captive audience at that moment. It's like a podcast ad in the middle. I mean, it's no different. Like the person is already in the groove and it's like, boom, hit them with a car. Boom. So I thought that was pretty slick. I have to imagine that impacts conversion pretty well. Totally. Yeah. And there's a lot of things like that. So like, we're always, you know, we have media products that basically are like contextual advertising that dealers can participate in. Like, I want to boost this vehicle and like, but only with these types of people who are looking for these types of things. And that works extremely well.

我一直对研究VDP（车辆详情页面）有着痴迷。对于那些不熟悉这个术语的人来说，VDP就是一个高级术语，用来描述你在市场或经销商网站上看到车子的页面。我记得当我看到Carvana开始每隔三四辆车就插入一些广告卡片时，我感到非常惊讶。知道我在说什么吗？就是在图片中突然加一个广告。我当时想，这些人真聪明。我喜欢那种方式，在那个时候能牢牢吸引住观众。就像一个播客中的插播广告一样，没什么区别。观众已经沉浸在内容中，然后突然“砰”，来个汽车广告。我觉得这种做法非常巧妙，肯定对转换率有很大影响。完全没错。而且还有很多类似的方法。我们有一些媒体产品，基本上就是让经销商参与的上下文广告，比如“我想推广这辆车，但只针对正在寻找这些类型车辆的人。”这种方法效果非常好。

Or if you're, like you said, looking at photos of a car, if you're looking at inventory, maybe you're interested in something similar to that, even if it's at the same dealership, vehicle buying has like a bifurcated funnel. Meaning like, you start thinking, you know what you want. And then you realize everything that's out there. And then you basically start researching again. And then you make a decision. So as a dealer, if you're not there at each of those moments in time, you're missing out in somebody else's. So you've got to be in the middle of that mix.

或者，就像你提到的，当你在看汽车照片或库存时，可能你对类似的车感兴趣，即便是在同一个经销商那里。购车的过程有点像一个分叉漏斗。意思是，你一开始觉得自己知道想要什么，然后发现市场上有各种选择。于是你又开始重新调查一番，最后才做决定。所以，作为经销商，如果你没有在每个关键时刻出现，就可能错失客户，而这些客户可能会被其他经销商抢走。因此，你必须要在整个过程中保持活跃。

People know more about the socks that they buy than about the cars that they're looking at sometimes, you know, it's like you got to meet people where they are.

有时候，人们对自己买的袜子都比对自己看中的车了解得更多。你知道吗，这就像是你必须在适当的地方去见人。