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Small used car dealership marketing tips

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jenniferexclusive

jenniferexclusive

Green Pea
Oct 16, 2023
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Jennifer
#1
Ive been put in charge of marketing for our used car lot. We have about 50 units, 30 are retail ready. Ive posted all of our inventory on marketplace, I make tiktoks, and I make FB posts pretty regularly but nothing is really taking off. This month has been so slow, and thats just how the market is right now (at least in my area for used cars). Since you all probably arent anywhere around where im at (Mississippi), could you offer me any marketing solutions or ideas to help drum up business? I want to help but nothing im doing is working.

Thank you
 
#2
jenniferexclusive said:
Ive been put in charge of marketing for our used car lot. We have about 50 units, 30 are retail ready. Ive posted all of our inventory on marketplace, I make tiktoks, and I make FB posts pretty regularly but nothing is really taking off. This month has been so slow, and thats just how the market is right now (at least in my area for used cars). Since you all probably arent anywhere around where im at (Mississippi), could you offer me any marketing solutions or ideas to help drum up business? I want to help but nothing im doing is working.

Thank you
Click to expand...
can payments look attractive? If so, are you advertising that? "Drive this for just $XXX". Don't forget if your store is on any kind of decent traffic road, your inventory visual appeal is very important. Easy to simply look like a car parking lot when driving by. Hoods up? Balloons? Flags? Moving them around? Something to look like its not a bunch of stale vehicles sitting in a mall parking lot. Often we equate everything to online and forget that XXXX amount of people drive by this place everyday. When you're closed, is there something on each car to make it easy to contact you? "text us for your best price 24/7" type thing. Point being, don't get sucked into only considering online and forgetting all the things you should be doing to make your vehicles look marketable.
 
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Reactions: willandre, Jeff Kershner and jon.berna
#3
Jennifer this shit is hard!

Great points Todd. Think of every possible way a customer can interact or gain an impression of your store and ensure it's up to date. Todd had a bunch here's a few more.

- call the store through marketing 800#s, for all departments
- submit leads and watch how the process works.
- submit leads and make calls to your competitors. Compare yourself honestly.

When things get slow you have to work twice as hard. For those of us the were running marketing in small stores in 2008-2010 you'll recall how you have to manufacture each month or they slip away and the store loses money. It's a seasonal business, what you learn and do to improve the store between Nov-Feb sets you up for March...
 
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#6
jenniferexclusive said:
Im not in sales but I will suggest that to our sales guy. What tools do yall use? I just requested a demo from tradepending.
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Ohh you're in sales now

Marketing is everything that impacts sells especially when it's slow. I would caution against seeking a tool or new solution to 'fix' the problem. First you have to identify if it's a traffic or conversion problem. Then identify what specific channels, what's causing the change etc.

An extra tool will add another plate to spin to distract you from discovering how to improve. If you identify the leak and it's due to something tool related then by all means...but i get the impression you aren't there yet.
 
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Reactions: Auto Analytix, Direct Deal, Carmedia2p0 and 1 other person
#8
@jenniferexclusive have you considered running paid social media ads, these generally do very well from what you're describing.

Here's what we're running successfully for our clients in a nutshell, so you can replicate it:

A) A fair amount of video content
B) Awareness/Lead gen campaign split
C) Persona-based copy & creatives
D) Automation & nurturing tools
E) Testing Pre-Owned offers vs Financing Offers

Hope this helps!
 
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Reactions: willandre and Carmedia2p0
#9
Build trust in your staff and drive conversations. Everyone wants to compete around their vehicles but you should compete around trust.

Are you running any advertising? Take your budget for third-party marketing sources and move half of it into internal campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Many social networks are really "pay to play" at this point so posting organically on them over and over again sometimes isn't too helpful.

Many things that look like "one-to-many" marketing-related issues are actually poor "one-to-one" sales-related issues. If you are working at the dealership then you have the awesome advantage of being able to see what the staff is and is not doing with their leads and conversations.

Drive to conversations and make sure your sales staff know how to handle the conversations, and make sure you are using a CRM that can round robin Facebook chats to the team ;-)
 
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