STREET VIEW: HOW A NEW TEXAS VOLKSWAGEN DEALER IS

Street Volkswagen Case Study
STREET VIEW:
HOW A NEW TEXAS
VOLKSWAGEN DEALER
IS PRODUCING RECORD
RESULTS
Brad Paschal
E-Commerce Director
Street Volkswagen, Amarillo, TX
“We have to meet people where they’re at instead of trying to make them fit into our processes, and
LotLinx directs them straight to our website.”
Street Toyota in Amarillo, Texas casts a very long shadow. That’s what happens when a dealership
has a 20% share of all the cars sold in a market the size of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. So
it was no surprise when Volkswagen approached Joe Street with an offer he ultimately decided he
couldn’t refuse – bring the VW brand back to Amarillo after an absence of more than 25 years.
According
to
Brad
Paschal, who serves as
the E-Commerce Director
at Street Volkswagen,
Joe said to VW, “I have
the opportunity to bring
50 high quality jobs to
Amarillo and help out 50
families. If we’re going
to do this, we’re going
to do it right.” And thus
was born one of the most
contemporary automotive
dealerships in the state.
experience and user
experience the best it
can be.”
Like other dealers, Brad
began by relying on socalled tried and true
marketing
solutions,
but the results were
disappointing.
“We
just weren’t having
very good success,” he
says, “because we were
getting the same leads
“LotLinx drives almost as much
from Volkswagen, from
traffic as our paid search, and we
“Contemporary”
also
Trilogy, from Autobytel.
spend half as much on it.”
describes how Brad is
There was a lot of
marketing the dealership,
duplication, and we
and LotLinx is a major
were spending a lot of
part of his strategy.
time filtering out those
duplicates and…trying to figure out who was the first
“A totally different way to do things”
one to send it. It was a big mess.”
Street Volkswagen opened in temporary quarters in
In the midst of this, Brad was introduced to LotLinx
July, 2013 before moving to a state of the art facility
through a woman who works at the dealership. He
this year. According to Brad, they wanted to leverage
recognized immediately that here was “a totally
the Street name by being “the most innovative, most
different way to do things and not have to have these
advanced store in Amarillo...and make the shopping
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LotLinx | Street Volkswagen Case Study | September 2015
third-party lead providers that give you really lowquality leads.” And so, while he continued to have
some presence on third-party search sites, he made a
major commitment to LotLinx – with gratifying results.
Sending shoppers directly
to the dealership’s VDPs
Brad realized immediately the value that LotLinx
brought to his marketing efforts.
“What LotLinx does for you,” he says, “is it drives
customers to what they’re looking for. So if they’re
on our site, and they’re printing out that VDP page,
they’re already where they want to be as opposed to
being inconvenienced.
“It keeps them from having to go through these
processes that the third-party company has set up to
make them money. Instead, it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s
the car I want. Let me print it out. Let me go.’ There’s
a click and the number to call, and they call and say,
‘Hey, you have this car. Can I come in and look at it?’”
Brad reports that “LotLinx pays for itself 10 times
over, and it has since we started. They’ve been very
influential in helping us achieve our goals, and we’re
continuing to grow, and we want to be the number
one Volkswagen store
in our region and keep
growing. We ended at
“WE’RE A VERY, VERY
50 cars last month.
YOUNG DEALERSHIP.
In fact, we had the
BUT WITH THE HELP
highest percentage [of
OF LOTLINX, WE’RE
sales] in the region.”
OVER 300% OF
WHAT VOLKSWAGEN
EXPECTED US TO DO.”
“LotLinx enables us
to close at a much,
much higher rate,” he
continues. “If I have a
Trilogy lead, it might
close at like 8% or 7%. But these leads that we’re
seeing that are generated by LotLinx are closing at
20 to 30%. So it’s much, much higher traffic. We’ve
even increased our website traffic with the help of
LotLinx. We were running around a thousand visitors
a month [before LotLinx]. We will hit 10,000 visitors
this month.”
THE BENEFITS OF LOTLINX FOR STREET VOLKSWAGEN
Data as of May 2015
$2,897
AMOUNT INVESTED
726
863
571
$3.36
26%
SHOPPERS
TO WEBSITE
VDP
VIEWS
DAYS SAVED
ON LOT
COST PER
VDP VIEW
CLOSE RATE
LIFT
LotLinx | Street Volkswagen Case Study | September 2015
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HELPING A CAR DEALER COMPETE WHERE TRUCKS ARE KING.
“LOTLINX ALLOWS A VOLKSWAGEN DEALERSHIP,
A BRAND THAT DOESN’T HAVE TRUCKS, TO COMPETE
IN THE TRUCK MARKET. THAT’S WHAT IT DOES.”
And it’s not just cars that LotLinx is helping Street Volkswagen sell.
When it opened, Street Volkswagen faced a problem
that was no different than that of most other VW
dealerships. Because Volkswagen doesn’t make trucks,
buyers don’t automatically think of a VW dealership as
a good place to buy one. But trucks are very big in
Texas, and Street Volkswagen wanted to sell its fair
share of them.
Towards this end, LotLinx has proven to be a valuable
partner.
“LotLinx has allowed us to streamline the user
experience,” Brad reports. “It has allowed us to make
it so easy for the user to see, ‘Oh, they have trucks.’
Boom. By the time they click on the image, they’re
on our website, and they’re like, ‘Oh, wow, they have
trucks here? Let me just go ahead and get there’.”
Street Toyota, beware. There’s a new kid in town, and
he’s gunning for you.
LotLinx: Transforming Digital Automotive Retail
To set up a meeting with a LotLinx consultant, go to lotlinx.com/schedule
For general information, call 1 800 625 LINX or visit lotlinx.com
LotLinx, Inc. 412 South Wells Street, Chicago, IL 60607
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LotLinx | Street Volkswagen Case Study | September 2015