Help talk me off of the ledge

[peter94]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post, I stumbled across this form as I was searching for marketing ideas for my small used car dealership. I saw some good comments on here so I thought I'd join up.

We are a small used car dealership in a rural area about 1hr away from the Twin Cities in MN. We are mainly a repair shop, with the car sales segment of our business growing since 2019. We moved into what I call our "Main" location about 1.5 years ago. We sold just over 100 vehicles in 2025. My goal in 2026 is to sell 120 vehicles. We have been working on speeding up our reconditioning operation, which is where I expect the growth to come from (In 2025 we ran into times where we only had 3 cars on the lot because we sold almost everything, and our service department was too overwhelmed to get the lot cars done in a timely manner).

Now that our service department can get the cars on the lot in a timely manner we have 13 cars on the lot, with 3 or 4 more coming on the lot in the next week. The problem is.....We aren't hardly selling anything. I think we moved 5 cars in Jan 2026 and like 5 cars in December 2025. 1 year ago in Jan 2025 I think we sold like 17 vehicles. We advertise on Facebook, Craigslist, carsforsale.com, findcars.com, I do test drive videos, and technical videos. Last year in Jan it seemed as if I posted 2 videos on Facebook and Tiktok we would sell like 3 cars. Now posting videos doesn't seem to be yielding any results.

Is this a market issue right now? Am I doing something wrong? Are our prices too high? Bad mix of vehicles? Part of me worries it is a pricing issue, as we do ask near clean retail for our vehicles as we make a significant investment into most of them with repairs, maintenance, etc. I wonder if we just need to be XX% under market rate in order for people to make the drive? But then again when I use carsforsale.com to look at other dealers in the area, we are on the lower end of the spectrum for some vehicles, and they still are sitting.

I just need the reassurance of random internet strangers that everything will be ok. As I am starting to lose my mind.

-Peter

 

[willandre]

What if I told you it could be all of those things? It's definitely a different market than it was a year ago, so you can't expect what you did last year to work the same way it did.

Share some of your assets (site, socials, etc) and I can take a look from the marketing side.

Happy to do that privately if you prefer.

 

[peter94]

Hi there, thanks for offering to take a look. Our main site is www.maverickautomn.com. We are on Facebook as Maverick Automotive Winthrop, MN as our sales and service site. We also have a location that is a repair shop and gas station in Arlington, MN just called "Maverick Automotive". I also list the vehicles under my personal Facebook account on Marketplace (Peter Tuma). I post most of my TikTok videos under @petertuma247.

Thank you for taking the time to give me your thoughts from an outside perspective.

 

[willandre]

It's great that you're getting out in front of people and adding value with your video content. That's the type of stuff that establishes your credibility in the local market and the near beyond. Your consistency in posting looks good, too, which is the name of the game. If you're not on Youtube and Instagram, think about posting there as well since you already have the content and all the audiences add up. Also, think about some shorter, salesy videos where you're clear on what you've done to the car, how great of a deal it is and how easy you are to get ahold of and work with.

Also, consider moving some of your ad budget to Google search where you're losing share to Carvana, CarGurus et al who have no viable business in your market.

There are definitely a few things digitally that aren't helping. You appear to have 2 Google business profiles for the business. Not sure what's going on there, but generally, when Google gets confused, search results suffer.



The click-to-call buttons on your listings page aren't working for me on desktop. That could be unique to my environment, but worth testing on your PC/browser to see if you can replicate the issue.

You're dominating Craigslist, but it doesn't look like it because the branding is inconsistent. This impacts recall for when people are finally in market and they need to remember who they saw. Overall, in your listings and videos try to get some consistent branding in every time at least at the beginning and end.




Think about what you want to be known for and make that your north star for your brand and in your videos.

Expert recon/repair? Low prices? 30-day warranty? Put some thought into this.

Lastly, (and obviously this has not been exhaustive from a market perspective), I would just say look at some of the basics in terms of signage and sales. You have great frontage, but a car passing through probably wouldn't see you in time to know you're selling cars. Those feather signs that say "Used Cars" "Great Deals" "Work Trucks" can really pull people in off the street.

I hope things turn around for you. Could be lots of things going on in the market, but people always need cars. Sell loud so they hear you.