CarGurus, Inc. (NASDAQ:CARG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Nick Jones: Got it. And then actually, I’m going to follow up on that then, and I can ask the arbitration one offline. I mean, so I guess what’s the balance of kind of having this rich upper funnel content at CarGurus and making sure people kind of keep coming to research cars, maybe aren’t as high quality leads, but they still like to engage with the brand from a content perspective. So, it seems like there’s kind of two problems to solve. There’s one being kind of a top of mind brand that people can utilize and you can get that traffic cheaply and then kind of making sure you’re only kind of paying for the high-quality leads. Does that question make sense?

Jason Trevisan: Yes, I think so. And it’s a multipronged approach that is from a marketing perspective, that’s precisely the balance of brand and performance marketing. The brand is to create the awareness and the interest and the intent. And the performance marketing is to capture them when they’re much closer to ready to buy from the marketing side. And then there’s the product side. And the on-site merchandising side, which is giving that user a better experience when they’re on our site that is more germane to more personalized to what they’re looking to do, but also gives them the awareness and the opportunities to go into these other channels or click pads that turn them into much higher converting users. So, it’s marketing plus product.

And we have we think an extraordinarily long way — long and exciting way to go. Because if you look at the percent of users on our site today, for instance, who are going through Digital Deal and who are 2 or 3 times more likely to convert, it’s very small. I mean it’s gone from zero to what it is. So we’re excited about the growth, but the runway is just significant.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Tom White with D.A. Davidson.

Unidentified Analyst: This is Wyatt Swanson on for Tom. Thanks for taking our questions. My first question, I’m just kind of trying to dig deeper into marketplace subscription renewals here. Curious what approach you guys are kind of taking to renewals and volume-based pricing adjustments for your listings product this year. It seems like you paused a lot of that over the past couple of years. What’s your appetite for trying to reset your pricing with dealers this year? And what’s contemplated in your 2023 outlook on that front?

Sam Zales: Thanks, Wyatt. It’s Sam Zales here. We are deliberately restarting a process, but it’s a different kind of process, one in which we do an annual business review with our partners. And so, it’s less of a sort of a very transactional old way of doing things, which was we call you and say that your lead growth was up 20%. Your price point went up ex Take it or leave it at the end of the month. We’re actually in a cycle of conversations about programs and consultation and what’s working well, unique and proprietary data that that dealer could use and helping them see the value of our programs. And what we’re doing in that regard is offering them a set of packages, all of which will impact our QARSD, obviously, I think that’s the right way to do things.

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