Everyone loves to be successful! You know what most people love even more than actual success? Having something to point at the proves their success—a fancy title, a bigger house. Often these ego boosts amount to nothing that matters.

You may have been voted “Most Likely To Succeed” in high school, but that didn’t guarantee you a job. You might have the most connections on LinkedIn, but you still need to do some extra legwork if you want to turn those people into possible business partners or leads.

The same is true with Vehicle Display Pages. Everyone loves to track their VDPs—digital marketing firms, your in-market competition, and maybe even you. And whenever there’s an increase in views month over month, who doesn’t want to brag that numbers are up? Any good news is great, sure, but the problem here is that this is only a bigger marketing number, not a bigger sales number. And unless you can trace an increase in VDPs directly to an increase in sold cars, it’s useless!

You’ve gotta ask yourself this question: What does the increase in traffic on the pages really do for you? Say you get 15 percent more VDP views month over month. Can you use more VDP views to pay your employees or take care of your dealership’s expenses? No one has ever been able to do it! That’s why our focus is on generating leads and making ACTUAL SALES.

Here’s an uncomfortable fact—those increased VDPs can actually lead to FEWER sales, not MORE. If you are giving potential customers the chance to comparison shop without interacting with you, you are encouraging decision-making based on a single factor, such as price. You know why people should buy from you, but that cannot be communicated on a Vehicle Display Page—you need direct interaction with your customers.

Don’t get us wrong, a VPD can be valuable—as a tool! If you have great VPDs that people want to view, use that advantage to get the information you need to connect directly with them. Get their contact information—an email address, a phone number. Then you or your sales team can actually talk to these customers. They were looking at your website, so they are thinking about buying a car. You just need to figure out what is stopping them and explain why you have the solution to any problems they have.

Then you can feel free to brag away—because your increased VDP views are leading to increased leads and increased sales. And that is something to really sink your teeth into!

For more tips and tricks to make your marketing more effective, check out our new EBook Leaf Your Old Marketing Behind: Six Automotive Marketing Techniques You Need To Quit Cold Turkey. You can download it for FREE right now. Just click here and claim your free copy.