James is looking to buy a car.  You have a lot of cars that you would love to sell to James.  Seems like a match made in heaven.   Let’s forget about the car buying journey for a moment (each step of the journey deserves its own post) where James is going through dozens or more touchpoints from discovery and research to buying.  Let’s just say that James found his way to your dealership website, searched through your inventory, clicked on one of your cars, and submitted a lead. 

Awesome right? 

You have a 26% closing rate on those types of leads so you basically just sold a quarter of a car.  You have one of your sales team members reach out to James in your perfectly polished way to encourage James to come to take a look and perhaps take a test drive.  

Let’s zoom out for a second and zoom back into James’ point of view.  He filled in his name, email address and possibly his phone number as well and clicked whatever call to action button your website vendor has set as a default.  

So far so good?  

Assuming your website loads at a decent speed, James is now redirected to a thank you page.  

“Thank you for your submission.  A qualified sales representative will contact you shortly.”  

Is that all the page has to offer?  Is James’ journey over or on pause until your sales rep gets back to him?  

Too many car dealership lead forms end with pretty much a dead end.  If the shopper wants to continue, he has to break through the friction and start shopping all over again.  Unfortunately for many dealerships, the consumer many times will go right back to Google, not your homepage.  

Instead, why not give James a reason to continue browsing on your website?  Keep his interest and excitement at your digital dealership.  

Is he shopping for a new car? Maybe you want to tell him more about the car he’s looking at and give him some juicy info that he may not know about.  It could be a video about some of the great features, or some stats or reviews from other customers who love that particular vehicle.  

What about a couple of similar vehicles with slightly different features that James might want to consider.  You have James’ name from the form he submitted, use it.  “Hey James, we’ll get back to you really soon but in the meantime, here are a couple of cool features that are available on similar [name of chosen model].  

The web is so powerful and we can do so much with it. Why do so many car dealerships choose to do the absolute minimum?  

If he submitted a lead for a used vehicle, maybe you can show him some other options.  Maybe you can tell him some more great pieces of information on the car he is interested in.  

You can also give him reasons to stick around on the site or with your dealership.  Why would he benefit from sticking around? What can you offer that other dealerships cannot?  

When James or any visitor from your site submits a lead, you have at least a few seconds of a captive audience to try and keep James from going elsewhere.  Every little optimization on your website and thank you page can increase your closing rate and give your customers the experience they are looking for.  

Don’t miss out on easy opportunities.