Want To Double Your Used Car Sales In 2017? Pull One Of These 3 Levers.

Managing and marketing your used vehicles relies on a dialed-in strategy. Before you even consult your agency/vendor, take into account your pre-owned gross profit, return on investment (ROI), days to turn, average cost of sale, seasonality, and realistic guidelines for evaluating and appraising trades.

You don’t want to put ad spend behind models with low inventory (1 or 2 vehicles). Stick to the models you have in abundance, and have your vendor link to your SRPs instead of the VDPs to provide your users with options.

Always consider which vehicles are most appropriate for your market. When trucks have a higher demand than fuel efficient vehicles, advertise your trucks! And beware: Avoid advertising hard-to-move inventory on Google. If your current showroom visitors aren’t interested, Google searchers probably won’t be either.

Add lease offers, financing offers, cash back promotions, holiday sales, and other incentives to your Text and Display campaigns. And please, make sure your agency/vendor is going a step further than OEM or “cookie-cutter” promos. You’re competing against local dealers. Make sure your PPC campaigns are helping you stand out.

When possible, use on-lot photos of your pre-owned inventory, or direct to 360º virtual walkarounds to help establish trust with your prospects that your used cars are in good condition. Lastly, be sure your Retargeting budget is adjusted according to your unique visitor volume.

We can’t say it enough: make sure all of your ads are optimized for mobile. A whopping 81% of car shoppers use smartphones to do their research, and Think With Google found that 1 in 3 shoppers who use their mobile device as part of the car buying process located or called a dealer from their phone.

Use actual photos of your used vehicles to build trust with your shoppers. Consumers want to see the actual vehicle before making the commitment to call or come to the lot. (We recommend leaving your photos unbranded to help them blend in with other local listings.)

Once a customer calls in about a particular car you’ve posted on Craigslist, pull up ALL vehicle listings that are similar to it. This will give you multiple options to show them that vary in price and availability.

In essence, Craigslist is the virtual form of local listings, and therefore is contingent upon local trends and interests. Be sure your Craigslist posting tool uses science and data to understand which days are best to post, what vehicles are trending, and how to optimize each listing so it resonates with your specific local audience.

Craigslist shoppers are lower down the sales funnel, making them more ready-to-buy than other shoppers. Because of their high motivation, however, Craigslist shoppers can be turned off by price quickly. Unless you know you have the BEST price in the area, only give away dollar signs once the shopper has called or walked into your dealership so you can offer them multiple options.

Most Facebook Advertising vendors boast about providing In-Market Shopper data from POLK and Datalogix – but your options don’t stop there. You can now reach Shoppers interested in your specific model lines, shoppers who have owned their current vehicle for 4+ years, and Facebook users with specific credit levels.

Have your Facebook Ad vendor load in lists from your CRM to match customers with existing Facebook accounts, and then create a Trade Up or Buy Back campaign to bring them through the doors again.

When it comes to Facebook Advertising, always try and differentiate your dealership’s brand from every other dealership in your city. What makes you different? What’s your story? Are you home of the “one-owner” vehicles, do you offer crazy guarantees, or incredible Certified Pre-Owned deals?

By adding just one line of code to your dealership’s website, you can start bucketing traffic to retarget on Facebook. Use Carousel Ads displaying multiple on-lot photos of your Pre-Owned inventory and directing to the SRPs.