Automotive Marketing

In a recent post, I discussed a vehicle lead that I thought was interesting. The question was raised that the lead might have been a scammer (it was not). I thought it would be interesting to discuss how I identify garbage leads that enter my system.

Here’s a list of red flags or warning signals that may indicate that the sales lead is a scam or automated bot garbage. No signal by itself indicates that a lead is definitely garbage, but a combination of a few might.  

1. The same message is sent from different names or email addresses. Scammers rarely submit a single lead on a single vehicle. Most crap arrives in chunks of 5 or 10 leads. While a real person might copy and paste the same message to multiple dealers, they will always use the same name and email address. It is extremely unlikely that two legit shoppers will compose the same email on the same day.

   
   Figure 1

2. Requests originating in multiple cities by a single individual may indicate auto submission. See Figure 2.
3. If a shopper’s name does not match their email address, the lead might have been automatically generated.

   
   Figure 2

4. Mention of a shipping company or agent is likely a scam. Car classified sites get hit with a scam that is popular on craigslist, the shipping agent scam. The alleged buyer is convinced he would like to purchase, and will send a check for an amount greater than the listed price to cover the shipping. This scam is designed to rope the seller into committing check fraud from their own account via the payment to the “shipping company.” Here’s an actual scam message that was submitted to one of my sites:
   

   Hello
   Thanks for the response
   I want you to know that the USA Cashier check you would be receiving shortly is meant for both the buying and shipping.
   Though you are not required to handle the shipping but what is required of you just simple and straight forward and I need to let you know now.
   Immediately you receive the cashiers check……Take it to the bank and deposit it when the funds clear in your account……..Deduct your amount for sale of this item…..Secondly, Transfer the remaining money to the shipping company that would be coming for the pick-up after you might have deducted all the necessary charges…..Finally, fix a convenient date with the freight company that you would be around so that they can come and pick the item up for shipping.
   But I have some questions to ask you please………………………………..
   1) Would you be able to transfer the shippers funds to them same day you receive the funds?
   2) Can I trust you with my money?
   3} confirm your name and address that you want the money send to to avoid sending money to wrong address
   Please email back with your reply to this and let me have your word as I need to conclude this transaction within the shortest period.

More information about this particular scam is all over the web, but my favorite page is provided by the community of craigslist.

The “red flag” criteria listed above can be easily translated into logic to flag leads for an editorial review. Here’s a list of words that I also use to scan messages for dead beats:

• transaction
• freight company
• shipping company
• shipping agent
• cashiers check
• cashier’s check
• your account
• account number
• account #
• account no
• deduct
• the funds
• trust you
• my client
• my customer
• my buyer
• USA
• personal assistant
• shippment
• shipment
• shipper
• westernunion
• western union
• money gram
• money gramm

A list like this is a great tool to flag leads for further review. I will update this post with additional phrases that I add to my filter.

For the last month, I’ve been link building the hell out of Yahoo! Answers. My focus on a single vehicle classifieds site has been extremely successful (and easy). A week into my campaign, I read a blog article that made the Sphinn homepage about how Yahoo Answers traffic can actually eclipse Yahoo search traffic. Boy, was that accurate.

Yahoo Answers is now sending more traffic to my site than any other source, including Google and Wikipedia.

I captured this screen shot from Google Analytics this morning. These URLs are the top referrering websites from September 21 to October 21, 2007.

Sounds too good to be true, I agree. Today, I misspelled the domain name of a website I wanted to visit, and I found OnlineDealer.net. The website is short on details, but it appears to be based in Ohio.

While looking wide-eyed over this week’s website stats, I came across a used car lead that I must share.

i indicated interest in your ( car) that was advertised on the net.Please i will want to know if it’s still availiable and if it is,Send me:

(i)The final/bottom price of the car .
(ii)Recent pictures of the car.
(iii)Why you are selling the car .
(iv)How long the car has been for sale.
(v)If the car has a clear title
(vi)The condition of the car .
(vii)Any other detail you may wish to give us.

i”ll want to hear back from you as soon as possible

This single email represents the mindset of the majority of car shoppers online. I’m brainstorming how I can change the way I present classified ad listings to answer some of the questions on this list. How many of these items are presented on your advertisements?

Let’s face it: The interfaces of two of the largest classified aggregator sites, Vast.com and Oodle.com, are nearly identical. On both sites, “Cars” is the first category, and on Vast, it’s selected as the default category for searches.

The problem is that a search from the Vast.com home page returns no vehicle search results for motorcycle queries. All motorcycles are in the “Merchandise” category along with boats. Oodle has not made the same mistake. In fact, Oodle’s home page will take any query and find the proper product category to query.  

I know very well what Vast.com is and what it can offer me as a consumer because I’m a search junkie & computer programmer, too. The typical shopper, on the other hand, is just looking for that box where he can type what he wants, and if he’s at Vast.com, he’s not finding that motorcycle.