Acton Toyota/Acton Scion

Background

Located twenty miles northwest of Boston, Acton Toyota has been fighting it out in the highly competitive Boston metropolitan area since 1989. Leading the company’s Internet efforts is Matt Lamoureux, Director of Internet Business Development, who came on board in early 2004, around the same time that the business added a Scion franchise.

Business Challenge

Lamoureux came to Acton fully convinced that it was the best Toyota dealership in the area. But he knew it would take more than his belief to make the business number one online. “I live about a twenty-minute drive from the store,” explained Lamoureux. “Believe it or not, there are six Toyota dealers even closer to my home. And the competition on the Internet is even stronger.”

Lamoureux wanted to make sure that consumers searching for Toyotas or Scions in the Boston area would find his two sites and not his competitors’ sites. Generating higher lead volume through organic, paid search, and third-party leads was the challenge.

Impact on Business

Acton was keeping pace in a competitive market, but Lamoureux sensed the dealerships could do better. “Thanks to [General Manager] Mike Hills’ forward thinking, Acton Toyota established its Internet business several years before I came along,” said Lamoureux. “But it didn’t take long for us to realize that we weren’t generating as many leads as we could, and that the Internet held more potential for growth than any other part of our business.”

The time had come to make a move that would allow Acton Toyota to build on its success and leave the competition behind. “Our sites needed greater search engine visibility, and we needed more leads. It was time to divert more of our traditional advertising budget towards the Internet,” said Lamoureux.

Solution

Driving increased traffic capable of generating additional high-quality leads is a complex problem. For an easy and effective solution, Lamoureux turned to Cobalt, choosing PowerSearch for both the Scion and Toyota websites. For third-party leads, he chose Dealix.

PowerSearch is Cobalt’s paid search marketing service, which works with a dealer to create an effective campaign based on the business’s unique market and goals. With PowerSearch, the campaign’s results are constantly monitored and analyzed, and the knowledge gained is used to refine keyword choices and bidding strategies. Maximizing the dealer’s ROI is the service’s explicit and ultimate goal.

“We knew Cobalt was the leader in leveraging Internet search to drive not just volume but high-quality traffic,” said Lamoureux. “Signing up for these services seemed like an obvious step.”

Results

According to Lamoureux, the results from these services were immediate and dramatic. In less than half a year, monthly email leads more than doubled; unique visitors increased by 77%; search engine referrals grew nearly seventeenfold; and the conversion of visitors to leads increased by 25%.

“We’re converting the additional traffic into leads and delivering more cars. On top of that, our cost-per-sale has gone down, and we’re making more money. Our Internet advertising strategy is considerably less expensive and more effective than our traditional approach,” said Lamoureux.

“Like a lot of dealerships, we’d been ‘on the web’ for several years. We’d had good success, but we knew that we were just scratching the surface,” he said. “Now things are starting to click, and we’re finally beginning to realize the potential that we always believed existed.”

Key Highlights

Matt Lamoureux
Director of Internet Business Development
Acton Toyota/Acton Scion
Acton, Massachusetts

Franchise

- Toyota
- Scion

Cobalt Product

- Nitra Website
- PowerSearch
- Prospector
- Dealix Leads
- Media Tracker

Results

- Email leads increased 119%
- Unique visitors increased 77%
- Search engine referrals increased 1700%
- Traffic to lead conversions increased 25%