POLL: How did you buy from FCP?

[mrbrian200]

I'm pretty sure MVS is where I first heard about FCP also. I'm not sure the click through the link 'procedure' is the best way to approach this. But I'm at a loss for any other way to do it. FCP doesn't have a 'where did your hear about us' field during checkout that I've ever noticed. I can't say how many times I've placed an order to MVS sponsors...then sometime after completing checkout I remember that I should have linked through MVS before adding items to the cart, but didn't.

If their sales volume drops noticeably after dropping MVS they'll be back eventually. It's possible MVS wasn't the only ad campaign they've pulled away from. Sometimes companies decide they have enough brand recall/recognition to pull back from advertising for awhile. But you can't do that long term, eventually they have to step back into the fold or risk being 'forgotten' by both old and potential new customers.

[callahanoffroad]

So add point of habit I always type in a url manually. I've been an online business owner for a long time and advertising is expensive. So I always type it out as opposed to the pay per click link. I learned about FCP from MVS, and quite frankly would never have gone there even once without MVS. But because of the insanely good reputation they have here I bought with confidence. But I'll be honest I've had some of their parts fail on me, a coil ignitor after 10,000 miles comes to mind. Just my $.02

[E Showell]

I too have had parts sourced from FCP fail, but on the rare occasions it has happened, FCP always dealt with it promptly and professionally.

They seemed to pay attention to this community as well. URO hoses come to mind for parts FCP stopped carrying because user experience with parts quality was negative.

[ZionXIX]

I too sent FCP an email with my thought on their decision. Now that eeuroparts has a similar warranty I may try them for a while.

[matthew1]

Thanks for the input, guys. It's very helpful.

I don't know FCP's motivations, if it's a matter of reducing ad spending across the board, or a value/cost/benefit calculation on their MVS ad specifically.

If it's the MVS cost/benefit specifically, that's where this discussion is important. I think in the last 5,6,7 years advertisers have been lured into a world of numbers to determine marketing effectiveness, thanks to systems like Google AdWords. That's where advertisers (anyone) can place ads anywhere on the Web... to appear on any site that runs Google AdSense. I've used it. It's got really deep and wide reporting capabilities to show exactly how effective your ads are: who (demographics) is clicking on them, when they're clicking, and in some cases, it gives you insight on everything all the way through to the post-buy Thank You page.

As you can imagine, this can be a powerful lure, and can make dollars spent on a simple sponsorship seem pretty lame.

I'm not saying FCP is caught in this syndrome. I have no idea what they're using to determine marketing campaign effectiveness. I have 0 insight into how they operate, and I'm not accusing them of anything.

As a footnote, FCP guys, I'm not trying to stir up a mob, just trying to get information on user behavior on how they go to advertisers' sites... if tracking is an accurate method to determine the value of a sponsorship.

[matthew1]

Hey @Matt, I tried to do a donation via PayPal, but it's erroring out on me. Is the PayPal link still valid?

I’ll look at it when I get home in about 2 hours.

[matthew1]

@clarkerussell, congrats on passing 11 years membership! https://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/donate Donations go to MVS server expenses, which these days run about $125/month (Dreamhost Cloud Compute + AWS for images).

Not a high or low, it's kinda in a historical average. It's been up over $250 with Rackspace, and that enterprise class hosting was dead reliable. We'll see what Google Cloud Platform brings. I'll be working on moving over to that this week.

[RickHaleParker]

FCP might see different if there was a way to link a FCP account to MVS.

FCP might see the light if they read MVS and seen all the word of mouth recommendations for FCP. Any business manager worth his salt knows the value of word of mouth recommendations

[j-dawg]

Car forums are generally in decline with the recent rise of Facebook, Instagram, and other social media feeds that bring relevant #content right into things we click through anyway. Too, advertisers can now splash their ads on literally any website we visit - I see ads from FCP and eEuroParts for things I've looked at while reading the news, scrolling through the 'gram, etc. Not to be too gloomy about it, but when was the last time you saw a months- or years-long build thread like the ones you'd see on Honda Tech or Nico Club in 2006? I spend more idle time on catch-all websites and apps that figure out what I want for me than websites I had to find on my own. The algorithms have captured my dopamine receptors very effectively.

There's still a place for sites like this, but the mindspace market for making an account on a website for a single purpose has shrunk. Maybe FCP decided their ad budget is better spent on tweets than posts.

[matthew1]

Well said, j-dawg. The silver lining of the movement away from car forums is that after all these new players, the best place for repairs is still a car forum. Facebook moves too fast to be a good repository for repair information. I can't remember the last time I saw a FB post from more than a week prior. You can get answers there, but as a reference? a storehouse for organized information?... it's poor.

I use MVS FB posts as flags that say "Hey this is a new repair at MVS", and little else.

A sad aspect of this new trend to Facebook, IMHO, is that FB page owners get no revenue from their efforts at running their page. Mark Zuckerberg gets it. They get esteem and maybe prestige, but in a sense they work for Zuckerberg for free. They draw users from a system that makes someone some income to one that makes nobody income, except FB shareholders.