CHICAGO, Feb. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Cars.com, the
premier online resource for buying and selling new and used
vehicles, announced today that it has launched PowerDrive, a
groundbreaking new advertising product for franchise dealerships.
Based in extensive consumer research, PowerDrive brings
together Special Offers, deeper reputation exposure and a
dealership-branded video experience designed to increase the
exposure of a dealership's brand, reputation and inventory on
Cars.com.
"Whether a shopper uses their mobile device to read reviews
right on the dealership lot, compares vehicle features and
dealerships online or watches video, the digital age offers
consumers 24/7 access to information and empowers them to take
control of the car-buying process," said Mitch Golub, President, Cars.com. "To
align with these shifts in consumer behavior, we first changed the
model for new-car advertising when we launched BaseDrive in May,
empowering dealers to showcase their brand and reputation, not just
their inventory. PowerDrive builds on that model and dials it
up, giving dealers even more ways to elevate and influence at
critical moments during a shopper's online journey."
Special Offers:
"Given that price and the availability of incentives and rebates
continue to be two of the most important attributes for new-car
shoppers, it was important that PowerDrive give dealers a feature
to leverage this information," said Nick
Hummer, Director, New Car Strategy. "Promoting special
offers, which can include OEM and dealer incentives but also things
that make a dealership unique, like 'free oil changes for a year,'
financing incentives or lease specials, helps tell a more complete
story about why a shopper should buy from a particular store."
PowerDrive promotes a dealer's Special Offers throughout the
Cars.com desktop site, mobile site and mobile apps. Offers
are displayed in multiple areas throughout the site on key shopper
pages, including the Dealer Profile (via a PowerDrive-exclusive
tab), vehicle detail pages, inventory search results pages and
videos, and only PowerDrive dealers appear when shoppers filter
search results by Special Offers in the guided navigation menu.
Dealers can customize and modify their dealer offers through
Cars.com's customer portal, as well as approve OEM offers
monthly.
"After adding Special Offers to our new-car inventory listings
on Cars.com, we saw a significant increase in the click-through
rate to those vehicles," said Andrew
DiFeo, General Manager of Hyundai of St. Augustine and PowerDrive customer. "As a
result, we recently had the best new car sales month in the history
of our store, part of which I attribute to Special Offers."
Deeper Reputation Exposure:
"One of the key findings of our research of new-car shoppers is
that they aren't necessarily looking for the lowest price; they
want a competitive price and a great purchase experience from a
dealership they can trust to service their vehicle in the years
ahead," said Hummer. "Dealer Reviews have been a powerful
differentiator for all of our customers since their launch in 2011,
and dealers have the opportunity to amplify their reputation even
further with PowerDrive."
In addition the dedicated tab of the Dealer Profile featuring
Dealer Reviews for all Cars.com franchise dealers, only PowerDrive
customers receive featured reviews on vehicle detail pages.
Customizable widgets bring Cars.com reviews to the dealership's
website and Facebook, providing external content that keeps
shoppers engaged with their site and Facebook page, as well as
making it easy to solicit additional reviews to drive volume.
PowerDrive dealers also receive a robust reputation management
tool, which aggregates reviews from Cars.com and a number of
other online reviews sites and provides actionable reports that
track trends over time and offer competitive analysis.
Branded Video Experience:
"Consumers are busy, and increasingly, they're choosing to do as
much of their shopping as possible online," said Hummer.
"Video is the closest thing to visiting a dealership in person, and
the strong engagement we're seeing with video is why we made it a
standard part of our advertising package in 2011. PowerDrive
takes this incredibly effective medium and makes it a powerful
differentiator by adding dealership branding and more ways to
engage."
As part of the enhanced video experience for PowerDrive dealers,
the video player on vehicle detail pages has been upgraded to
feature a dealer's logo, tagline and links to their Special Offers.
All of a dealer's individual videos from various VDPs are
aggregated on a PowerDrive-exclusive tab on their Dealer Profile,
along with exclusive make/model videos that keep a shopper engaged
within a dealer's specific content as they continue to do
research.
For more information or to upgrade to PowerDrive, dealers can
contact their Cars.com sales representative, visit
http://dealers.cars.com or visit us at the NADA Convention &
Expo, Feb. 8-11 in Orlando, booth #2075.
ABOUT CARS.COM
Founded in 1998, Cars.com is an award-winning online destination
for car shoppers that offers information from consumers and experts
to help buyers formulate opinions on what to buy, where to buy and
how much to pay for a car. Cars.com is a division of Classified
Ventures LLC, which is owned by leading media companies, including
A.H. Belo (NYSE: AHC), Gannett Co.,
Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), Tribune
Company and The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO).
SOURCE Cars.com