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Carjojo

Kayak.com for New Cars.

Title
  • VP, Marketing & Product
  • 2016-2018
Roles
  • Product
  • Marketing
  • Partnerships
  • Series A Fundraising
Awards
  • Webby Award Runner-Up
Team
  • Peter Levy
  • Peter Odryna
  • Diana Santiguida
  • Bill Flitter

Brand Story

87% of Americans dislike the car-buying process, and it's no wonder.

Traditional car-buying sites are biased lead-generation machines being paid by the dealers meant to squeeze more value for dealers and deceive consumers.

We set out to build a platform to empower people looking to purchase a new car and deliver them the lowest possible price.

Vehicle page
Product Page

Brand Identity

We wanted our brand identity to be immediately differentiated from the Autotraders and CarGurus of the world.

We built a brand identity that was approachable, warm, and pulled design inspiration from top technology brands rather than the traditional automotive motif.

Product Overview
Key Features
  • Fastest and most comprehensive search and research pages (later, much was replicated by Carvana)
  • Analyzed 11 million new cars in real time
  • Predicted the lowest possible price a dealer would accept on a particular car on a particular day
  • Guaranteed the lowest-price and would negotiate on the customer's behalf
  • Saved customers on average $1,500 more than the TrueCar price

Initial Commercial

Today Show Placement

Webby Awards

Runner up to BMW.com

Marketing & Growth Strategy

  1. Establish Credibility:
    Build a polished brand that would attract top experts.
  2. Media Bomb:
    Leverage data insights to get major media placement and build buzz
  3. SEO Lattice:
    Build upon media bomb strategy for link authority and architect a technical SEO framework to quickly rank for product pages
  4. Search Ads Growth Hack: 
    Reverse engineered dynamic keyword placement to be the only auto brand bidding on vin-specific keywords
  5. Tighten Point of Conversion:
    Optimized landing pages to perform up to 70% conversion, built customer success program, streamlined checkout functions.

Media Strategy

Results

Carjojo was sold in 2018!

We built the most advanced car marketplace in the world and helped disrupt an industry in the process. Our product saved customers an average of $1,500 below the dealer supported tools like TrueCar. We were featured in tons of major media and were named runner-up to BMW.com in the 2018 Webbys (the Oscars for the Web).

Not bad for a team of 12 people.