Dealer research

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Posts posted by Dealer research

  3. Posted

    4 hours ago, tradex said:

    We have registered but no repsonse back...

    Hmm that's the 2nd person that said that. Can I ask you to simply send a blank email to hello@cazarr.com and we'll manually enter you into the list. 

     

    Sorry about that and we'll fix whatever the mailing list issue is asap. 

    6 hours ago, RH Trading said:

    Motors is a complete waste of time and money, have tried it several times, both on free trials (which they keep offering me to get me back on) and have also spent thousands with absolutely zero response and zero sales and I monitor everything religously

    Did you registered with cazarr.com

    first 3 months are free plus no contract and no payment info needed. Also all our features are completely free

  5. Posted

    On 09/09/2017 at 7:58 PM, Jimbo said:

    The going seems a bit slow at the moment (maybe its just me!)

    i use autotrader and ebay for the main ads. 

    I also occassionally try facebook and friday ad. 

    I look on autovillage and cargurus but dont seem to be able to list cars on there. 

    Motors.co.uk - is that any good? How much do they charge

    anywhere else thats good to try?

     

    i have cheaper cars around the £2k-£2.5k mark which usuallt sell fairly quick. Although the stuff around £5k-£6k seems to stick around too long. 

    Thanks in advance

    Have you taken a look at cazarr.com?

    free for vehicles up to £1500, first 3 months free advertising anyway and then 24p a car per day. Loads more but take a look anyway 

    hope it's of use. 

     

    Ta 

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    2 hours ago, MotorJam said:

    Dave

    Agree with everything Tadams says above.

    None of us have to use AT or any of their competitors for that matter. I'm not saying you said that just pointing out the obvious because I personally think you're asking the wrong questions to the wrong people and focusing on the wrong things. We may resent paying AT prices and I'm going to ignore all of the well documented issues we have with them and point out that the simple reason we use them,  is because they put our cars infront of our customers, give them the add ons that they want and make them pick the phone up/email/chat.  AT research is largely not focused on dealers, it is focused on car buyers, they have millions of visitors to their site and the technology to track and analyse their movements. They then offer the dealers more than just a lead...they record calls, offer chat services, videos, websites, stock valuation tools, ways to connect to other dealers to trade stock and the tools to analyse response etc. We use them (grudgingly) because we get a return on investment.

    We have had contact from three businesses like the one that you appear to be launching in the last week alone. One wanted £200 for 20 cars a month, three months free, no stock feed and were "going to do it all on social media"...couldn't show us what the site looked - it was a landing page, couldn't tell us how many cars they were going to launch with and beyond the "going to do it all on social media" did not appear to have a marketing strategy.  Another wanted £200 a week for 20 cars, they had an app with a few cars on, no stock feed, two months free and were then charging dealers at least 20% more than joe public. To be honest, by the time the third one got to us with the line "We're going to take AT down" we were a bit fed up to say the least.  For your information, we won't be going with any of them.

    There are two simple questions that you need to find the answers to, to make your business a success:

    1. How do I get dealers to advertise with me (what is my USP and is different from AT, Gurus, EBay, Exchange and Mart, Gumtree, AA Cars, Car cliq, Autovolo, Piston heads, Motors etc etc etc?)

    2. How do I get buyers to use my product?  (What is my marketing strategy) This is where you will come unstuck without VERY deep pockets that go a lot deeper than remortgaging your house(s)

    So you get the whole chicken and egg situation?  Without the customers you won't get the dealers, without the dealer's stock you won't get the customers.  You should be providing dealers with six months to a year's worth of free advertising WITH a stock feed to have the remotest of chances, no matter how good your site/app/product. This is not to benefit US, this is to benefit YOU because if you don't have the stock on your site, you won't get the customers, you don't get the customers, you don't sell cars, dealers stop paying (if they ever started), pull their cars and customers go elsewhere and your business fails. 

    The stock feed...even for free I'm not going to sit putting every single one of my cars on your site, there will be those that will but I'm guessing they will be relatively few and far between and you won't get any traction at the volume end of the market. You need to make it easy for me to use you and at least get me some enquiries (what I do with them after that is down to me) before I decide to use you instead of one of the channels I'm already using, or increase my spend in an already saturated market.

    Your focus on our dissatisfaction with AT is misplaced. You need to be working on what I would love about you and that has to be more than the opposite of what I don't like about AT. There's stuff I do like...are you incorporating that? What about the stuff I don't like about EBay/Gumtree/Motors/Gurus ? What about the stuff I like?  More importantly what about the customers?

    So in answer to your question would we give you a go?  The answer, based on what I have read so far, is "no". That's not to say I won't change my mind but you've not dangled any carrots that will make me bite or said/shown me anything that I've not heard before.   That said...I hope you do make a resounding success of your business, if you can sell me more cars than AT at a fraction of the price, trust me I'll backtrack with bells on.  

     

    Hi MotorJam and thanks for the message. Thats why we're here to find this kind of info out for release. Could you advise on the comment you put to help us out and give us an idea of this? 

    "There's stuff I do like...are you incorporating that? What about the stuff I don't like about EBay/Gumtree/Motors/Gurus ? What about the stuff I like?"

    We have a marketing strategy but until we go live with the site on 1 August, theres not alot more we can say until then. After 1st August we may either get people interested or fall flat on our faces. 

    Thanks

    Dave

    BHM and Arfur, Obviously we're never going to win you over but all i can say is that we were here to find more info out on what dealers would like from something that could genuinely challenge competitors to give you a "near perfect" solution for dealers from the start that you could get behind. We've had some valuable feedback and also some people who think we are dreamers. 

    I never came here to annoy anyone and can only apologize if i have.  

    If i can summarize what you 2 have said, then basically, everyone is happy with the current options and the market doesn't need anything else and we are destined to fail. 

    I'm really sorry you feel we have offended you by coming on here and (as mentioned before), I wont create any new threads and keep my messages to replying to comments only

    Thanks 

    Dave

  8. Posted

    23 minutes ago, Arfur Dealy said:

    Dave, I'm not negative, I'm a realist. You ultimately are researching here with the potential to trial a product which you hope to sell to us. So far, from your approach you haven't given me the slightest confidence to believe in you. You sound to me like a market trader trying to offer an "amazing" new product, then when you show the product it'll be an apple peeler. Big build up with a huge let down. I wish you the best of luck and would love to be proved wrong :) I mean that. Simon 

    Hi Simon. We have some work to do! 

    What aspect doesn't give you the slightest confidence in us. We need to resolve that asap! We're new and wet behind the ears for sure and wouldn't hide that fact. We know we're an underdog but relish in that. If it doesn't work, we've at least tried it. Not amazing BTW but refreshing! 

    Can we count on you to give us a go? 

    Dave

  9. Posted

    21 minutes ago, Arfur Dealy said:

    This sounds just like a dreaming student writing a thesis Which will inevitably turn into a quickly disappearing flop. 

    Hi Arfur, 

    Thanks for the comments. I do understand the sceptasim but we're all in with this and have a refreshing change to others out there. We came here to hopefully get a positive response which we have got but others have also been negative about it. It's the negative people like yourself that we'd love to win over. 

    Can we count on you to give us a go? 

    Thanks 

    Dave 

  10. Posted

    32 minutes ago, Mojo121 said:

    We'll give it a go. Don't get me wrong, I wish you all the best, I just know how hard it is.

    Anyway, what will your site be called and how are you planning to get buyers to it?

    Thanks Mojo121 and thanks for the kind words. 

    Site name is still a secret until 1st August when we go live with the site, message and essentially asking dealers to get involved and get stock on pre launch 1 Sept. 

    How do we get buyers on...Thats what our marketing team have been up to for 9 months working on a 16 week initial ramp up via all channels. Hand on heart truth....its chicken and egg which is why we are here. We need stock on it. if i personally went somewhere and there was no stock. i'd never visit it again so it really important for us to get stock on from the dealers so that people browse. Hope that make sense. 

    Cheers

    Dave 

    BTW current commitment (whether we get these or not) is approx 20k cars. Its not enough currently. 

    Anyone interested please let us know! lol. 

  11. Posted

    Hi Mojo121.

    Thanks for the email. We've actually done the emailing a DB around 9 months ago which led us to the product we have today (M and S vouchers plus free to use our service for 3 months). 

    Apologies for flooding and noted. Probably no more posts for us (promise Admin!) as you have given us valuable feedback. I dont think its amateur coming here as this is a very powerful site and gives powerful insights which are just as good as surveys to be honest if not better because conversation flows

    Can i count on you to give us a try? 

    Cheers 

  12. Posted

    56 minutes ago, Tadams said:

    i think you need to speak to website hosts and see how there coding works to share with AT perhaps and create something of the back of that ?

    I am a little confused though as i thought you said there was a BETA to come on Aug 1st ? but you don't know how to obtain feeds yet ? 

    Like i have said before i wish you the best of luck, its a busy places though where pre existing name cant rival AT such as Ebay, motors etc.. CarBaya was the next to try and now they are asking for investors on their site. 

    Cmon Tadams, give me a little break sir! lol. We're here asking for help. Believe me, all the doubting etc we've done already (no sleep them nights!) We've remortgaged to the hilt and all the rest of it so we're here to simply get some help and encouragement if possible.

    I said... "we are due to go live on September 1st with Beta testing for Dealers interested (for free obviously). Website will be live by 1st August with what we do"

    Could we count on you to give us a go for free? 

    Ta

    Dave 

     

    1 hour ago, tradex said:

    Are you asking how to 'mirror' AT ads' and then generate revenue from your sites advertising, as that's been tried before?

    Negative ghostrider. That pattern is full already. 

    We're not into that. To let you into our mind....

    Zero 3rd party ads or crappy finance pop ups etc. 

  14. Posted

    Hi Tadams,

    Very new here and apols if we do sound to have limited knowledge (we do have limited knowledge! lol)

    Thats why were asking the community. Who could hopefully help us. (You gotta start somewhere)

    Feeds come from your DMS dont they if our understanding as a XML/CSV. My question was, can we see one of them (regardless of whether its to AT or not)

    Can you help Tadams? 

    Cheers in advance

    Dave

    I suppose my question (after reading it back) should be....

    How can dealers get their cars listed in bulk on our platform? 

    What we want is to make a no hassle way for dealers to get their stock listed. Any ideas on how this can be done easily?

    Cheers! 

    Dave

    Urghh sorry Tadams...last point...

    Our struggle is....How do we get cars listed from dealers...We have the answer to the customer point (getting traffic to us from the general public) but thats no good if we get the public to us and only 50 cars showing. so we want as many cars listed as possible pre launch. 

    Thoughts? 

  15. Posted

    Do any of these ring true? Any changes to be made? Which one hits the nail on the head (If any)

    1. Dave the car dealer just wants to sell cars. He uses Autotrader because it’s the market leader and although he sells cars through it, he feels unappreciated and annoyed by them when they make changes that work against a good paying customer with no thought about them.

     

    2. Dave the car dealer just wants to sell cars. He feels he has to use Autotrader because they are the market leader. Daves has used Autotrader for many years but feels annoyed and frustrated by them making changes that work against him, increasing prices and locking Dave into long contracts. Dave feels like he has no other option but to continue with them.

  16. Posted

    Hi community. Hope everyone is good. We know this is a tall ask but....

    We are looking for help to "see" what a car feed to AT looks like? Is anyone willing to share a feed with us so we can take a look? 

    Anything shared with us wouldn't leave our internal development lab. We just need to try and upload a feed to our app and see if it uploads perfectly. 

    We're a startup looking to offer an alternative to AT. 

    (I know many people have said we will never make it and we're wasting our time but please, if you can, help us! lol)

    Thanks in advance everyone!

    Dave

  18. Posted

    3 minutes ago, metcars said:

    We're doing his market research for free? But, he's not the first do this on here.

    Hi Tradex and Metcars....

    I did say....." Anyone that is interested be kind and honestly (considering we are a business) tell us how long this free period should be"

    You tell me? 

    On other posts BTW i've said im here to offer a free period in return for feedback

    Cheers

    Dave

  19. Posted

    Hi Gavin,

    Cheers for the comments and i know how this sounds. We're probably another one of the many others that have tried. We have something different (i dont blame you for thinking we're garbage because im sure the previous ones said "we have something different" too!)

    All we can do is show what we've got and go from there. We're dealer focused. 

    All i could ask is that when we do go live, to take a look at the USP and use us for free for 3 months. If we're garbage, i'll be the one on the streets and youll be the one throwing 20p at me saying " i told you so" 

    Hope not though!

    Anyone that is interested be kind and honestly (considering we are a business) tell us how long this free period should be. 

  20. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Max Branning said:

    If you really could of got a dragon on board then that is the kind of help you would need to get noticed by the public.

    When someone wakes up in the morning and decides they want to go out and buy a new car where is the first place they are going to think of looking?

    Obviously it is not all just AT but unless people are purposefully going to your site to search then its going nowhere as no dealer will pay for it and then you cant generate any revenue to keep it going, unless you are relying  on advertisements to prop it up?

    Im still not sure if this is a wind up thread though to be honest !

    Cheers Max, First of all, its not a wind up. Release 1st August as a web holding page explaining exactly how were different and to sign up for an alert on the launch. That TBH is pretty much aimed at dealers. 

    Launch is 1st October. I should say we're App first focused...again this was based on research.  

    No ads with what we're doing. No finance quote things etc. 

    The reason we are on here (and other forums) is to honestly find out what this app should do for dealers and what it shouldnt do. What AT does well, but what it doesnt do well, then make that for you. If we miss then so be it. We've given it a go. 

    Dragon side. honestly thats what i thought but....my thinking was this. That would, at best, be 3/4 public messages about investment then radio silence and they move on (but still have a lions share of us). so we'd be giving away alot of the company for 3 or 4 public messages. people soon forget about what so and so said a month ago...hope you see where im coming from. Of course those kind words would be mint, but as soon as the dust settles, we're on our own with hardly any compan owned by us. 

    Cheers

    Dave. 

    P.S Would you give us a go for free? 

  21. Posted

    2 minutes ago, Max Branning said:

    What exactly are you going to do marketing wise so that joe public know you exist?

    Even if you have every single dealer in the country advertising their stock on your site, unless joe public actually use it to search for their next purchase and the dealer knows without shadow of a doubt that that lead came from your site, there is no way any dealer is going to sign a contract and hand you over cash ( not for long anyway )

    Put yourself in the mind of a buyer who maybe has not got a clue where to look for a car, what comes to their mind first.

    I have tried several options to AT that were all a waste of cash AA cars / Motors / RAC all dead money for me. Ebay is the only real competitor for AT for me as it actually brings in leads for a good value contract.

    Do you honestly believe you can offer more and have a bigger budget than AA  / Motors / RAC and do something that they could not....?

    Hi Max, 

    Cheers for the message. 

    Short answer is yes. 

    Yes as in, we have a better offering to dealers (not just our charges) and yes as in the Public because AT isnt perfect (thats also what dealers have been telling me here)

    We dont have the budget of AA, Motors etc. but we dont need the budget either. There are more cost effective ways to reach audiences. 

    I know what dealers want in the end.......Cars being sold! and thats the number 1 priority. Do you need to be charged 3k for the privileged? no you dont.

    I suppose though, the proofs in the pudding. We're un tested and potentially living in cloud cuckoo land but you've got to try and take on the big players, worst case we miss and lose everything, then get a job, either way for dealers another potential competitor may give AT another nudge at the fact, they need to change something for you guys. 

    We've got to try. My passion is cars, I use AT EVERY DAY, just browsing cars, i thought there was a better way and here i am. I've put everything into it, remortgaged, actually said no to investment from "a dragon" (was that stupid? possibly but i thought, if they are interested, others will be). If we didnt try we'd never do anything. 

    Its a dream that i'm trying to bring to life! 

    Cheers and have a strong week 

    Dave

  22. Posted

    13 minutes ago, trade vet said:

    Dave.....as I recall,like the AT mag back in 82?,their website was never free from the outset.We were spending over a grand per week in the mag,I think we may have gone on for £1 per car.There is plenty of room for you in this market and you don't need to charge much when you see AT doing 49% net profit.I have just spotted another site CarsinKent,it has 8000 cars,loads of dealers and I imagine they are making money.I hope you do well and if you do,AT will just buy you out.Good Luck.

    Dave.....as I recall,like the AT mag back in 82?,their website was never free from the outset.We were spending over a grand per week in the mag,I think we may have gone on for £1 per car.There is plenty of room for you in this market and you don't need to charge much when you see AT doing 49% net profit.I have just spotted another site CarsinKent,it has 8000 cars,loads of dealers and I imagine they are making money.I hope you do well and if you do,AT will just buy you out.Good Luck.

    Cheers Trade vet!

    Really appreciate the positive words. We're not here to take dealers for all they've got. We think there is a better way to do this and....

    Ask dealers what that should be

    Make that site for dealers

    Get dealers uploading cars (for free for 3 months, longer if dealers think it should honestly be longer)

    Get the general public on

    Sell cars!!!

    Cheers and any other comments (bad or good) are welcome! 

    Have a strong rest of the week

    Dave

     

    7 minutes ago, grant8064 said:

    Best of luck with it.

    I'll have three months of any advertising for free

    Of course you can...theres a catch...we just ask for £5k upfront first

    BTW we're joking. Only thing we will ask you for is feedback on your thoughts on it and if you'd change anything. 

    Be in touch as we get closer. 

    Thanks for giving us a chance. 

  23. Posted

    12 minutes ago, Gavin@Rousdon said:

    It doesn't matter if it's free for 3 months, 6 months or 6 years, unless you are going to match AT in advertising your product (as in your site) to the car buying public any site will fail. I spend near £3k a month with AT, they take that money and use maybe 50% of it to drive consumers to use their website and take the other 50% as profit (no idea what the split is in truth). It brings customers to me, I don't care how much they make. Unless you are prepared to have an advertising budget in the £10's of millions to get people using your product you can't compete. 

    It's like what Manchester City had to do to get where they are today, spend millions after millions, loose millions after millions just to get near the other teams.  

    So he made something different to a horse. A car is vastly different

    You are making a website, not that different to what AT done.

    Maybe invent a drone that picks up cars from a dealer site and drops them onto a customers driveway, 30 minutes later the drone either returns which the car or with a BACS payment. Now that is different

    Hi Gavin

    That sounds mint! We can only try. I do honestly know what your saying BTW. 

    Its what we've thought about for the past 18 months, We're s*^%ting it but confident too. we need Dealers to help us. 

    we've got something which is different to AT. What dealers think of it is another thing, thats why we're here to recruit Dealers to try it and give us feedback. 

    The whole process was for this to be built around dealers using their input. 

    On the marketing side. AT spent approx £15 million on Marketing last year. They are an old dinosaur in this new digital world (albeit a T Rex!)

    The amount we budgeted to spend on marketing is a miniscule amount compared but....

    New school advertising vs Old school advertising is stupidly good value for money. not just in terms of cost but in terms of targeting a very specific audience. Why do you need to carpet bomb EVERYONE in the UK. Why not just people who are looking for cars? but then even better why not spend advertising money on people who are specifically looking for a Ford Focus? 

    Traditional ad spend (tv, papers, magazines etc) costs £28 per 1000 people (approx)

    Digital spend (online) costs £2.50 per 1000 (approx) but is HIGHLY targeted

    Cheers

    Dave

     

  25. Posted

    24 minutes ago, Gavin@Rousdon said:

    Better as in drop the 'good price' etc, drop the finance adverts around it and make the adverts and site look good (which AT do)

    Thats the point, even the one's who haven't given up still only have 80% of the stock and have started doing what AT do, finance adverts around adverts etc. I'm afraid AT were ahead on the game when the internet took off, until an other massive revolution like the internet happens again which AT miss (like Yellow Pages 15 years ago) they are here to stay. 

    Hi Gavin. Cheers for the feedback. Mint info there by the way with "good price" thing and also finance ads. That's already NOT on ours. 

    However....How come it has to be free for 12 months? Why not 3 months or 6 months? We're playing around with 3 months currently to get stock on and TBH get feedback from dealers on what we can add, change to make it work better for them. 12 months is a bit of an ask? I dont know if any competitors of AT offered that initially? 

    BTW i dont know so im just asking! 

    Feedback im getting is majority wish there was a valid alternative to AT, but may not give us a chance even if it was free? 

    Thoughts? 

    Cheers again - Honestly, all the comments are mega cos we're crafting this as you give us feedback!

    Dave

    Sorry i should of also said....

    For dealers willing/wanting to drop AT they need to be confident the newcomer is providing the same amount of leads (obvs if not more) to even consider dropping AT

    Cheers

    Dave